Points of Interest

We are now fully entrenched into World Cup 2010 and judging by the number of people who've asked me questions about it and soccer in general since it kicked off Friday, I figured I'd take the opportunity to point out a few things of interest. I won't go complete soccer 101 but most questions center around these:

The World Cup format does a round robin group play initially. Each group consists of 4 teams and everybody within the group plays each other once. 3 pts. for a win, 1 for a draw (tie), 0 for a loss. Top 2 from each group move to a single elimination tournament. By all accounts the US should advance out of group play to the elimination tourney. Winning the whole thing, well not so much.

Offsides is when an offensive player is behind the last defensive player (not counting the goalie) before the ball is passed towards him.

There are no timeouts (45 minute running clock for 2 halves) and if you get subbed out you can't get subbed back in...which is why you see players rolling around on the ground like they got shot.

The cards...yellow card is a warning (similar to a technical in basketball except you don't get a free kick) and a red card (2 yellows also equal one red). If a player receives a red card, his team must play a man down for the remainder of the match, he's suspended for the next game, and he's responsible for doing the team's laundry that night (or maybe just the first 2).

Do not adjust your television sound. That constant noise that sounds like a swarm of bumblebees descending upon you is the un-ignorable (80% certain I made that word up) sound of fans blowing on there Vuvuzelas (not a double entendre). I'm no fan of it but when in Rome....(or Africa)


Vince Young found himself on the offensive end of a scuffle in a strip club in Dallas over the weekend. My issue with this is that a starting qb (most of the time), for an NFL team, who gets heckled constantly on the road.....could not refrain from fighting when someone insulted his alma mater of the University of Texas by flashing the hook'em horns symbol downward??? Do better VY...do better.

This video could be entitled one second changes everything. It (hopefully) bids farewell to Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell, one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time who's at the end of a storied career. To quote Tony Reali..."He got knocked the career out"


By the time you read this, the Celtics may have repeated history from 2008 in winning a championship against the Lakers in game 6, only this time on the road. I like their chances infinitely better at winning game 6 in LA than I do them winning game 7 in LA. My biggest concern at the moment though is why nothing more was made of Big Baby referring to himself and Nate Robinson as Shrek and Donkey.