¡Viva Futbol!

The World Cup is happening, in case you haven't noticed. If you know me at all - and hopefully those of you who've read this blog once or twice have a vague understanding of me as a human being - you know I'm first and foremost a basketball fan, with baseball at 1A and football not far behind. It takes a bit of research to find out that the only sport I successfully engaged in after the age of 15 is soccer, but that fact might help you understand my feelings on this spectacular event.

In short, I think the World Cup is the best sporting event still in existence. I never got a look at that sweet Mayan sport where the losers were sacrificed to the Gods, so it's unfair for me to say it's the greatest sporting event in history, but I have to imagine it's close. The World Cup, as an institution, has more meaning and excitement to it than anything else I've ever seen in athletics. So I've been wondering... why isn't this country interested?

Frankly, I can't presume to answer that question for the country. There are myriad possibilities, for example: (a) Who wants to watch a sport we suck at? ... or ... (b) There's not nearly enough scoring in that kickball game ... or ... (c) I hate the way guys flop and act injured, what a bunch of sissies ... or ... (d) What fun is a game where 90% of the players can't touch the ball with their hands? For the record, these are stupid reasons because: (a) International competition is completely unpredictable, and how much we suck in general has little bearing on any specific game (see: 2002 World Cup, 2004 Olympic Basketball) ... (b) Who says a game has to be high-scoring to be fun? Before everybody started cheating baseball scores looked a lot like soccer scores and that was the "national pastime"; then there's the NFL, where scores have been arbitrarily assigned number values to make the scores look bigger - if touchdowns were worth 1 point and field goals a half point, would people stop watching? ... (c) Umm... have you watched a basketball game lately? People flop all the time and we live with it; the bottom line is, guys try to get every call they can and sometimes a little acting helps your cause ... (d) It's a matter of developed skills, and soccer is the only sport that comes to mind where players need to use their feet to handle the ball; if you're not intrigued and impressed by the degree of control that these guys can exert without hands, perhaps you should try trapping a 60 yard punt with your chest.

But, as I said, there's really no good answer to why people aren't watching. So in lieu of answering my own burning question, I'm going to tell you - yes YOU, stupid gringo - why you should be tuning in to soccer coverage over the next couple weeks...

The Sport

Soccer is a great sport. I'm not going to tell you it's the best sport, because I wouldn't necessarily agree with that assessment. Personally, I prefer basketball and baseball; but that doesn't change the fact that Soccer is one of the oldest sports in the world, is steeped in spectacular tradition, and is actually an intricately strategic game. Also, it is almost certainly the most popular sport in the world just by sheer number of fans and level of fanaticism. I've heard, on a number of occasions, the argument that "I shouldn't have to like soccer just because everybody else in the world likes it... what do you think I am, a lemming?" No, jerk-off. Nobody wants you to be a lemming. But did it occur to you that maybe - I know this sounds crazy, just bear with me - maybe all those billions of soccer fans the world over are on to something?

If you're a baseball fan, you've probably been forced to argue with someone, at some point, who said baseball was a stupid, boring game. I'd be willing to bet that during that argument you said, at least once, "well, if you'd only take the time to understand the game..." Because that's the truth - baseball can be slow, but an appreciation for how the game works and the history of the game makes it entertaining to those of us who know what to look for. Same thing with soccer: if you've watched some of this World Cup and found it boring, don't give up yet. Try to find somebody who knows the game and sit down with them (trust me, they're watching). Ask questions. If you watched the US game and found it boring... well, it was and they completely sucked, so don't be discouraged. It might take a couple matches, but this is a game that even the most American of us can learn to enjoy.


The Stories

In every way that has nothing to do with the actual athletic competition, the World Cup is everything that the Olympics should be at wishes it was. The Olympics are stupid. Nobody really cares much, outside of the folks who actually participate. The sports are obscure and largely irrelevant (considerably more obscure than soccer, in most cases) people are counting medals just to say we've got more hardware than Japan and Germany, and we're force-fed awful stories that often flop (see: Michelle Kwan, Bodie Miller, etc.)

The World Cup is a month-long international holiday. In virtually every country not called "United States" life has been put on hold until the Cup is won. And I don't mean every country that's in the competition - I mean practically every country in the world. Have you seen the commercial that points out Scotland failed to make the Cup, but assures us their fans will be there cheering anyway? That's not a joke; funny, but not a joke.

