With the Fifa World Cup 2014 coming into its home stretch, I confess to having a casual interest in the whole spectacle. To call me a fan would overstating it since I've actually only viewed partial games in the break room at work during lunchtime, but it still holds my interest more than football ever can or will For the most part, organized sports holds about as more credence in my world as organized religion.
In full disclosure, my grandson is responsible for me watching the dadgum game at all since he's been playing most of his life and I've fulfilled some of my grandfatherly duties by supporting him in his love of the sport. My love for him has weakened my loathing of all sports. Watching him on the field at any early age helped wear me down and soon I was joining him and his parents at actual professional games involving our own MLS team, the Portland Timbers. (See blog post: SOCCER? I BARELY KNEW HER) Those events have been some of the best moments I've spent in the Pacific Northwest. It's not enough to make me a full-fledged, card carrying, drum beating member of the Timbers Army, but if a game is on the telly, I'll stop for a spell. The Timbers help encourage a sense of hometown pride, something I haven't experienced in my lifetime until recently.
(I also get quite a bang out of bugfuck crazy ass rugby matches as well, the closest thing we have in the real world to Rollerball.)
Which brings us back to the World Cup. Yeah, it's just as corporate and commercial as any other sporting event, but the international flair gives it an Olympic appeal. While I was jazzed for the USA team getting as far as they did (damn waffle eaters got the best of 'em), I was just as engrossed in the matches of other countries.
As for the soccer-haters out there who oh so wittingly chime in with "Can't wait fer the World Cup to be over so's everyone kin not care 'bout soccer agin", take a friggin' breath. Football season is moments away and so is the next 11 months of basketball. Then while you wallow in your steroidsphere, the rest of us have to put up with a bowl game a week sponsored by Cheetos or Hometown Buffet and the endurance test known as March Madness, a name that should really offend metal health advocates.
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| ANN COULTER on a recent visit to FOX and FRIENDS |
And I happen to to like soccer because anything that offends the insensibilities of praying mantis lookalike Ann Coulter really can't be all bad, can it? Soccer's un-American? Why don't you numbskulls either support or try to save the real American game of baseball. (I have some ideas. For example, if a runner gets a hit, he gets to hold onto the bat as he runs the bases)
It 's called the WORLD Cup.You football/basketball Ammurrikins don't want to be a part of the world? Fine. Take a hike.
Earth. Love it or leave it.
See? I can talk sports. Some day I'll tell you all about my lifelong love of professional wrestling. And my credibility begins to fade away in three...two...one....pfft...
