Confessions of a Litigious Mind

The random, irrelevant musings of a law school graduate.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

world cup fever

it's not that i have world cup fever, but that the world cup is giving me a fever. soccer? please.

now dont get me wrong, i like soccer. i really do. playing soccer is really fun. in college i played intramural soccer for 3 years. we went undefeated one season. i played goal cuz no one else on my team could catch, and everyone else was afraid of the ball. but i loved playing goal. god, if he existed, would know that i dont have any foot-eye coordination anyhow. i'm more of a baseball guy. playing soccer is great.

but one thing i cannot do is watch professional soccer (i can watch amateur games if i know someone playing). i cant. trust me, i've tried. the other day (maybe yesterday, i dont know they all blend in) i watched like 15 minutes of argentina/ivory coast. in those 15 minutes i saw only one shot on goal, and for 12-13 of those minutes the ball was kept in the middle third of the field. just kicking it back and forth. striker, wing, defense, wing, striker, defense, striker, wing...ahhhhhhh! i'll admit, it's cool when they score...when they score. but i can catch those highlights on sportscenter.

and besides, what kind of game can end in ties?! hockey used to, but they fixed that glitch. football technically can, but never does. ties are for shoelaces and sexual offenders, not sports.

luckily, this isnt really a huge problem for me, other than having to hear about it all the time. world cup programming wont block out any sporting events i'm interested in, and i dont have any regular weekly shows running now that i have to worry about missing on network tv.

maybe i'll give it another chance, if there's an interesting game on. cuz if dicta is anything, it's open-minded. now shut the hell up.

posted by josh @ 6/11/2006 10:54:00 AM

10 Comments:

At 6/11/2006 3:51 PM, Blogger law monkey said...

you can stand to watch baseball, but you can't stand to watch soccer?! you truly are a freak of nature, dicta. truly.

 
At 6/11/2006 8:44 PM, Blogger josh said...

no. baseball has scoring, between the juiced baseballs and steroids. but stuff happens in baseball. pitches, the ball is hit. runs are scored. NO TIES.

stuff happens in baseball. in soccer, 3 guys just kick it in a little triangle until they turn it over, then the other team does the same.

ever notice how soccer fans are always drunk? its cuz they have to be.

 
At 6/11/2006 10:49 PM, Blogger d$ said...

did i ever tell you about my friend from italy who played professional soccer over there? well he was on a team from southern italy and he said that the whole sport was so corrupt that they would get paid to throw games every now and then. one time a guy even came into their locker room with a gun and said he'd kill some of them if they won the game.
anyways, he tried to switch teams, move up a division or something and his coach got mad and paid an opposing player to break his leg.. now he cant really even run without a lot of pain.

see, soccer's got drama too!

 
At 6/11/2006 11:07 PM, Blogger law monkey said...

there's a lot of corruption in sumo wrestling, too.

dicta: baseball is nothing but some dirt piled amidst some grass, with a man holding catgut and leather, trying to give another guy the evil eye and to effect some form pseudo-macho intimidation. at least, when you watch baseball, that's all you see. every few minutes, one of those men actually gets off his ass to run.

in soccer, on the other hand, unless you're the goalie or benchwarmer, you bet you're running for as long as you're on the field.

why do you think baseball players have guts, and soccer players do not?

just because points aren't being scored in a soccer game as often as they are in a baseball game, the fact is that soccer games involve continuous action. the ball never stops rolling, and the plays actually involve some sort of strategy. baseball? pfft. wake me up when it's time to go home. (which is another good point: baseball games don't have any set length; soccer games do - unless the game goes into overtime, which is infrequent.)

