Do we love any sport as much as other nations love soccer?

For me, the best part of the World Cup isn't tied to how the United States fares. If this sporting event were a music group, we'd be like Pras from the once-great Fugees — just there, not much of a factor.

We proved it again by not advancing past the round of 16, but that's OK. We're getting better, as we like to say. Besides, the best part is watching how much transplants from other countries love soccer.

I was reminded of this last week while standing in a room full of Brazilians at Tempero do Brasil in the U District. They sang, danced, beat drums and celebrated their culture as they watched their team play. It was just another glimpse of the rest of the world's love affair with soccer. This time, however, I started wondering about something.

Do we love any sport as much as other nations love soccer?

Seriously, think about it. The inclination is to huff and throw out our obsession with football. And while I agree the passion is similar, our love of football is still much different from the way, say, South America loves futbol.

Why? Because the pigskin is one of our many passions. The checkered ball? It is the passion in many countries outside of the U.S.

Does it make us a lesser sporting nation than Brazil? Of course not. In total, Americans love sports more than any country, but our focus is considerably more divided.

Graça Ribeiro, the chef and co-owner of Tempero do Brasil, agreed. She moved to the U.S. from Brazil 17 years ago.

"It's different because soccer, it's in your DNA in Brazil," she said. "There's nothing like that in the U.S."

Her husband, Antonio Ribeiro, explained further.

"Since we've been here, I see it sometimes in baseball, with a father and kid throwing the baseball around like we kick around the soccer ball with our children," he said. "But in Brazil, soccer is more spontaneous. We're playing it all the time. It's above all other sports.

"When babies are born, we have a special ball for them. It's like a way of life. Everybody experiences soccer. Here, there are choices. Not in Brazil."

It makes sense. We strive to be the ultimate democracy. The land of the free. We're trained not to comprehend limitations. It's very American not only to believe that we can do anything, but also to believe that we can care about anything. In interests and ethnicity, we're too diverse a nation. So, of course, our sporting interests mirror that.

Americans love to be good at everything. In this past Winter Olympics, Canadians often talked about how they had to win the men's hockey gold medal. It's the mecca of hockey, they were the hosts, and even if they had won the medal count, it would've felt empty without that hockey gold. Rarely does a gold medal mean that much to us. We just want to have the most.

Football is America's sporting passion right now. It's so us. It's a bunch of oversized men fighting for land. We love it, and we're by far the best in the world at it. Actually, we're one of the few football-playing nations in the world, so there's no outlet for us to express our international supremacy.

Baseball is called America's national pastime. Most think that's outdated now. While Americans still love the sport, perhaps more than the game deserves considering the steroids scandal, we've lost our fascination with the game. It's not the same anymore. And we've accepted that we're not even close to being the best in the world.

We've turned into a country of sports cliques. It's getting increasingly more difficult to find fans who are die-hard followers of all the Big Three sports — football, baseball and basketball. Each clique rips on the other, yet the sports still make millions because we love having options.

We're jaded about sports, but we can't live without them. The more embarrassing the scandal, the more resilient we prove to be as American sports fans.

But what it would be like if almost our entire nation — the bulk of the 300-plus million of us — obsessed over just one? We see it at times when the U.S. does something it's not supposed to do, like advance to the gold-medal game in hockey. Yet when we lose, as the Americans did to Canada in that classic Olympics hockey finale last February, we shrug, cherish the joy of coming together and remark, almost laughingly, how the victorious nation needed it more than we did.

National pride, not to mention sports passion, takes different forms.

"Wars have started over soccer matches," Antonio said.

Meanwhile, we tag some sporting events as war in an odd attempt to be cute.

So, no, we don't love any sport as much as other nations love soccer. Sports polygamy — it's our way of life.

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com, Twitter: @Jerry_Brewer