The Show for May 28, 2026: UA's shrinking student body, World Cup and more

The University of Arizona is getting smaller — reducing the size of its student body. We’ll hear why university officials say that’s intentional. Plus, how big might the upcoming World Cup be in the U.S.?

Transcript

MARK BRODIE: Hi, I’m Mark Brodie, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, what’s behind a smaller student body at the University of Arizona? And will the summer’s World Cup be the talk of the town, and how much does that actually matter?

But first, an audit of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has found almost three-quarters of the spending it attributed to complying with a settlement to reduce racial profiling had little to do with that purpose. The settlement is the result of a legal case known as Melendres v. Arpaio. In that case, the judge found the sheriff’s department under Joe Arpaio violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers and ordered changes to the department. That included bringing on a monitor to make sure those changes were happening.

Recently, Maricopa County officials, including current Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, have asked to end that settlement. One of the factors they cite is the cost of complying with it. But as my next guest reports, much of that spending is not related to compliance. Rafael Carranza is an investigative reporter at Arizona Luminaria and has looked into this. He joins me to talk more about it. Rafael, good morning.

RAFAEL CARRANZA: Good morning, Mark.

BRODIE: So, what kinds of spending is the sheriff’s office saying that it is doing that is related to complying with Melendres that actually isn’t?

CARRANZA: The majority of the spending that we are talking about here is for personnel. So we’re talking about employees that the department has had to hire as a result of these settlement agreements. Mostly, it involved the creation of two new divisions that had to be completely staffed with employees, as well as hiring additional investigators to look into misconduct claims against deputies. And so the personnel costs are the highest proportion, but there are a number of other items. For example, there are expenses here for body cameras and Tasers. There are expenses for renovations. There are expenses for travel. So it really kind of varies, but the one thing in common is that they were all billed as part of the settlement agreement.

BRODIE: Well, is some of that attributable to the settlement? Like you mentioned that there are personnel costs, they had to staff two new divisions. Clearly, it would seem that some personnel costs would go toward that settlement, but maybe just not all of them?

CARRANZA: That is correct. The audit identified that approximately $63 million of the $226 million that they analyzed from 2014 to 2024 had some very clear connection to the judge’s requirements over the course of four court orders that the judge has issued over the past decade. But the remainder were either misattributed, meaning that they were not related to the court orders, or perhaps that some of the work was partially attributed to Melendres, but then the sheriff’s office charged the full costs of that service or that employee to the settlement when the work that they did was only partial.

BRODIE: Ah, okay. Is there an advantage to the sheriff’s office of billing more stuff to the settlement? Like, is there a reason why maybe they were doing it?

CARRANZA: Well, that’s kind of the big question that I think auditors were trying to get to the bottom of, and I think we asked the sheriff’s office as well. And I think that the sheriff has spoken a number of times in public about how they’re required by law to pay for these court reforms. But they were able to add expenses to this. For example, one very clear example that I can point to is body cameras. The judge required deputies to purchase body cameras to document the traffic stops that are at the very heart of this lawsuit. But the sheriff’s office then also ended up getting Tasers that were bundled into this body camera system. Now, the Tasers are not required under the court orders, and so that’s an example where the audit found that even though the body cameras were required, the sheriff kind of went above and then charged the Tasers, which were not.

BRODIE: What, if anything, has the sheriff or his department said about this?

CARRANZA: Well, the sheriff’s office and the county supervisors as well have been very clear about their desire to wrap up this settlement, which has been going on since 2013 when the first court order came out. And by now, the supervisors have approved over $350 million for the settlement—a huge amount that they see as can be used going towards other things as well.

But when it comes to the audit itself, they have declined to challenge the findings of the audit. I think the supervisors in particular have alleged that the original lawsuit was over racial profiling and the traffic stops, and they feel that looking into the county’s finances goes beyond the scope of that initial lawsuit. And so they’re refusing to kind of engage talking about the numbers, even though supervisors have referred to those dollar figures as a reason why it has to end.

But it definitely becomes—it’s still kind of a big item of dispute. And as the case is still going on, it still continues, there’s still a lot of kind of steps ahead before the compliance efforts end. And so I think that the price will only continue to be kind of one of those salient issues in this debate.

