18 June 2006

Not So Boring After All

Who would have known, the US v. Italy match on Saturday is being called the most exciting of the World Cup thus far. Of course, I don't have any delusions about soccer replacing Baseball as America's pastime. Nor would I desire or commend that. But I'm pretty sick of soccer being downplayed as a worthless sport and all this. It's not fun to watch. It's too slow. Not enough goal scoring. Condosleeza Rice is an alien freak. I keep hearing it everywhere.

Well, how about this. Basketball and football suck because they have TV time outs. The money-making advertisements are more important than the game are they? Not to me. And they try to hide it too ... the ticker that says "Timeouts - Boston: 2 , Lakers: 1" doesn't make any mention of the goddamn 12 automatic stoppages the ref will whistle so that we can all be indoctrinated to buy gatoraid and coke.

I won't even get into the last 2 minutes of a close basketball game taking 20 minutes to play. When cheating (fouling) becomes the most important aspect of play then you've got one hell of a lame sport.

Then there's soccer, even the lowly MLS, showing all games in their entirety and uncut/uncluttered by TV breaks. How's that for refreshing?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is a bit refreshing, true enough.

I watched the US v. Italy game and liked it. One thing about that though.. I'd say cheating and fouling had a pretty big impact on that game, at least as much as in any other game.

JR said...

True, cheating plays a role in all sport, but not in all sport does it become part of the game-plan that coaches actually verbalize.