The Vickback, Toilet Literature and Just Footy

For late July, there is a tremendous amount of sports related buzz being funneled through our collective consciousness: Mike Vick and his humanitarian work, Barry Bonds and his daily struggles to keep his monstrous noggin afloat above his broad, pimply shoulders and, of course, the Beckham's driving on the right side of the road and into our hearts. I'm going to touch on these subjects for a spell:

It seems like only yesterday my boy Benny and I were in college, watching Mike Vick torch outside linebackers to the corners while lofting rangy depth charges into the Blacksburg night. I respected the game but I hated the uniform, it was a painfully undeniable fact that this kid had something. Flash forward to our 4th year and he's been drafted first overall, made the cover of Madden, broken his leg and is now back and rallying the listless Falcons offense in a meaningless late season game on Sunday Night Football. Mike Patrick, Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire are so effusive with their praise that Ben and I joke (halfway seriously) that one of them will motion to rename the position of "quarterback" to "vickback". Now? His passing arm (while strong) is merely adequate controlwise which really makes him one-dimensional, he hasn't strung together back-to-back playoff wins and his legacy just may result in an endless string of impossibly lame jokes on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno anytime a news story pertaining to dogs hits the wire. Clinton Portis kinda sums up Vick's career nicely, "...a lot of back roads got dog fights if you want to go see it. If it's behind closed doors, it's okay." Wait...WHAT?!?!

I don't care about Barry Bonds anymore. I just read Game of Shadows. Great book. It sat by my pooper for two months and I'd read a couple of pages everytime I pooped. I read about Barry Bonds and the degree to which he was/is/always will be an asshole while I sat on the john for about sixty days. Could I have taken it and placed in on the bedside table? Sure, but really, it belonged by the shitbox. A few pages here, a few pages there, usually on glorious Saturday mornings I could get through a chapter or two. I'd highly recommend the book, by the way, a genuine page turner. Maybe I would grab a couple quick sentences while taking a drunken number one while standing up... but I would usually have to go back and reread those anyway... what with the wobbling and whatnot... what was I talking about? (The best part is, I passed the book onto my Dad when I was done. Wow. I hope he doesn't read this.)

I love the feature articles in most every sports publication here in "the States" that pose the question "Can David Beckham save soccer in America?". That question is faulty on so many levels that it astounds me. First off, David Beckham is an aging superstar who has more impact with the marketability of the Galaxy than skill to help propel them to a championship (They trail first place Houston by 20 points). Secondly, soccer doesn't need "saving" as far as any typical USA sports enthusiast can tell you. I think this idea arises from the flawed supposition that this country's teeming population of sports loving pseudo-sophisticates are secretly preparing for the day that they will flip their Footy Loving Switch to ON because of a comparable Magic Johnson/Larry Bird/Michael Jordan moment happening on the pitch of an MLS game. People will agree, they'll say, "Aye, and Pele almost worked! Remember that!" And in literal taking... Yes, that is technically true... but, once again literally speaking... Communism almost worked too. There are reasons we attach the word almost to phrases. And yes, I understand that I am being somewhat flippant, but there's a reason.

Soccer lives and breathes as this globe does. It pulses on every inhabitable surface of this planet and has endured for as long as any other organized sport in mankind. Truth be told, there is a pocket of the United States that celebrates this game and plays it and watches it and loves it. They are a minority, but they exist. What the U.S. misguidedly aims for are the "casual fans" to jump aboard and support a game that didn't formulate on American soil. To see the best, means you must cast your eyes across the Atlantic. To watch the World Cup, means you must root for an underdog. It's a little much to ask when we generally gravitate to sports we feel superior with, those which we dominate other countries at (as far as professional leagues go - NBA, MLB, PGA (sorta - Tiger), NASCAR, etc). We even took the name football, changed around the rules of rugby, practiced this new game, perfected it and now the NFL makes 4 billion annually and Friday Night Lights is the best show on TV that nobody is talking about. That's what we're all about... Beautifully... Fucking... Illustrated...

By the way, I happen to like soccer/football. FIFA on the PS2 was a revelation for me. Ditto the Premier League. But it's just not meant to be an American passion, it just doesn't mesh here. And that's OK.

I think, the game of soccer will not be relevant in the good ole U.S.A. until a scrappy kid from Winthrop, Massachusetts who doesn't know any better leads a untested but talented squad of equally scrappy 20-somethings past a heavily favored Brazil team in ominously colored uniforms during the 2022 World Cup in Los Angeles which can be later parlayed into a Disney movie and a scorching American love affair with the game known as "just footy".

Oh wait, that sounds a lot like Mike Eruzione. He still seems like a pretty cool guy.

But, the NHL still sucks.

...

Just forget I said anything.