BRODIE: Well, so as I mentioned, the sheriff and a number of county supervisors have asked the judge to basically end the monitoring and the oversight of the sheriff’s department. Is this audit something that the judge might look at and say, "You guys are complaining about the costs, but not all of this cost is actually related to what you say it is"?

CARRANZA: Yeah, and the judge has said as much in court as well before attorneys for the county supervisors and for the sheriff. And essentially, his view on that is that the county officials in general can’t speak about these costs and use that as kind of an excuse to end oversight without also having to justify those expenses. And so he’s talked about how he has the right to try to have them justify those costs, which the county has so far refused to engage. But he has not made any steps in that direction. But certainly, I think based off of his statements in court and some of the court filings, he certainly feels that he has that authority to do so.

BRODIE: Interesting. All right, we’ll keep an eye on this going forward. That is Rafael Carranza, an investigative reporter with Arizona Luminaria. Rafael, thanks so much.

CARRANZA: Thank you for having me.

BRODIE: The University of Arizona is getting smaller, and school officials say that’s on purpose. The first-year class starting in the fall of 2025 was about 20% smaller than the prior year. U of A has also reduced the amount of tuition discounts it gave out-of-state students. Kate Hidalgo Bellows has written about this. She’s a staff reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education and joins me now to talk about what she found. Kate, good morning.

KATE HIDALGO BELLOWS: Good morning.

BRODIE: So, how much smaller is the U of A getting here?

BELLOWS: Well, it’s important to keep in mind that it was just for this past class. So if you were to look at the university as a whole, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference because even though the first-year class got smaller, the other classes wouldn’t have beyond a normal amount. But for a first-year class to get 20% smaller is pretty significant, especially in these days where flagship universities—so large state universities—are generally doing very well.

BRODIE: And when you asked a number of administrators and officials at the university, they said, "Yeah, we’re trying to do this."

BELLOWS: Yes, that surprised me. So they said that it was to try to take in a more prepared class, a class that would graduate and retain at higher rates. In my reporting, we found that Arizona students graduate at lower rates than other peers of the institution, so other mostly state institutions in the Midwest or Southwest. And that was kind of surprising to see that, but it was also to help cut costs because, as I’m sure your listeners know, the University of Arizona used to be in a $177 million budget hole. So Arizona was giving a lot of merit aid to out-of-state students. Less merit aid, less appealing offer. And so they saw the results of that.

BRODIE: So, I mean, I think it probably bears asking if, you know, maybe the university is trying to reduce some of the costs. But are they really trying to have fewer first-year students? Like, is this something they’re actually intentionally doing, or is it maybe related to other factors?

BELLOWS: Right, and that’s something that I looked into and was a big question of mine in my reporting. I’m based in D.C., but I went out to Tucson and talked to people there. And it seems like there’s a number of factors, and it wasn’t all intentional. So keep in mind also that there’s a demographic cliff, so fewer high school students graduating and going on to college. Colleges are dealing with reduced faith in higher education.

The university had also cut some admissions recruiters to try to reduce costs, like many universities have had layoffs. And so that meant that students might not have been finding out about the university—out-of-state students. But I think the bigger thing, and the thing that I think is so unique here, is that the university felt like they were taking in students that weren’t succeeding and they were putting them in debt that they couldn’t get out of. And so when I spoke to people there, they were very concerned about that problem. And so the students that they are trying to take in have better credentials and better test scores.

BRODIE: Does that make the university maybe a little more selective in its admissions process?

BELLOWS: That seems to be the goal. So more recently than those changes—the 20% reduction—the university has made some updates to its admissions process that are kind of in line with what some more elite universities do. So, for example, adding an early action deadline where you apply earlier, you find out earlier, you might commit earlier.

They’ve also made holistic admissions—where you’re considering grades, academics, extracurriculars, essays, other factors—the one lane for getting in. So it used to be that if you had like certain grades, you would automatically get in, but they have done away with that and now it’s just holistic admissions.

BRODIE: Is this something that university officials want or plan to continue? Like, do they expect that, you know, for the next X number of years, the freshman class will continue to be smaller than it has been in the past?

