[Leica] World Cup Musings

[msmall at infionline.net (Marc James Small)]

 This is an International list, though I suspect that a plurality if not a
majority of the LUG are USians.

We had a discussion some years back about Rugby.  Now we are having a LOT
of discussion about the World Cup, with fervent statements by all sorts of
folks, including some USians.

We never seem to discuss sports with a great deal of interest to many North
Americans such as baseball, real football, basketball, ice hockey, or golf.

The US media has not given a great deal of coverage to the World Cup, I
will admit, other than articles on the concerns of the German police over
the potential for fan rowdiness or the possibilities of terrorist attacks
on the major games.  You really have to have an interest in football/soccer
to find much about the standings from the print media, though the 'Net does
allow us to easily find this out if we dig a bit.  (Every US daily will
print the daily baseball standings during the season, by way of comparison,
and will certainly cover the real football standings during the NFL season.
 But outside of the big national papers, the US print media seems to only
provide a brief article or two every day and to simply announce forthcoming
games with the broadcast schedule.)

The difference in concentration is interesting:  non-USians seem much more
intense on the World Cup that USians do on, say, the NCAA Final Four or the
World Series or the Superbowl, and seem much more concentrated on
discussing it on inappropriate fora such as the LUG <he grins> and in
spreading out their predictions.  How many of you guys predicted that
Germany would win the World Cup?  <again, he grins>

Come this Autumn, maybe we can have dozens of messages on the World Series,
followed by dozens more on the Superbowl and, in the Spring, the Final Four
and the NBA playoffs and the NHL Stanley Cup doings, and the like.  We can
also give a lot of words to the prime golf tournaments, the watching of
which is much akin to the watching of paint drying, and then we can do the
National Trap-Shoot Competition and the Triathalon.  And there is the
Triple Crown in horse-racing -- we probably should expand this to include
Epsom Downs and Ascot, I guess.

How come you non-USians never want to discuss Formula 1 auto racing?  We
really ought to be discussing "America's Favorite Sport",  stock-car
racing, aka NASCAR, with its junior-leagues below it.  We can have a great
bit of talk about that, and then we can do the pony-car circuit.

Then we can get into disscusing US professional wrestling -- described by
the Encyclopaedia Britannica as early as 1940 as "grotesque gesturings by
weirdly costumed clowns".  Or let us dissect the claims of that Pope of
Virginia Beach, Pat Robertson, to have done a one-ton leg-lift in his 60's
-- I have never met Pat Robertson, but I knew his father, a very decent,
gentle, and honorable man who lived a block from me for a couple of years,
and find that this sort of claim simply makes my skin crawl.  Youse guys
wanna talk about it?  

Let's ask Brian to rename the LUG the ISF for "the International Sports
Forum", and then we can all talk at great length about the World Cup and
Formula 1 and who won the latest yachting match off the Isle of Wight and
.....

Give us all a brreak, guys.  By now, we have identified those interested in
discussing the World Cup.  Why not talk the chat off-line?  

Otherwise, us USians might inflicut you all with a blow-by-blow account of
each game of the next October Classic, the 2006 World Series, live-time as
each error occurs and as each passed-ball flubs by the catcher.  And those
of you from the UK and the Shards of Empire can give us a similar
play-by-play of the next Test Matches, und so weider.  Again, perhaps Brian
ought to rename this group so that the name properly represents its primary
focus .... <again and aagain, he grins>

Marc




Marc

msmall@aya.yale.edu 
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!