 
At 6/11/2006 11:53 PM, Blogger josh said...

overtime in soccer is not infrequent because the fields are 985,000 square yards so no one ever gets into the attack zone and scores. continuous motion doesnt matter if the motion is boring. would you stare at a pendulum all day? i would guess not.

in baseball there is strategy, and every game is very different. there are different pitches, and one inch in either direction could mean the difference in every at bat. which pitch to throw, what play to put on when there are runners on base, how to shift the defense for each batter, for each pitch. please. the only strategy in soccer is hey, pablo, why dont you kick this round ball in that there net.

also, just cuz guys are constantly running doesnt make them athletes. would you call an illegal immigrant running from border patrol an athlete? i would not.

basically, if i wanted to just go watch a lot of pointless running, i'd set up a spot on the US/mexican border. but since i enjoy entertainment, i choose baseball, america's pasttime. if soccer is so great, how come most americans dont give a shit?

 
At 6/12/2006 3:16 AM, Blogger Damon said...

To those really into it, baseball has enough strategy to talk for weeks about, but overall it's quite boring. Hell it's often boring to play. However, soccer isn't much better, as Josh says there's just too much nothing happening around midfield. But there is strategy too, particularly on "set pieces" as I was told they are called yesterday, you know corner kicks and such. I watched parts of three matches this weekend and saw three goals, all of which were on set pieces, where specific plays can be designed. One was Beckham's specialty curving shot from like 50m away. Pretty sick. Anyway, Americans don't care because we have all our own goofy sports (that we are good at) that the we (or Canada) made up and most the rest of the world doesn't care about. But the US is ranked 5 this time, so if they can make it out of the group (unlikely it seems) I would think there would be some interest.

 
At 6/12/2006 8:13 AM, Blogger josh said...

that's just it. the US is 5 and still no one cares.

come on matt, i know you're back, help me out here. set everyone straight.

 
At 6/12/2006 10:54 AM, Blogger law monkey said...

i see the problem: you boys obviously understand the nuances of baseball (rules, tactics, strategies, etc.), but i'm guessing your expertise in soccer is not quite at the same level. this isn't meant to be a criticism, just an observation.

that being said, my own knowledge of baseball is inversely proportional to the level of my disdain for it: less knowledge, more disdain. conversely, because i know substantially more about soccer, i have a greater affinity for it. for you, your knowledge-appreciation levels for baseball are also proportional.

in any case, because i know nothing about baseball, and because i don't care enough to learn about it, i still think it's a horribly dull sport.

dicta, you say that americans don't care about the world cup. i don't know what americans you've been fraternizing with, but down here, we've got 12 law clerks - many of whom know next to nothing about soccer - engaged in a winner-takes-all pool based on the world cup games. americans use the term "soccer mom," not "baseball mom."

i would suspect that, in any case, americans might prefer baseball over soccer because they can associate with baseball players. "hey look! a guy who does just as much sitting/not moving as me! and he gets paid a few million for it! sweet!"

personally, given the recent steroids scandal, plus the '94 labor strike, i'm kind of hoping baseball fades out, to be replaced by an even greater sport: soccer.

 
At 6/12/2006 1:10 PM, Blogger Damon said...

I think soccer is not being promoted as much as it could be in the US because the TV networks don't want it because there are no stops so they can't show ads every 3 minutes. It's getting ridiculous in other sports: TD, commericials, kickoff, cmmmericials, plus every change of possession, timeout, injury, and quarter. So football or baseball give a serious % of airtime to ads that soccer can't match.

 
At 6/12/2006 3:38 PM, Blogger NDM said...

Soccer isn't being promoted in the US because the US still sucks. Sure, they've come a long way since their first World Cup qual in 1990, but they got into the 1994 Cup by hosting, and then finished dead last in the 1998 Cup. And then today, they just got their asses handed to them by the Czech Republic, 3-0. I am a soccer enthusiast myself, and I would like nothing more than the US to hold their own on the world stage. But they continue to disappoint, thus, their own fans have little to get enthused about...even their world ranking of #5 was a farce (unless you believe the crap that the FIFA computerized ranking system spits out). At least Australia won...

BTW...funny ass blog. Keepin' it real...

 

Post a Comment

<< Home