One Of My Puck Hog

One Of My Puck Hog Collaborators. . . Martin Devon, has written a heart-warming rejoinder to my global complaint against "soccer bigots". It's a nice little ditty about his trip to the 1999 Women's Final at the Rose Bowl. Give it a read.

In his post, Martin rightly points out that most of the world didn't know what a blog was back in 1999, slyly implying that there were no bloggers around anyway. I take his point, but from where I sit, the tenor of some of the garbage I've been reading is nothing new.

One of the reasons I'm such a big fan of blogging, is that it provides a welcome contrast to much of the tripe produced by the mainstream press in the area of politics and culture. But when it comes to sports, and in particular Soccer/Football, the stuff I'm seeing isn't any different from the tired, "soccer is boring, American culture is superior" message I was assaulted with in 1998, 1994, 1990, ad infinatum.

(Let's make something clear: like Victor Davis Hanson, I do think Western culture, and American culture in particular is superior. Results speak for themselves, don't they? I just don't think America's failure to embrace Soccer has anything to do with it.)

Don't get me wrong, if someone doesn't like Soccer/Football, fine. I can live with that. But what's tiring me out, over and over, is that sportswriters, both amateur and professional, can't deliver straight-ahead coverage of Soccer/Football without a healthy dose of why they couldn't give a damn about the sport. So, while coverage of other sports is filled with serious discussion of strategy and tactics from writers who know what they're talking about, the media always fill their Soccer "news hole" with rants from writers who either hate the sport, or don't know a damn thing about it.

And the 1999 Women's World Cup is a case in point. I watched the games on television, and even got a chance to watch the U.S. play Germany at FedEx Field outside of D.C. (Just as an aside, President Clinton was at the game, something the press picked up in the coverage afterwards. What they neglected to mention was the fact that whenever his picture showed up on the scoreboard, he was greeted with a chorus of full-throated boos.)

I watched, because I love sports and I love soccer. And the bigger the event, the better. And while during the 1999 Women's World Cup, the anti-Soccer bigots went underground, they were replaced by a greek chorus singing the praises of feminist empowerment.

Sure, I was glad to be rid of the usual idiots, but I wasn't exactly enamored of the crew that had taken their place -- a group that went about their business with the same sort of fervor demonstrated by Chairman Mao's Red Guards. And, just as with the anti-Soccer bigots, the shameless boosterism got in the way of what was happening on the field.

How? Well, let's travel back to that Summer, in particular the tournament's final at the Rose Bowl between the U.S. and China. A scoreless tie bled into a scoreless overtime, and led to penalty kicks to decide the game.

Sure, everybody remember Chastain nailing her shot to give the U.S. a 5-4 win on penalty kicks. But in the excitement of victory, the wailing about the emergence of a new era in women's sports, and the mindless praising of the authors of Title IX, one thing went missing.

In the third round of kicks, China's Liu Ying's shot was stopped by U.S. goalkeeper Brianna Scurry. But when you looked at the replay, it was clear that Scurry had left the goal line before Ying had struck her shot -- a clear Soccer no-no that should have resulted in the Chinese being awarded a goal.

Not that anyone wanted to bother pointing this out in the game's aftermath. After all, there was an agenda to fulfill that was bigger than the game, and a little thing like the facts couldn't be allowed to get in the way.

To paraphrase the great bard, the game's the thing. And when anything else gets in the way, I get predictably cranky.

So there you have it, the heart and soul of why I treat a portion of the blogosphere with such disdain. And, as for Andrew Sullivan, one of the public intellectuals leading the anti-soccer charge, I have only this to say: if you'd like to deal with sports again, I make this suggestion. Why not an analysis of the Indo-Pakistani conflict throught the prism of their long-standing rivalry in Cricket?

Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath.

Eric 04:58 PM

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