BELLOWS: Yeah. So actually, when we talk about the university getting smaller, this is about the size that it was before the pandemic. And since then, like other flagships, it had just kind of ballooned up to about 9,300 students. Sorry, I don’t have the number right in front of me, but—and so when I’ve spoken to the president and the provost, they’ve said that they’re kind of returning to that smaller size and they will not be going back to, you know, 9,000-plus students, which, you know, it should also be said, puts a lot of strain on university resources like housing and dining and stuff like that.

BRODIE: Yeah, I’m curious about the faculty because some of them, based on your reporting, were, you know, they weren’t necessarily complaining about having smaller class sizes, but maybe there are some aspects of it that concern them?

BELLOWS: That’s correct, Mark. So, you know, one of the other interesting things about the University of Arizona is it’s a lot more diverse and has a higher percentage of Pell-eligible students than a lot of other flagship universities. So, you know, the university enrolls a lot of Hispanic and Latino students, native students. And I think the concern from the faculty members was really about what the university’s becoming and who it serves. And some are worried that the university is trying to position itself as a more elite institution than it actually is. That’s what they say. And there’s concerns that that will—that in that mission, it will become more white, less diverse, taking in richer students, since, you know, there’s a correlation between test scores and wealth. So that’s the concern that I hear from faculty.

BRODIE: Sure. Have you seen this or have folks at the U of A said that, you know, they modeled this on any other university? Like, is anybody else doing this?

BELLOWS: I haven’t seen this particular strategy elsewhere. I mean, containing class sizes is not uncommon. There’s many reasons that a university might want to do that, including the resources that I mentioned, putting the strain on that. But it’s kind of goes against what you would normally think a university would want to do, especially when you consider the fact that the university told me that when it cut tuition discounting for out-of-state students, and was taking in fewer out-of-state students, that didn’t have that much of an effect on how much money it was bringing in. And actually, taking in fewer students meant that it had about the same amount of money because of how much discounting there was going on. So I just think this whole strategy is pretty unique. But some of the admissions changes we see that pretty often.

BRODIE: Interesting. All right. That is Kate Hidalgo Bellows, a staff reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Kate, thanks so much.

BELLOWS: Thank you so much.

BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. With Lauren Gilger, I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, two weeks before the 2026 FIFA World Cup officially gets underway, we ask why soccer isn’t as popular in the U.S. as it is in other countries and what it’ll take to change that. But first.

LAUREN GILGER: And now let’s continue with our new series here on The Show about religion at the state legislature and how lawmakers’ religions affect the way they vote, the issues they care about, and maybe even why they ran for office to begin with. We’re calling it Ditat Deus, or God Enriches. That is Arizona’s state motto, after all.

And today let’s turn to Arizona Senator T.J. Shope, a Republican from Coolidge who’s been in the legislature for the last 14 years. Shope is what we might call a cradle Catholic.

T.J. SHOPE: My grandmother played the organ at our parish for over 40 years. I grew up, you know, sitting up in the choir loft and singing along. Well, I don’t know. But, you know, I was an altar boy for, you know, all the way up through high school and such, and still a dues-paying member in our Knights of Columbus.

GILGER: A childhood growing up in the church are what he called core memories for him.

SHOPE: It’s—it’s—it’s the ceremonial things that you often remember most, especially being an altar server is, you know, who gets to carry the cross in? Who—who was handling the incense, for example, as you—as you walked in? Of course, the best job that everybody wanted was who was going to ring the bells at the proper time during the sacramental offerings, etc.

GILGER: His dad’s side of the family is from Iowa, but his mother is from Mexico. And he told me his hometown Catholic parish in Coolidge has always had a distinctly Latino vibe.

SHOPE: My dad is probably, you know, referred to as Don Tomas more often than not now because it’s a very Hispanic-heavy parish and much like Coolidge as a whole.

GILGER: Shope remembers tamales at Christmas and fish fries on Fridays during Lent. But today, he is one of the lawmakers at 1700 West Washington who talks the least about religion. I sat down with him recently at the state capitol to talk more about how he thinks about his religion today and how it’s played a role in his work as a state lawmaker.

