Towards the end of the longest (and sixth-best) FIFA World Cup on record, The Onion, America's satire newspaper of record, published a piece titled "Report: That's Enough Soccer For Now."
"Saying the nation had enjoyed a perfectly adequate amount of dribbling, passing, and loud chanting," it said, "a new report published Tuesday confirmed that was enough soccer for now. 'Welp, that was fun, but we've got our fill,' the report read in part."
For a lot of Americans, that sentiment probably rang true. The Onion is really good at what it does, after all. But you? If you're reading this piece, you're different. The World Cup made you a soccer fan for good: You're ready to live the soccer lifestyle. You're not going back.
Here's a little secret: Soccer is already a mainstream American sport. If that wasn't true before the World Cup, it certainly is now.
Last fall, as Ryan O'Hanlon recently referenced, The Economist published the results of a survey saying more Americans listed soccer as their favorite sport than baseball. And this summer before the World Cup, a Nielsen survey suggested that the base of soccer fans in America is over 60 million people and potentially the fourth largest in the world.