Seriously, someone else has to have thought of that? Cup-date?!
Believe it or not, I’m enjoying the World Cup. That’s right, I am.
Oh, sure, I’m in the middle of Kansas, and people here are obsessed with the nouveau-Big 12. The Cup barely registers. At least that’s what I assume; I don’t really talk to anyone not on the Internet.
The point is, I like the World Cup. Like I said, it’s a tournament, and I’ll watch. It’s an improvement over Mike and Mike or the Today Show as morning prep background noise.
(By the way, the network morning shows have been showcasing this guy who was trapped behind a furnace for 12 hours and subsisting on trickles of rusty water, before he began sawing his own arm off. You think you’ve got problems! This guy cut off his own arm! Believe it or not, I’m not complaining about the morning shows. I’m fascinated and disturbed by this. Totally worth competing stories on four networks at 7:15, 7:21, 7:24 and 7:46.)
Anyway, I was all set to take to task friend of the blog (Well, not really a friend. I just enjoy his book A Few Seconds of Panic. I assume he’s a friend.) Stefan Fatsis for his column, tweeted on Saturday, about a 50-year-plan for soccer adoption in the U.S.
I assumed this was the typical tripe (Why doesn’t the US like soccer and WHEN WILL THEY?) and whining about American culture’s refusal to embrace soccer. Instead, it’s a great read about FIFA and the U.S. Soccer Federation actually planning for the future of soccer in the U.S.
Got me to thinking – Soccer really has come a long way. Think back to the World Cup when I was 10 (Maybe you also were 10. Maybe you were 8. Work with me.). No one could possibly have cared less. Now, here it is, prime-time sports news; whether owing to a 24-hour sports cycle, a global economy, or the rise of hipsters. Soccer is a veritable niche sport, co-existing along the lines of tennis, and maybe even hockey. So what if it’s largely supported by pretentious eggheads consciously choosing to follow an unpopular sport in hopes of appearing supremely intellectual? Hockey, after all, is supported by fanatical lumberjacks who eat moose for breakfast and brush their teeth with maple syrup. This really isn’t any worse, right?
There’s your appreciative post for the day, the gargantuan revelation: Soccer is good. We like it fine, as long as soccer phonies aren’t wasting my time wondering why more people aren’t as smart as they. It’s even grown to the point of the phonies’ chagrin – as they try and reconcile a yearning for popularity with the disdain for anyone horning in on their racket. I mean, should soccer rise to the level of baseball, then where do they go? Water polo?
But that’s enough for now. Time to return to sports I comfortably inject with my own self-loathing. Not only is this Tool-in-Kansas-City week, it’s also the NBA Draft. That’s right, by Thursday, you’ll see, once again – NBA Daft – my exercise in making fun of 19-year-olds I’ve never heard of, and rudely abusing struggling business entities. Where petty happens.