SHOPE: You know, it’s funny because when you invited me to—to chat about this, I—I realized that probably 14 years that I’ve been here, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about that at all. And I think that as I reflected on it before doing this, I—I was thinking to myself, well, maybe, you know, I—it’s a product of something that I’ve seen often, I guess, is that—and we’ve seen with Catholic presidents or candidates for higher office and things. It just doesn’t seem to be something that is often, you know, a centerpiece of—of discussion, right?

Um, it’s not necessarily the thing that I go to immediately when I’m thinking about like a tax policy or an infrastructure policy that I’m trying to—to do. But it’s, am I using my position in a way that I think of myself trying to be a good person and trying to be good to others? Was that shaped by religion? Probably.

But I can’t say that for me it’s something that I’m doing X, Y, Z because of this chapter, verse in the Bible or something. I mean, and not to knock that, I have plenty of colleagues that I—I know that probably go to it more than I do. To me, I guess if you’re getting to the right—the right end, how you get there is kind of not consequential to me as long as we’re—we’re working towards the same shared goal and the same shared idea of trying to do the right thing.

GILGER: It’s interesting. So I want to talk about some of the moments in which religion comes to bear at the legislature. I mean, like every day you open session with a prayer, right? Um, often you’ll have like you said, colleagues speaking about their religion. Lots of folks will say, you know, "I was sent by God to be here." Like, "I feel like this is, you know, where I’m meant to be for these very specific religious reasons."

SHOPE: Well, if it were a vow of poverty, I’m guessing that that would be one thing, but—

GILGER: There is one of those in the Catholic Church, but not for you. I wonder, so are there moments when this feels like it comes to bear, though? Like your religion either feels like it is centric to something that you’re voting on, or the opposite, where it really feels like it might conflict?

SHOPE: I think anytime that there is something very difficult facing you, whether it’s in life, whether it’s here at the capitol, I think most people go to something. I can’t lie to you and say that I haven’t lied in bed before an important vote the next day. You know, you wake up at 2:00 in the morning or something and you’re just thinking about what you have to do.

So many times, there are so many passions that run high in this place, both pro and con on an issue. There has to be somebody that is the person that is just going to try and calm things. And that is probably one of the things that I try to do the most in this place. And that’s not necessarily, "I need your guidance on a vote," or, "I need, you know, the Lord’s help to see something clearer." It is oftentimes the help to be that voice that is going to be able to bring the temperature down and try by example at least to help my colleagues treat each other well.

GILGER: Yeah, that’s a—that’s a sort of counterintuitive point of view on this. I like it. Um, let me ask you about one of the moments where I think you have had to be at least answer these questions, right? And—and I think I asked you them at the time. You came in a couple of years ago when we were looking at a very contentious vote on abortion at the state legislature—the repeal of this 1864 almost total ban on abortion that criminalized doctors. You were one of just two Republicans at the time who broke with your party and voted to repeal that. And abortion obviously a big issue for Catholics. How did you reconcile that? How did you think about it?

SHOPE: You know, I think that for me and—and somebody who’s a pro-life individual, still characterize myself as such, we don’t make decisions here in a vacuum. And I know that for many folks that are out there, they see one bill come up, and it can be any bill, and they say, "If you’re yes on this, this means X. Or if you’re a no on this, this means something else."

The reality is that in that case, we had a ballot measure that was attempting at the time to get signatures to put a question on the ballot. And we had to make a determination. And I—I had made that determination in—in my mind anyway of what is the lesser of these in my mind two evils that I’m faced with. In my thought process at the time was that by voting to repeal the 1864 law, we would stand a better chance of defeating the measure in November, thereby keeping many of the other restrictions that we’d had.

GILGER: Did you hear from Catholics, Catholic leaders, people saying, you know, "You can’t vote this way"?

SHOPE: It was a mixed bag. Yeah, it was definitely—it was definitely a mixed bag. I was still uh, come November, campaigned against by folks on the left because I—it’s not like I’d had an epiphany or anything like that and had changed my viewpoint on the subject. And then you still had folks on the right who maybe I was not able to touch and—and have them at least understand what my thought process was. My ultimate tenant in this place has been a genuine respect towards people’s viewpoints.

