paying-attention

It has always amazed me that a population that can stay awake during a baseball game claims to find soccer and ice hockey boring. The problem seems to be that these sports require you to watch all the time, not just during intermittent set pieces.

During the World Cup football tournament (or Copa Mundial, as it was called on the only stations that carried all the games live) readers where I live were subjected to the usual clueless and idiotic commentary in the newspapers. I don't know if local columnists in the daily newspapers of Albuquerque, New Mexico, can be described as "mainstream American media." I mean, just geographically they're already pretty far away from the main flow of opinion. Maybe informed opinion here is as far out-of-date as the fashions New Mexicans wear. I can only hope.

A columnist called Jim Belshaw, who apparently makes a living being an even bigger idiot on paper than his fans are in real life, promised to watch the games while reading a book. His reasoning? Since they show instant replays of all the key moments, it is easier to listen for the crowd and announcer getting excited and then watch what they are so thrilled about in the replay. By this logic, it would be a waste of time to watch any sporting event at all when you can just catch the highlights on the ten o'clock news.

Then there is the moron who calls himself "The Linz." (Please let that appellation be tongue-in- cheek.) This guy deigns to recognize soccer as maybe being as interesting to watch as the local college basketball league. Athleticism, team spirit and national loyalty are beside the point. Having just realized that world class football involves different teams, athletes and coaches following markedly different styles of play, he notices that some teams seem to be able to partially manipulate the decisions of referees. In his eyes this makes the World Cup competition almost as interesting as a home basketball game.

Here's some news for the babblers and scribblers of the United States media circus. The game the rest of the world calls football doesn't need you. Recently I saw a British actor on television talking about the various degrees of athleticism required in different sports. Referring to the players on the various national football teams, he commented "Those guys have to be in great shape."

Leno asked, "Do you watch American football?"

The actor looked a little embarrassed. "Well, I guess they're in good shape, too. They seem to stop all the time."