Have you heard about the Togolese team? Yes, people from Togo are Togolese. This is the former German colony's first World Cup ever, and they made it to the 32-team tournament despite a world ranking of 61. They drew first blood in their opener against South Korea, but couldn't hold on and ended up losing 2-1, much to the chagrin of the country's voodoo priest. You see, Togbui Assiogbo Gnagblondjro III had predicted that Togo would advance to the knockout round (round 2) and their loss in the opener makes that an even more daunting task. Before this Cup is over, Gnagblondjro may well wish he had never left his usual post - keeping an eye on 650 naked priests and priestesses in a Togolese forest and communicating with ancestral spirits.

How about Trinidad & Tobago? They're another first-time qualifier, and the smallest country in the cup. This is perhaps why they celebrated their draw with Sweden - which they earned despite playing a man down for much of the match - like it was a world championship. The "Soca Warriors" fared nearly as well in their second game, holding powerhouse England scoreless for nearly 83 minutes before faltering to a 2-0 defeat.

Stories like these don't fall off of trees, they're born of a passion we rarely see from American athletes or fans.

The Athletes

I expect you've heard this recently: soccer players are in better shape than almost any other athlete. They are essentially long distance runners, only they have to run sprints with alarming regularity throughout their marathon. These guys can run and run all day and night, and there's no timeouts or breaks. Soccer players need to be ready to break from their constant trot into an all-out sprint at any moment - from the opening kickoff to the end of stoppage time.

The stars of soccer are also great personalities. Even Americans know David Beckham - he's helped by his physical gifts (and I don't mean athletically) and his marriage to a pop star, but he's more of an international celebrity than almost any American athlete. Brazil's Ronaldinho is arguably the most exciting player in the history of the sport - just ask the Michael Jordan of Soccer: Pele says Ronaldinho is the best in the world right now and "better than Maradonna," long considered the second-best all-time to Pele. The young Brazilian is also a showman, pulling moves the likes of which haven't been seen for a long time and juking opponents left and right.

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I know, enough already. I've just spent more text on soccer than you ever wanted to read. You're not interested. I get it. I'll stop. Just so long as you know that you're wrong not to be watching the World Cup, and that myself and billions of foreigners will be a part of the greatest sporting event alive while you're biting your nails over the first half of the baseball season. Stupid gringo.

Seek, and Ye Shall Find - but why seek?

It was less than a month ago - albeit not much less - that I sat in this same seat, supposedly doing administrative work for the American Liver Foundation (shhhh... don't tell) and wrote my last post. In the first paragraph, I chastised myself for not visiting with my K-bors nearly enough, suggested I'd appear more often moving forward [quote: "as I bring back the once-a-week post minimum (which I am trying to do)..."], apologized to my lady-readers for overdoing the sports thing and then proceeded to write about sports. Well, in the interest of saving space, consider that paragraph applicable to this post as well.

However, I once again encourage women everywhere (or the lone woman reading this, anyway) to bear with me, as I think the following will say as much about the world we live in as it does about sports in particular. Last time, my sports-based-yet-interesting-to-non-sports-fans piece was a brief foray into comedy - I drew your attention to a minor-league team that was calling out the Kansas City Royals (who are really just a minor-league team in major-league uniforms). Today I'm angry, not amused.

Two sports stories caught my eye today - two stories that really should not have had to be published. The first addresses a recently-completed report about Lance Armstrong's potential use of performance-enhancing drugs. For years, ever since his dominance of the sport of cycling began, angry, jealous, and usually French rivals of America's favorite (only?) famous bike-rider have questioned how it is physically possible for someone to go straight from the chemotherapy table to the top of their sport. Especially a guy from a country that couldn't care less about cycling.

The jealousy (and presumably the French-ness) of Lance's detractors led to countless backhanded steroids accusations over his 7-year run of dominance. None were thought to hold any water, until last year's report that Lance's 1999 samples tested positive for a banned substance (EPO) when they were brought out of a freezer in 2004. When the report came out, Lance vehemently denied it (as he has every one of the myriad accusations over the years) and once again pointed out that he has been tested with absurd frequency for 7 or 8 years and never had a positive test. The International Cycling Union hired some impartial Dutch lawyers to conduct an investigation.