You know, I guess that probably puts me as a—as a bit of an outlier in a—in a place where either on the left, I’ve seen colleagues use religion to say, "Hey, well, you ought to be using the government to fund X, Y, Z." And on the right, obviously, "We ought to be using the government to not do other things." And it is most definitely used as a political football. And I think if there’s one area that I would fall on is that look, religion should—and your faith in God and your faith in—and if you don’t believe in God, your faith in whatever else that you have, the idea that it’s used as a political football to me is something I’ve never really been a big fan of.

GILGER: I want to ask about—about immigration. We’re seeing ICE raids across the country, outrage about that, lots of debate on this front. The Pope, the Catholic Pope, has spoken out against the inhumane treatment of immigrants in the country, talking about how Jesus was a migrant. The bishops have followed suit. I wonder what you make of that and sort of these moments when your religion tends to cross with your politics?

SHOPE: Yeah, I mean, I—it’s uh definitely something that’s uh been brought uh to me. I mean, I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that I haven’t heard that and something, you know, especially with my voting record, which I stand by 100%. It’s hard to separate that. I’m Hispanic. I also vote that way, right? I mean, I support hardline immigration policies. So it’s something that definitely comes up.

But the reality is is that I have to make a decision on what I think is best for the citizens of this state and public safety. I want to make sure that the citizens of this country, the people who are entitled to getting help are the ones who are receiving it. So whether that interacts in a negative way with my religion is something that I have to deal with. And ultimately, if you—if you are a believer, you will have that final opportunity to—to see if you were right or wrong. I’m not sure. Um, it—

GILGER: Is it for you like about your personal, I guess, political points of view there conflicting and saying, "You know what, this overrides it"? Is it because of your constituency that you’re representing?

SHOPE: I don’t even think it’s about the constituency. I think that um, A, it’s just, you know, my personal belief. And I think that whether that shaped by religion or not, and could be a question, I’m not sure. But the reality is is that you come in, you make—you try to make the right decisions based on the issue that’s facing you. And that’s if there’s any guidance that you ask for, that I ask for, it’s to stay true to myself, to go ahead and make sure that I have the courage to do what I think is right.

GILGER: Do you think the Pope is wrong on this? The bishops are wrong?

SHOPE: Do I think? I mean, you know, I don’t know that I would use that phraseology. I would say that we just disagree.

GILGER: Disagree. Senator T.J. Shope, thank you so much.

SHOPE: You bet.

BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. The 2026 FIFA World Cup officially gets underway two weeks from today as Mexico and South Korea face off in Mexico City. This year’s tournament is being co-hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Team USA kicks off its first game on June 12 against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium in L.A. The run-up to the World Cup has been marked by some controversies and criticisms, from the price of tickets, transportation and parking, to the first-ever final match halftime show, to geopolitical tensions.

It’s against that background that Andrés Martinez stopped by the studio recently. He’s a professor of practice at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and co-director of the Great Game Lab at ASU. He’s also the author of the book, "Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport." I started our conversation with a question he’s likely been asked a zillion times before. Why isn’t soccer as popular in this country as it is pretty much everywhere else on Earth?

ANDRÉS MARTINEZ: Well, that was the question that befuddled me when I first came to the U.S. when I was 15. I had—I was born and raised in Mexico, but in a very American household. My—my mom was a gringa from Dallas, Texas, who went down to Mexico City to teach at the American school. I think she thought it would be a—a lark, a great adventure for a year or two, but she met my Mexican dad. And one thing led to another. So I—I was raised in Mexico in a very—I was very fortunate to be in a bilingual, bicultural household.

But anyways, I come to the States at the age of 15 in the ’80s, not thinking I was going to have a wrenching adaptation, you know, challenge of going to a new country because it was my other country. The one way in which I did feel like I had been dropped on a different planet or behind some sporting iron curtain was when it came to sport. Because suddenly I—I was cut off from this global culture that kids in Mexico shared with kids in Nigeria and Germany and Korea. And that was very strange to me and—and surprising because I thought, well, isn’t the U.S. supposed to be the center of the universe, the—the hub of global popular culture?

