It’s closer to a fact than it’s opposite.
The Military-Civilian gap is well documented. Google it.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/23/the-military-civilian-gap-fewer-family-connections/

“This military-civilian gap is much wider among younger respondents. Among those under age 40, 60% of veterans have an immediate family member who served in the military. This compares with only 39% of all adults younger than 40.”

Obviously, it is not an entry requirement, but I still maintain that most young people going to a Service Academy, ROTC or OCS have a family member in the military. Someone qualified to get into West Point has a shot to go to Stanford but has to work much harder on the application. If they don’t have someone close to them with military experience, it is unlikely that they will be motivated enough to apply.

Case in point: Amy and Andrew graduated from West Point in 1989. Three of their daughters, Alix, Anastasia and Arianna attend or graduated from West Point.
http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/the-west-point-sisters/?_r=0
Interesting FACT: 48% of women in the military marry a member of the military. For men? 7%
I think the chances are high that children of a two-veteran-family will consider military service.

And:

“A tally several years ago found that only 10 children of the 535 members of Congress were serving in the military, Kennedy said. In contrast, 180 of the children of the 307 U.S. military officers with rank of brigadier general or above were in service, according to a 2008 Pew Research Center poll.”

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2013/11/12/dangerous-gap-between-us-military-and-civilian-spheres-stanford-historian-says

How would the defense feel about moving the trial to New Hampshire or Maine? Not a lot of “diversity” there.

I think we have a bit of a Baptists and Bootleggers phenomenon. Cops are justified in their militarization by rioting blacks and this results in some innocents killed by overzealous cops. Rioters/looters who just want to burn/steal/cause mayhem are given cover by protesters/press who are agitating against police brutality. We are trapped in a vicious cycle where each side gets more extreme and self-righteous, justifying their behaviors by the atrocities committed by the other side (reminds me of Israelis/Arabs).
We see support for this interpretation with reports of police harassing peaceful demonstrators and media, while standing by while looters destroy shops. Why put themselves in danger when the looters are making their case for them for the need for more militarization?

“you have to have been watching soccer for 10+ years to even understand what was going on in that game.”
You say this like it is a good thing. This ensures that young fans and fans in countries new to soccer will find it boring. And find fans like you insufferably arrogant. Good luck with that.

I think the basic comparisons are off. World Cup soccer (and its relative arbitrariness) should not be compared to college basketball, or professional US sports, since they have salary caps, lotteries, and high turn over, factors which by design or by outcome tend to level the playing field, thus yielding increased arbitrariness. All the Moneyball in the world won’t help Bahrain become a world soccer power, unlike the Oakland A’s or KC Royals. And you only need a couple of good guys to transform a college basketball team (and they improve so fast at that age). I went to Stanford and the Collins twins and the Lopez twins changed the team when they were on it. In contrast, national teams are developing their players for literally decades before they contribute to a World Cup (Ronaldo played professionally at 8 years old).
A better comparison is a team sport, held every 4 years, such as women’s gymnastics at the Olympics. This sport may seem arbitrary since a single poor performance on an inherently difficult apparatus can kill one’s chances. But we see the same countries on the podium, year after year.
And, how can you measure arbitrariness without controlling for differences in levels of quality? Golf seems highly arbitrary but Tiger dominated in his prime so in that era it may have seemed less arbitrary. Boxing or Horse Racing seem far less arbitrary, but if you have a number of evenly matched opponents, the results seem highly arbitrary. Countries tend to be far less evenly matched than horses or individuals and change far less frequently relative to one another. Germany in 20 years will still be richer and more populous and spend far more on development of their national team than Costa Rica. In contrast, the winner of the 2018 Kentucky Derby hasn’t been born yet, so we cannot judge consistency or relative quality.