First of all, sometimes I do refer the sport, when speaking in english, as soccer, because it's how people from north-america know it. Makes my life easier. But when I'm speaking with someone from Europe, I'll always say football.
Second, I've noticed that the sports popular between americans are the ones in which the almost exclusevely play among themselves. The north-american football. Basketball. Hockey. Baseball. These are sports that allow TV stations to fill the game time with advertisements during all the broadcast (time the ammount of game actually been played on a Superbowl game, and the ammout of time for ads and you'll see what I mean) - and I always found that a bit arrogant. Another good example is racing. Nascar is the most popular car racing on the US, mostly because it is dominated by US drivers. What about Formula 1? Not popular, why? The last american Formula 1 driver competed in 1994 and was never able to FINISH a race. Football does not allow commercial breaks in between the game. It dosen't have spetacular scores. It is dominated by south america and europe. So there's no media attention. No popular interest. No one cares. So they put it down as much as they can.
I did watch north american football, and I belive it is a good game. I've seen every Superbowl since 1996 to 2004, and wacthed regularly during 1999 and 2000. But it is different. It's something else. It dosen't class. The strategies are limited to pre-determined rehearsed plays. There is no real competition, as soon as the plays are called, the down is pretty much defined. You almost never see a real improvised play, a moment of full team play on a situation outside the pre-determined play. The real football is a sport that requires both planning and preparing and skill. It requires a lot of skill. The players must be complete. There's no "quarterback". No "kicker". You can't change the whole team for the defence.
There was this interesting article by a north-american sports website back on the 2002 World Cup, called "The Rest-Of-The-World Cup", in which he said how boring football was, how sports should be designed for TV watching, and that north-americans would only care about it when "America wins the damn thing". That's the whole spirit about it.
While I am against USA politics in all senses, I've NEVER been anti-american at all. I am a huge fan of its culture, history and its people, and I have always been an admirer of that great country, but this view on sports, and specially on *sigh* soccer, I always have seen as arrogance.
But then again, it's better that way. It's like a fun private club the whole world can get in except USA and Canada. And only south americans and europeans have the SPIRIT for it. That's why I've said the only way to watch a football game is in a London pub at 9pm getting drunk.