And of course, I didn’t realize this when I was 15, the fact that if you go back in our history, something that, you know, I now write about and study, we very consciously as a nation uncoupled ourselves from the rest of the sort of sporting universe in the late 19th century to develop our own homegrown games, right? And so, you know, fast forward a century from that period and I’m arriving in this country that proclaims the winners of our domestic leagues world champions. Now, what I find exciting is that this is changing rapidly. And obviously right now, we’re in a completely different place in terms of our relationship with the world’s default sport. And we are now a proper soccer nation in a way that we weren’t before then.

BRODIE: Well, it’s interesting you say that because for so long, people have said, you know, all these kids play youth soccer and yet we aren’t really producing, you know, great international soccer players. And that’s obviously changing with American players playing both in this country in MLS and also in, you know, the Premier League and and other leagues in other countries. But it’s interesting to hear you say that we are now sort of a proper soccer nation because when you look at the results—take the U.S. women’s national team out of the equation—when you look at the U.S. men’s national team, the results haven’t really been there.

MARTINEZ: Well, it’s funny when you—when we say I mean, this—this idea that we were—soccer was always going to be the next big thing, and when are we going to close this gap between youth participation and a following among adults and performance at the pro level, kind of reminds me of the old Kissinger joke about Brazil, right? "Brazil is the country of the future and always will be." And people always have had that attitude about soccer.

But I, you know, I think you could look at the glass half-full or half-empty. I would—I push—I would push back a little bit at saying the results aren’t there because again, when I first came to the States, this period I’m talking about in the 1980s, the United States had not been to a World Cup since 1950. We were absent for 40 years. We could not qualify to play in a World Cup.

BRODIE: That’s—which is obviously different now.

MARTINEZ: Um, and—and certainly if you’re uh, again, I grew up in Mexico, I still root for my Tri when, you know, the U.S. plays Mexico. And if you’re sitting in Mexico, boy, you—you notice the difference in terms of how far the U.S. has come, right? It’s become one of the most heated rivalries in the world. It’s a very exciting regional rivalry. And so recently, you know, the U.S. is a—is a sort of middle power in men’s soccer. It’s not as dominant as it is on the women’s side or as Americans are accustomed to in many of the sports. But when you look at the—the rise of women’s soccer, I think that is one of the factors that changed all of our culture’s relationship to the sport.

BRODIE: Well, because the U.S. women’s team has been dominant on the world stage for many, many years now.

MARTINEZ: Yeah, and and I think that’s an—it’s an underappreciated story, the extent to which women in this country, you know, girls and women who picked up the game of post-high—the passage of Title IX in the early ’70s, really naturalized the game American. And the other thing that kind of made the reconciliation of the U.S. and the world sport inevitable is just sort of globalization at a—a more top-down corporate level.

BRODIE: Well, so I could see that as potentially being a double-edged sword in the sense that, yes, it’s bringing, you know, this behemoth country, the United States, into sort of the world community of of soccer/football and encouraging Americans to play football and to stay playing football soccer after, you know, youth leagues and everything.

But I could also see, you know, folks in other countries thinking, "Well, you know, here we go, you know, American companies just commercializing and ruining soccer like they’ve done with everything else."

MARTINEZ: It is it is a bit of a careful what you wish for. I mean, because I think people around the world for a long time have thought one of the things that strikes us as odd about Americans is that they don’t seem to, you know, want to play the same game that we’re playing, and wouldn’t it be great if they did? And yet, now that we are, yes, there’s definitely American influence is spreading. In my—the subtitle that I referred to a little bit provocatively is, "our quest to conquer global sport."

This is the first year, for example, that a majority of clubs in the English Premier League are U.S.-owned. So there’s—that investment is welcome. Those organizations bring a high level of professionalism to a lot of what they do, but there’s also consternation, you know, among fans who like the traditions of the game and they they worry what does this mean?

BRODIE: In the world of international soccer, is it considered a good thing, is it desirable for the U.S. to be competitive in soccer? You know, you hear a lot of folks sort of quietly anyway in the NBA say, "You know, it’s good for the league if the Lakers and the Celtics are good." You know, it’s good for baseball like if the Yankees and the Dodgers are good. Is it considered good for international soccer when the United States is competitive?

