We are about to enter that Sports Dead Zone between the end of the NBA Finals and the start of the college football season (unless, of course, you’re a fan of the WNBA, in which case, over the next two months, you’ll be one of the 17 happiest people in America). So I thought I’d share some thoughts on sports:
• Something nice to say about the World Cup of soccer: You know how it’s summer time, and your wife wants you to do stuff around the house? All you have to do is tell her, “I’m watching a World Cup game right now, but I promise that I’ll get right to it as soon as somebody scores.”
I watched the opening-day match between Uruguay and France. I could have read War and Peace before somebody scored. Who am I kidding? I could have written War and Peace before somebody scored.
Not that the game was without tension. The last two minutes of extra time were edge-of-your-seat gripping as the Uruguayans argued with the Asian ref over where he was going to place the ball for a French free kick. One Uruguayan even got a yellow card.
Still, it reminded me of that brilliant ad back in the early days of MTV. This teenage boy is watching MTV when a knock comes at the door. He opens the door, and there stands the Grim Reaper, who points and says that he has come for the young man. The kid says, “But I’m watching MTV,” to which the Reaper responds, “OK, I’ll come back when it’s over.”
A few years ago, I turned on MTV and saw some dreadful thing about Flavor Flav in a hooker hookup show, and I realized that the aforementioned young man is dead, since MTV is sooo over.
• Another good thing about soccer: Those guys really are good athletes. Every year around Christmas, ESPN puts on an hour-long show with nothing but soccer highlights from around the world that year. Some of them are amazing. I could watch that show for up to an hour.
Unfortunately, in real life, those highlights are surrounded by hours, and sometimes weeks, of just running up and down the field in shiny uniforms.
Another reason those guys are good athletes: Have you ever seen Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire pretending to be clumsy? It’s masterful. A soccer player has to be a good athlete in order to get kicked in the shin (which is covered with a state-of-the-art shin guard) and then instantaneously fall to the ground, writhing as though he had been shot with a molecular disruptor. It’s gotta take years of practice.
• The Super-Spectacular Pac-16 Mega-Conference: At press time, the Pac-10 was about to become the Pac-11, after the conference invited Colorado to join. Really?! Colorado? What, did El Paso turn us down?
I hated the idea of a 16-team mega-conference sprawling from Seattle to Austin. I hated what it would have done to University of Arizona athletics, especially the so-called “minor” sports. It would have confirmed the worst fears that college sports are only about money.
Fortunately, after days of looking like it was a done deal, the 16-team plan fell apart. It’s like during the Six-Day War, when an Israeli guy asked a woman out. She said, “We can’t go on a date! There’s a war on.” So he said, “Well, how about tomorrow night?”
A Pac-16 would have sucked on a seismic scale.
• Why I hate the Lakers: Mostly, I despise Kobe Bryant, who, besides being the best basketball player in the world, is also one of the most easily despise-able people on the face of the Earth. Phil Jackson is smug; Ron Artest is a thug; and Derek Fisher is a crybaby. And then there’s Pau Gasol. Did you know that “Pau Gasol” is Spanish for “whines on every play”? Oddly enough, it’s also Portuguese for “bad facial hair.”
• Never kick a cheater when they’re down. Before we begin throwing stones in the direction of USC, we should all consider that there but for the grace of God …
I’m not so naïve as to believe that cheating doesn’t go on elsewhere, but I was taken aback by the nondenial denials issued by former Trojans coach Pete Carroll and confirmed cheater Reggie Bush, both of whom are long gone from USC, which will suffer mightily from the misdeeds of Bush and former Trojan basketball player O.J. Mayo.
What kills me, however, is that besides banning USC from bowl-game appearances for two years, the NCAA will also strip the Trojans football program of 30 scholarships over the next three years.
I’m sorry, but isn’t the NCAA supposed to be (at least partly) in the business of educating young people? Why take away scholarships? People might argue that the 30 kids who don’t go to USC will get scholarships elsewhere, but somewhere along the line, there will be a net loss of 30 football scholarships in the NCAA. Plus, USC will save money in the process.
Why not have USC give out those 30 scholarships—with the free room and board and tutors and study table—and just have the recipients not play football? Wouldn’t that make for a more positive lesson?
This article appears in Jun 17-23, 2010.
Where is the NCAA’s complicity in this scenario? Have they indicated they are returning or forfeiting the millions in revenue they’ve reaped on the backs of Reggie Bush, USC and any other program they have deemed in violation of NCAA amateur(gag) policies. The NCAA hypocrisy borders on being criminal!
I do like your suggestion of providing the 30 scholarships to non-athlete students chosen by lottery.
Time for the NCAA to be gutted and replaced by an organization that truly represents the best interests of students and the educational mission of the universities.
