I came across a good soccer article at ESPN by a writer who hung around with Pele as he slummed with the New York Cosmos, a soccer team of the 1970s. What makes the article readable is that not one syllable is wasted talking about on-field activities. Instead, this he-groupie writer focuses on the overlap of the whole Studio 54 sex, drugs, and disco crowd with a team playing a seemingly up-and-coming sport. I like the parallels between the scenes. The disco scene, after all, whatever its enthusiasts expected at the time, was completely fleeting. By January of 1980 Studio 54 was (I'm guessing) replaced with a XXX theater, with bouncers that didn't exactly turn you away for being insufficiently stylish and attractive.
Coincidentally, another '70s story came up while I was at the Dodgers game on the Fourth, which bothered me because it's a baseball story I knew nothing of. It was the basis for the trivia question at the game, but I read more about it on the internet later. Back in 1976, two guys ran on the field between innings with an American flag, lighter fluid, and some matches; you can see where this is going. Rick Monday, a long time Dodger, ran over and rescued the flag, already soaked in lighter fluid, just before they lit it. This has gone on to become a legendary story in Los Angeles, judging by the number of fans who knew the answer.
Both stories illustrate something about the 1970s that I think I've now figured out. Think about the aspects of the 1970s that set the decade apart from others in the U.S. The protagonists in films, even very popular films, had mixed motives and were seldom morally upstanding, while the plots frequently had either little resolution or downbeat endings. Would Rocky lose that match in an American film in any other decade? Would Michael 
have Fredo killed? Our faith in politicians was at a low ebb, as our presidents were either dour and corrupt, pathetically inept, or Gerald Ford. Hedonism hit an all-time high, and random sex and drug use were without even the lame "do it 'cause The Man doesn't want you to" rationalizing idealism of the '60s. After a long undefeated streak, we lost a war, prompting the '72 Dolphins to send a case of champagne to the Vietnamese. Soccer was on the rise, and nationalism was on the wane. In retrospect, what America was going through is obvious. We were turning European.
Then things changed in the 1980s, for some reason. In the '80s, we instead were turning Japanese, or at least we really thought so. Chuck Norris went back and won the Vietnam War after we had apparently lost it; after extensive research, I consider Rambo's contribution to be minor in comparison. When a downbeat, always whinin' '70s icon like Bruce Springsteen recorded a song with downbeat, whinin' lyrics, it nevertheless became the most insanely popular nationalistic song in American rock history. I mean, I still remember how popular Born in the U.S.A. was in 1984, not that I had any idea what the lyrics were beyond the refrain. After a boring decade of only half-hearted nuclear brinksmanship, Reagan kicked things in the ass and brought us close to nuclear war again, just like the good old days. And our movies were formulaic and trite, just the way we liked 'em.
If things had continued as it looked in the '70s, we might have universal health care, rampant female nudity in films, actual science taught in public schools, voters who could find the Southern Hemisphere on a globe, and a tiny army incapable of going abroad and fighting ambiguous wars. We snapped back to being American not a minute too soon!
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