Soccer
© 2010 by H.B. Koplowitz
This year's early second round World Cup exit by the Yanks was but a blip between Tiger Woods and LeBron James on the American sports psyche, and for two reasons. The first has nothing to do with soccer: If not for the incessant vuvus, I might have watched a few more matches myself.But then there's the game itself. With baseball, football, basketball, hockey, NASCAR, golf and rodeo, does America really need another sports craze, especially one as exasperating as soccer? Don't get me wrong. I'm an avid, make that rabid, sports fan. I also believe America could be enriched by adopting many aspects of international culture, like nationalized healthcare and the metric system. But not soccer.
First of all, players can't use their hands, so it's kind of like the Riverdance of sports.
After awhile, all that prancing and dancing at midfield begins to look like loitering, which is why basketball adopted the shot clock.
The game clock moving forward instead of counting down to zero, and the indeterminate endings to the matches are annoying.
With all the kicking, bumping, tackling, tripping and head butting going on, it's very macho to play without pads or helmets, but it's also very stupid.
If, as we say in America, ending a game in a tie is like kissing your sister, what is playing for a tie?
There's only three refs and no instant replays, so an inordinate number of games are decided not on the competency of the players, but the incompetency of the judges.
My biggest complaint about soccer is that the soccer community seems to like it that way. They want the game to remain archaic and capricious, which, taken along with libations and vuvus, tends to turn fans into hooligans. And in a country with the right to bear arms, that might not be such a good thing.