MARTINEZ: It it depends a little bit who you who you’re asking, right? If you’re asking Gianni Infantino, who runs FIFA, it’s awesome, right? Like, he’s going to make more money out of a World Cup in the United States, even at a time when, you know, we could still have these debates about whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. Like, we’re not that into it yet compared to a lot of other countries, although we’ve come a long way, and it’s still going to be—it’s still the most profitable market for FIFA.

You know, it’s funny, 26 million people watched the Qatar final on U.S. television, the showdown between Mbappé and Messi in 2022. That was more people than watched any of the World Series games that year or any of the NBA finals. Obviously a drop in the bucket compared to the Super Bowl domestically. And yet there were no Americans on the field. It’s kind of remarkable. And so there’s still so much upside. So I think it’s going to be good for the game from the from a commercial perspective.

You know, I think FIFA’s always had this—it’s always been a bit of a riddle in the sense that it is by far, I call it the the world’s default sport. It is the most popular sport. But even when you say it’s the most popular, I feel like that’s selling it short. And yet, it has not been particularly popular historically in the three largest nations on Earth by population. So it is a bit of a, you know, there’s still so much growth in these markets.

But I think, you know, if you’re a traditional fan of Italy, Brazil, England, how are you going to feel when the United States starts winning tournaments on the men’s side as they have on the women’s side? That that that might be a bit of a careful what you wish for.

BRODIE: That’s Andrés Martinez, co-director of the Great Game Lab at ASU and author of the book, “The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport.” More of our conversation in just a moment.

BRODIE: Let's return now to my conversation with Andres Martinez, co-director of the Great Game Lab at ASU and author of the book, “Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America's Quest to Conquer Global Sport.” The World Cup starts two weeks from today, and I asked what a successful World Cup in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada would look like to him.

MARTINEZ: Well, I have one answer as a fan of Mexico, but let me be less parochial.

BRODIE: I should point out you're wearing your Mexico jersey two weeks ahead.

MARTINEZ: Yes, I brought my Mexican jersey, because I know it would look great on radio. But being less parochial than that, I mean we could talk a lot about what success looks like from the sport and how the games unfold.

But I think when you zoom back, a more interesting question is: Is this World Cup going to be the conversation across the U.S. this summer, or is it going to be still something that has a bit of a niche following? Where it's going to be massive in terms of the sold-out stadiums and people in sports bars and fans of the sport and people who have traveled — that's a given. But is it going to go a step beyond?

We have this fellow at the Great Game Lab. He's actually a professor emeritus at Michigan, who's one of my kind of idols in this space of writing about sport and society. He's a political scientist, Andrei Markovits.

And he wrote a book called “Offside” that looks at exceptionalism and American exceptionalism and soccer. He wrote this in 2000, 2001. And he talked about certain sports that reach the level of hegemonic culture. A lot of us could play pool or go bowling, but a sport that becomes part of the hegemonic culture is a sport that we're all kind of expected to follow, even if informally.

And soccer is like one half-step behind certainly the NBA, our three big homegrown sports. And I think this World Cup will be a moment to take stock about whether the whole country really kind of rallies behind this thing and is following it. And if you're in Germany or Spain or Brazil — or even in our neighbors in Mexico — and a World Cup is going on, there's no missing it.

And is that going to be the feeling traveling around the U.S. this summer? It's kind of an open question in my mind.

BRODIE: So, it's kind of like, if you tune into sports talk radio, are people talking about it? If you go to a sports bar, are the games on TV and people are watching and talking about it? Is it sort of permeating the national conversation?

Listening to you talk, it strikes me as the most recent example is the U.S. men's hockey team from the most recent Olympics.

MARTINEZ: Yeah. I think that's a good example, yeah.

BRODIE: Do you think that there's a part of measuring success that we won't be able to tell until some amount of time has passed in the sense that we won't really know right away if the World Cup has sort of lit a fire under America in terms of its interest in soccer and whether more kids play youth soccer and whether more people are maybe watching Major League Soccer or even collegiate soccer and continue to pay more attention even to international leagues?

Is that something that you'll be paying attention to in the years to come after this country is one of the co-hosts of this tournament?