Well, that investigation has ended, and it not only exonerated Lance, but also questioned the integrity and practices of both L'Equipe (the paper which first reported the allegations) and the World Anti-Doping Agency. My favorite exerpt says the tests were so questionable that "it was 'completely irresponsible' to suggest they 'constitute evidence of anything.'" Oops.

The second story was about Gilbert Arenas. On Wednesday (yesterday) I read a report that Arenas was arrested - nobody really knew exactly why - and tried to wiggle out of it by saying "You can't arrest me, I'm a basketball player. I play for the Washington Wizards..." Turns out the whole sports world read that report, and every outlet from ESPNRadio to Reuters was blasting the NBA's most underrated player for disorderly behavior, hubris and stupidity. I heard the statement "this is the problem with athletes today" more times than I'd care to remember.

Oops again. Apparently nobody got Arenas' side of the story; at least until Michael Wilbon decided to pursue that outmoded journalistic convention - due diligence. It turns out maybe some overzealous cops just made a mistake during what was a tremendously busy weekend on South Beach - and then they lied on the police report so they didn't look bad. If you've ever been arrested before (and I'm not in a position to confirm or deny whether that's ever happened to me) you probably know this: policeman will lie their curly-tailed asses off to avoid people realizing they've made a mistake.

Reading Wilbon's article, I'm as sure as he is that Arenas did very little - if anything - wrong. The cops arrested him because he was a tattooed black man who got out of his car in traffic; and the national media is so ready to crucify athletes for stupid behavior that thousands of news outlets published the story - including details of a likely-false police report that probably should not have been released in the first place - without so much as contacting Arenas for his account.

These stories depress me deeply. They're not the only examples of a sports world that prefers a pariah to a hero. Another that came to my mind was last year's unfounded steroid accusations against Todd Helton. I won't get into details, but basically an announcer said - during a broadcast, on the air - that he had inside knowledge of Helton using steroids; it turned out to be creatine, a completely legal supplement. Basically, people (particularly in this country) love to tear down sports stars - we want nothing more than to find out that these men who outperform us by such a ridiculous margin only do so because they cheat; or else that they may be famous and ultra-talented, but they're also big jerks.

I've got news - yeah, tons of these guys are jerks. You know what? Jerks are everywhere. I see them on a daily basis. As a semi-permanent temp employee, I've found at least 50% of the people I end up working for or with are jerks (not the people here at ALF, of course). I'm a fucking jerk. You're probably a jerk too. Athletes are the same; maybe slightly more likely to be jerks given the self-confidence required to be a successful professional.

Of course, the most successful people in other professions are more likely to be jerks as well. How many Fortune 500 CEO's did something sleazy to get to the top? Probably right around 500. For every Randy Moss (pot-smoking, pushing-cops-with-his-car football player) there's a Kenneth Lay (cheating, conspiring, embezzling Enron player). But Lay's mistakes don't inspire us go after Steve Jobs, so why the excitement over arresting Arenas? Simply because our athletes are celebrities, and our CEO's are not - at least, not until they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

My intent is not to blame the media for reporting on the transgressions of our role models. I just feel as though the climate surrounding sports is very negative these days. There are tons of positive and excitingthings happening - one of the best overall NBA postseasons ever is in progress, World Cup 2006 starts in 8 days - but people focus on the controversy surrounding Barry Bonds, or the arrest of Gilbert Arenas, whose team was eliminated from the NBA Playoffs weeks ago.

Hey, ESPNRadio - save the gossip news for People Magazine; or MSNBC.com (where my good friend Paige Ferrari does a terrific job of writing about celebrities and gossip.) Instead of searching for the stories about stupid, selfish athletes off the field, let's talk about the on-field exploits that lead their teams to ignore everything from drug problems (Darryl Strawberry, Ricky Williams, etc.) to legal troubles (Kobe Bryant, Randy Moss, etc.) to just general jerkiness (Karl Malone, Bill Romanowski, etc.)

Sports are supposed to be an escape from "real life" - so why can't we allow athletes some escape from the public eye for their "real lives"?

That's the fundamental question, and also the end of today's rant. I'm afraid I got a bit overzealous and am only now realizing the length of this post. If you managed to wade through the above, I welcome your thoughts on the subject. Otherwise, I fully intend to resume frequent posting in the immediate future.

Won't you be my K-bor?