World Cup Coverage - Not

I sure will be glad when the "World Cup" is over. Futbol is for the most part a pretty uninteresting sport to watch. About the only thing of interest in the whole thing is watching the crowd. In that it is kind of like NASCAR. Most people watch NASCAR to see the spectacular crashes and I would imagine that many glance at "futbol" hoping to see some kind of riot.
On the rare occasions that I do check out the game it is only to watch the English (Barclays)Premier League, the NFL of soccer. It is fun to listen to the fans drunkenly sing in the stands and plus the teams have cool names. The team from Arsenal has perhaps the best name in professional sports anywhere. I have an Arsenal Gunners t shirt just because I love the name and the logo.
Here in the USA soccer continues to gain popularity. There is now of course a professional league that actually has a chance to stand on its own. I personally would not pay 50 cents to go see it, but to each his own. Soccer is probably a good sport for children to play as it is, for the most part, a non contact sport. Oh sure, you can get hurt, but you can get injured walking from the living room to the kitchen. It is without doubt good exercise and a good way to keep fit. It is also pretty fun to play, but to watch it is like pulling teeth.
Now with that being said, it will not be too long before the USA is the top dog in the exciting world of "futbol." This is can be viewed as both good and bad I guess depending on your perspective. At any rate it is apparent that soccer is here to stay despite the fact that it is viewed by many as just somehow "Un American."
That reminds me of something. Do you remember a few years back when Iran beat the USA in some sort of multi national soccer match? The Iranians jumped for joy and ran around like maniacs. One would have though that the Prophet himself had shown up and scored the winning goal. Sports Talk great Jim Rome commented that he hoped the Iranians were happy with themselves but that they should realize that the USA is much better than they at the only sport that really matters - War.

I liked that.

BCS Controversy

The BCS is of course B.S. and everyone knows it. Mack Brown and others are no fans of the system, though he and others (Florida, Bama, LSU, KSU especially, etc. ) take advantage of it by scheduling weaker non conference opponents that on paper at least, have little chance of winning. That is why it is so wonderful when one of these IAA or weaker teams from say the Sun Belt Conference or MAC bites them on the ass. The ULM victory of BAMA was great a couple of years back and of course Appalachian State embarrassed Michigan not too long ago. This year alone Iowa was scared by IAA Northern Iowa and came within a hair of losing to Sun Belt Arkansas State. KSU was beaten by the Ragun Cajuns and that was fun also. The point being, the BCS pushes these major power football schools into working the schedule this way. The "lessor" team gets a good payday and the "power" team usually comes away with a victory. This runs up the wins for a team with national championship aspirations, but a good many of these games are in reality just meaningless scrimmages. Before the BCS there were a few games like this here and there. Often they were scheduled between coaches that had a friendly history, but it has gotten ridiculously out of hand. I saw and editorial the other day concerning this phenomena. Apparently USC does not schedule down nor does Stoops over at Oklahoma. That is to their credit, but it can most definitely hurt their chances at a shot at a national title. Take Oklahoma's loss to BYU this year. That is factored into the BCS computer when it comes to doling out BCS Bowl Games. USC of course had their loss this year also. A win over a IAA team should not count when factoring points and a loss should count three times more than a loss to a D1 team. That would cut down on some of this particular abuse in the college game.

Senator Hatch of Utah apparently sent a letter to President Obama asking him to look into the BCS system personally. Hatch is under the opinion that the BCS system violates the anti trust laws that this country has in place. He may be quite right.vIt goes without saying that the BCS system is flawed and (hopefully) will eventually go away; but do we really need the government to get involved in this right now? They should have other things on their plate at this time. That reminds me of when John McCain was hounding baseball about steroid use, when our troops were fighting and dying in the war against the Mohammedans. This is still the case of course. Our president and government are bickering about side issues while our economy sinks (don't let them fool you; this nation may be in for a major economic meltdown) and our troops are fighting, without proper support mind you, in Afghanistan and still in harms way in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

Are those damn fools in Washington out of touch with reality? The BCS System, steroids in baseball, thugs in the NBA, Soviets in the NHL (just kidding), the popularity of un American Soccer (not kidding) and so forth will eventually work itself out. Get on with the nation's business.