MARTINEZ: Yeah, I think that evolution is ongoing, it's irreversible. But I think this World Cup has an opportunity to accelerate it, to give it another uptick.

I mean, at the youth level, it's hard to imagine like many more kids playing rec soccer, because it feels like it's now part and parcel of everyone's childhood.

BRODIE: Yeah, so many already do.

MARTINEZ: But you know, like the legacy of the '94 World Cup, which felt like an outsider's attempt to jumpstart the game in the U.S., as opposed to this one. But that did leave the legacy of MLS. And that was a very conscious project.

But I remember going to some of those games in '94, and some of them were played — there were games at Stanford. There were games in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. I mean, I think a lot of NFL owners back then might not have even returned phone calls from people at FIFA.

Now, the 11 U.S. venues are all NFL stadiums. And in many of these cities, it's only because of the enthusiasm of the NFL franchise to make sure that they got these games, that their games are going to be played there. So, it's a very different proposition.

But I do think we'll have to see whether the World Cup helps push along — I think the MLS still is lagging in terms of its relationship vis-à-vis how big the sport is in the U.S., and it faces this conundrum of globalization where, yes, it's benefiting from America being more connected to the global sport, obviously. But we're so connected now, thanks to globalization, thanks to revolution in media, that I can watch Arsenal on NBC.

So, it has this sort of competitive intrigue. We've gone from, you know, when I first came to the country, you couldn't watch any soccer on television, to a point where you could watch any league on the planet practically here in the States. You’ve just got to figure out which streaming service to sign up for.

BRODIE: Yeah.

MARTINEZ: But they're all there.

BRODIE: Well, because in most American sports — you think about baseball and American football and basketball — if you are in another country and you want to play at the highest level, you come here, right?

Like, if you are a baseball player anywhere else on Earth and you want to play at the highest level, you come to the U.S. If you’re a basketball player, same kind of thing. There are certainly leagues in other places, but not at the same level as in the U.S.

It would seem as though maybe one of the downsides of American success on the world stage is that, at least for right now, it’s still seen as more prestigious for American players to go play in Germany or in Spain or in England or in Mexico than it is to stay and play in Major League Soccer, and for players from other countries — you know, someone like Beckham came to the U.S. or Messi, but it was still very much at the end of their careers, not sort of while they were in their primes.

Is it realistic or would it be realistic, do you think, for MLS to be sort of at the level of La Liga or the Bundesliga or the Premier League, where the top players in England or France or Spain or South Korea would want to come to play in this country in that league in their primes?

MARTINEZ: Yeah, and I think that’s what I was referring to, I think in terms of the next step where we need to see the progress of the sport in the United States. Not only is it more prestigious to go play in Europe, it’s just necessary if you want to play at the highest level at this point. The English Premier League is the NBA or Major League Baseball for that sport.

BRODIE: Yeah.

MARTINEZ: And the economics are going to have to change dramatically, you know, for the MLS to start competing with that. You would need to see such a dramatic spike in ratings. At the end of the day, the big-time sport really is the most important form of media, and its economics is all built around the media rights.

BRODIE: Sure. Interesting. All right, we’ll have to leave it there. Andrés, thank you so much for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

MARTINEZ: Thank you, Mark. This is really fun.

BRODIE: Andrés Martinez is co-director of the Great Game Lab at ASU and author of the book, “The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport.”

[MUSIC]

BRODIE: All right, that’ll do it for this Thursday edition of The Show. Thank you as always so much for being along. Don’t forget to sign up for The Show’s weekly newsletter. It’s called Radio Heads. You can sign up at theshow.kjzz.org, get it delivered to your inbox every week. While you’re online, you can also follow us on Instagram. We are @kjzztheshow.

The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, Ayana Hamilton, as well as Bruce Drummond. Skye Schaudt is our digital editor, Claire Lawton is our newsletter editor. Chad Snow is the news director. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. For Lauren Gilger, I’m Mark Brodie here in Phoenix. Have a terrific rest of your day, hope to have you right back here tomorrow.

BRODIE: You’ve been listening to The Show’s podcast. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

>> RSVP FOR AN UPCOMING LIVE EVENT FROM THE SHOW