GOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLL.............
...I'm not gonna watch Soccer, and You Can't Make Me...
-
I remember feeling this way back in the 'eighties' when the Compact Disc was first unleashed on the public. Nope, not me...I was gonna stick to my guns and buy vinyl until such time when it wasn't made anymore. Well, shortly after CD's initially came about, Vinyl just kinda disappeared. I remember first hearing about CD's, and way back then I thot, "if anything can replace records, it's gonna be CD's". And soon it came to pass. And Vinyl became harder to find than rollerskates in King Tut's tomb. I hung on, though; each time a new release came out by My Favorite Artists, I'd go to the CD store--formerly Record Store--and dutifully place my order with the clerk. Just about the only way I could get a new album on vinyl was to stay on top of release dates, meaning I'd have to hear about it in the newspaper or online, and place my order as soon as I could. And a multi-million selling CD might have a vinyl run of about twenty-five thousand copies, so I'd have to be on top of it.
-
Well, so it goes with Soccer. All of a sudden it's invaded our culture trying to become a sport with Massive Popularity. Soccer is here. Doggone it, I absolutely hate watching a soccer game. Any sport that doesn't let you use your arms or hands is just Odd in my book. As a result, you've got two soccer teams playing each other, and let's face it, there's only so much precision to be had by only using your feet. As a result, the ball is here, the ball there, and it's being kicked around the field by the Soccer Teams who, if they can't find a ball to kick, they kick each other. And a full hour can go by, and perhaps one or two goooooooaaaaaallllls are scored, and that's it. And, soccer is becoming so popular that ESPN commentators all of a sudden are complaining about 'the way the game is played'. The announcer on one such ESPN broadcast was griping about 'penalty kicks', which come about by various fouls committed by a player, or two, or twenty-seven. After the match is done one team gets to kick the ball, where it's placed twenty feet in front of a goal that's perhaps fifteen feet wide, and only the goalie, who can use his hands, gets to defend. Just the goalie. When you have a guy with a six-foot arm span, defending a goal that's twenty-feet wide, most of the time the poor beleaguered goalie is gonna miss, after which the winning team can then leave the field and go up into the stands and start fights with the crowd. So Soccer Is becoming a new National Pastime. That's the fault of Mothers Across The Nation who drag their little brats to soccer games. And Sarah Palin is a soccer mom, which was probably just the shot the soccer proponents and athletic stores needed. But in the photo at left, she's trying to remember which ball goes to what sport. Think, Sarah, Think...

-
Most nights, right after the Baseball game is, it's all-soccer, all-of-the-time, running helter-skelter and wiggledy-piggledy in the pursuit of the World Cup. What you get in a soccer game is running, running, and more running. In no particular direction. I'm sure there are various strategies employed in a soccer game, but again, there's only so much precision there can be if the players can't use their hands since the hands have quite a lot more dexterity than the feet. As proof: I can't type with my feet. So there. The Soccer Goalies do get to use their hands, which is great because forty or fifty players are bearing down on him, kicking each other as well as the ball, but being a goalie has to fall just short of facing a Firing Squad. My argument is that Man was born with HANDS. Man was made to use his hands. Which means that any living, breathing armless animal, such as a pack of Rhinos, could be placed on the field with a soccer ball, and the results would be about the same as with World-Class Soccer players. The old joke goes something like this: "If you can't find the ball to kick, just kick someone else". Just like with the CD's I mentioned above, I've got 'this feeling' about soccer...it's coming, no one can stop it, so Get Used To It; it's here. But it's such a difficult sport to watch.
-
But there's another sport out there that Might Just Have A Chance to be really entertaining, and that sport would be RUGBY. Rugby is like pro football--American Football, that is. Except that all the Rugby players do is run, run, run all over the place; no stopping the clock between plays, and the ball can either be kicked or thrown. Yep, that's right. You can use yer hands in Rugby. In a Rugby match, two teams consisting of a whole bunch of players take the ball up and down the field to try and reach the "end zone". And, there are no Goalies in Rugby. And no shoulder pads, either. So these Rugby guys could really hurt each other. Yeah, Get With It...Let's see some ACTION...
-
In the short portion of the Rugby match I watched, several ggggoooooaaaaaaallllllls were scored and the game moved along pretty fast. And the players themselves seem to resemble 'just us regular folks'. No precision timing for a fifty-yard pass, no 'illegal formations', they can make a forward pass and not have to worry about it being legal or not. A Rugby game is like two street gangs defending their respective territories, only without switchblades and sub-machine guns. Rugby players are not graceful runners, either, they rumble up and down the field trying to catch the guy with the ball, and they can knock him down, step on his face, and there are rugby players all over the place...piling on this guy, trying to rip the ball out of his arms. Hopefully the downed player can spot one of his team-mates and somehow try to get the ball to him. It's not graceful, it's not refined and I can imagine Rugby Players have difficulty getting Life Insurance.
-
This sport, Rugby, is a sport that I could watch without being dragged, kicking and screaming, tied up and plopped down on the floor in front of the TV. In the short portion I saw, several scores had been made and I think the outcome was something like twenty-two to seventeen, somewhere in there. I can imagine the Rugby TV-watching Experience could only be enhanced by all kinds of salty snack foods, several sixpacks of cheap beer and hot DiGiorno pizzas. "This has got to be a delivered pizza". "Nope, it's Digiorno". "Delivered." "NOT delivered". "DELIVERED, DAMMIT ", after which both protagonists knock each other to the floor, and all of their buddies pile on top of the Guy With The Pizza. Hmmm...I think I've invented a new sport here.
-
Finally, yes I know that Soccer Players also get to use their heads. Ouch. That's gotta hurt. And remember you've got brain tissue on the inside of your skull. Me, I'll use my head in another way. I 'think' I'll try to find a baseball game to watch...