Takes me back to the late 70s (or maybe early 80s, it’s been a bit) when all the college sports teams were getting suspended and Tank Macnamara ran a series where some small college was going to have to play the Charlie Tuna Oceanographic Institute in the Rose Bowl. Makes you wish the NCAA still had some backbone and that things would have changed for the better. All this money has just made things worse and the NCAA is acting like a pusher to the schools.
Bad mouthing soccer again, eh? Soccer players have nothing on the drama queens playing for the NBA. You only have to get within 4 feet of Kobe before he swoons to the floor with a bad case of the vapors, clutches his knee or shoulder or elbow and rolls on the floor in pain, then he suddenly jumps up and runs after the ball when the ref doesn’t buy it. I’d rather see one point scored and actually have it be an accomplishment than have a team score 50 times and still lose. Basketball has no defense (standing around under the net and waiting for a rebound is not defense). Soccer has a strong defensive component to it making scoring difficult. A blocked shot on goal is just as important, if not more so, than a scoring goal. Maybe you should create “Short Attention Span Scoccer”. Just three strikers, one defender and a goalie per team, no offsides, 15 minute quarters. Just guys kicking the crap out of the ball from midfield, trying to score. Actually, that sounds a lot like basketball. Probably would play a lot like basketball, too! Those goals in soccer are worth waiting for. A 0-0 tie is a badge of honor for soccer teams. Kinda like a no-hitter in baseball. If you’re bored by it all, stick to half-hour sitcoms with rat-a-tat jokes, James Patterson novelettes, and Danehy articles in the Weekly.
Who’s Kobe Bryant?
Free Marc Emery
I don’t really think Daheny dislikes the things he makes fun of. He just chooses a few topics to aim his wit at.
I’ve been looking forward to the soccer jokes for a few months.
Tom, I see you have not evolved one iota from your rant on Soccer 15 or so years ago. You have created a new moniker for yourself, the Glenn Beck of Soccer…all incitement, all emotion, no knowledge, no rational thought.
The thing that is so puzzling to the fans of soccer, is the very need to rag in the first place. The National Council of Sports, who provide data to sports marketers deciphered two decades ago that the soccer player, fan, and family are generally multi-sport players and supporters of athletics in general. And many of us can even dance too! Meaning the soccer aficionado does not suck on the negative energy of ragging other sports. Such a stance is akin to the kid who always had sand kicked on him at the beach. Maybe your obsession with being contrary is cuz you can’t dance!
At any rate, you seldom see the soccer fan going out of their way to speak as you do. We are capable of doing so, but only as apologists in the interest of offsetting such jack ass attitudes. Like, “what the hell is football, but all fall down, all get up again interspersed with time outs for buffoon beer ads” “The average length of a play in football is 8 seconds..how athletic is that? Soccer players do not have to grunt to play. Soccer is like good sex in a marriage, we do not need to score instantly after having ball possession, it is all in the foreplay.Ergo, soccer is for lovers! Hope this is received in jest.
Kentop’s narrative in the previous post is good. You would do well for yourself and your editor to take some time to learn the game and appreciate a true sport enjoyed by the entire world. Do you recall the history of basketball? Dr. Naisbett, I believe, and how it was invented by a soccer player shooting his ball at a peach basket in the gym of an Ivy League school?
Summarily, the 17 Laws of Soccer are designed to uphold the integrity of athletic prowess. It is the contest itself that is tantamount to the sport, not the ability to commit tactical fouls for gain. There is no contest there. In basketball you can simply loiter at the foot of the hoop. Because of the beauty of the offside rule in soccer there is no loitering, the player must “earn” their goal. An intentional obstruction of a goal in soccer is an ejection, in most other sports it is fan entertainment. Where is the sport in that? (exception US Game with Slovenia) Where is the sport in an intentional foul in the waning seconds of a game? The inherent equanimity of the rules in soccer result in extra time added to the clock for intentional delays.
And since we are playing Keystone Cops here….. I see that baseball in Tucson is serving us well, with two vacant stadiums, 50 million in subsidies including cost of TEP, and a goose egg to show. How is that for a low scoring game?
I say turn one of those stadiums over to Soccer for International Friendlies, Exhibition games and youth and semi-pro soccer and it will cash flow in 10 months.
Like Yogi Bera said, “cash is kinda like money.” Without taxing the tax payer. Last time I checked that is called free enterprise capitalism, and it is imbued in the sport of soccer.
Play ON..Advantage! Mike Brewer/Ret./USMC
“Asian” referee. “Big fat white guy” some weeks back…. Seeing a trend here that makes a racist like me uncomfortable.
Same ol’ lame ol’ jokes about soccer told by fatass after fatass all across the land. Does Danehy get paid for this shit, or is his only reward the immensely undeserved self-satisfaction?