In most of Lane County, the World Cup excitement doesn't exactly runneth over.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

2006 FIFA WORLD CUP

Whatever it is that causes World Cup fever, Americans apparently remain blissfully immune.

And it seems no different in most places around Lane County, where Friday's opening of the world soccer tournament was greeted with about the same level of enthusiasm and insight as the start of flea and tick season. Never mind those billions around the globe whose lives come to a halt every four years as the world's most truly international sport chooses its champion; America just doesn't seem to have caught on.

"People around here don't know how cool the World Cup is. It's just over their heads," said Eric Gilbert, manager of the Game Day Sports Bar on Highway 99 North and one of those few Americans who are into soccer. "I don't think people get it."

It is a bit baffling. In a country as sports-crazed as the United States, where people will spend hours in front of a television watching people play poker, soccer is something of a Teflon sport - it just doesn't seem to stick.

That can be a bit disconcerting to folks who grew up just about anyplace else. Foreign students at the University of Oregon, for example, feel even more foreign when the World Cup comes around and instead of the nonstop parties, nonstop talk and nonstop excitement, nothing happens.

Ariovaldo Lucas, a student from Brazil, said that back home people are allowed to shift their work hours so they can take time to watch soccer, or football as the rest of the world knows it. And people do just that, gathering in happy, noisy crowds in homes, at bars and even in front of street corner televisions set up just for the event.

"In Brazil they have more passion for football," he said. "We're a lot noisier."

Entire governments will even boost the national utility grid so people don't miss the World Cup. In Haiti, said Nathan Gue, electricity typically isn't available 24/7, but during the World Cup, the power is on night and day.

"If not, they would have riots," he said.

Gue said in his home country he wouldn't be considered a huge soccer fan, but even someone who doesn't live and breathe the sport notices something missing when he's in the States during World Cup time.

"I miss it a lot," he said. "It's around, but I don't feel it as much as when I'm back home."

But there are American soccer fans, and they often have the same fish-out-of-water feeling when the World Cup comes around and nobody seems to notice.

"It's a global event, so it's very surreal at times to live in this country," said Lane Community College instructor Michael Samano, who grew up in Eugene and played soccer because he was too small for football.

He's the kind of guy who, when the cup was staged in Asia four years ago, would roll a television and VCR into his office and have games playing all day. This year he's cleared his bulletin board and filled it with World Cup stories and TV schedules.

"I'd say that World Cup fever is in my office, and it is contagious," he said.

And there are signs that the fever is spreading. Consider the scene Friday morning outside The Old Pad on East Amazon Parkway:

"This morning when we opened there was a group of about 20 students waiting to get in" to watch the opening game of the tournament, said bartender Mac Goodwin. "It was pretty fun."

And over at Rennie's Landing on Kincaid Street across from the UO the doors opened at 6 a.m. today so fans could catch the first match of the day. On Friday, Polish student Marta Drzymala and her American friend, Sarah Kenney, were parked at the pub to watch Poland play Ecuador.

They both left disappointed, and not just because Poland lost, 2-0.

"It's really sad," said Kenney, who had wrapped herself in a Polish flag. "It's such a great sport and no one appreciates it around here."

Drzymala didn't come in with a lot of hope for her home team, knowing it hasn't scored a goal in an opening game in 20 years. But that didn't leave her any less appreciative of the sport or the World Cup.

"I think it's the most beautiful thing," she said. "It's better than the Olympics."