Entering Yared Ogunro’s room in the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house, the first thing that is noticeable is the soccer game playing on the television.

The 21-year-old McCormick junior is a die-hard Arsenal fan, an English team, and has been playing and following soccer his entire life. His mother and father, who grew up in Ehtiopia and Nigeria, played soccer and became Manchester United fans when they moved to London. The Ogunros brought their love of the game to the U.S.

Ogunro is, however, the lone Arsenal fan in a family of Man. U supporters, and ascribes this fact to having “always been the deviant in the family.” Of course, if his family still lived in England, he probably would have been disowned for soccer treason. Ogunro plays on the club soccer team at Northwestern and cites “the passion behind the game” as one of his reasons for loving soccer. He credits the school’s diversity for his finding a sizeable amount of soccer fans on campus, including a bunch of fellow Arsenal fans. His web homepage is ESPNsoccernet.com.

In 2006, FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, released its second “Big Count,” a survey that determines how many people across the globe play soccer. The number that came back was impressive: 265 million players, plus another 5 million people involved with the game in a non-playing capacity. Even more staggering than these figures, however, is the number of American citizens that play soccer. According to the Big Count, it’s almost 24.5 million.

Despite these statistics, soccer ranks somewhere between NASCAR and badminton in terms of generating public interest. The Northwestern sports scene is no exception. It is easy to find fans of baseball, football and basketball but soccer aficionados are harder to come by.

There are still those on campus who actively follow the “beautiful game” and are more than willing to share their passion.

“I’ve been surprised about how many kids like soccer here” says Mark Scoptur, a 20-year-old Weinberg sophomore and supporter of Tottenham Hotspur, a team that happens to be Arsenal’s rival. Scoptur has been following Tottenham for about three years and says he was turned on to the sport by his older brother, who is a Manchester United fan. When picking a Premier League team to root for, Scoptur said he “didn’t want to pick a team out of the Big Four clubs [the quartet of traditional Premiership powerhouses that consists of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool],” and that, “Tottenham had the potential to be good, but were historically underachievers.”

At Northwestern, Scoptur follows the Spurs by watching them at his fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, whenever possible. Scoptur, along with a few other soccer fans in the fraternity, watches his favorite team on a regular basis, even if it means getting to the house at nine in the morning on a Saturday. Some of his non-soccer-following friends occasionally watch the games with him, and Scoptur said he “think[s] once people actually see the games, they realize it’s not a boring sport.”

Unlike Scoptur and Ogunro, JP Lona is not part of a fraternity and cannot watch his favorite team, the Danish club Aalborg BK, on a regular basis. “If I could I would,” says the 19-year-old Weinberg sophomore, who lived in Denmark for his last two years of high school. Still, Lona is able to keep track of his team by visiting their website multiple times a week. He has not let his inability to watch Aalborg live dissuade him from following a game he’s played all his life. He concedes that, “there are a few people” he regularly talks soccer with in order to see what other people know about the current state of the sport overseas.

A self-described Arsenal fan “since I learned what soccer was,” 19-year-old Weinberg sophomore James Dawson grew up in London and was immersed in the game from an early age. In addition to Arsenal matches, he watches any game that is on television. Dawson is a perfect example of the small yet devoted group of soccer enthusiasts that populate Northwestern: students who prove that, while it may not be the most visible of sports, soccer on-campus is still alive and kicking.