After all of the people I heard bitching and complaining and moaning about how boring the World Cup was and how no one in America was watching perhaps the greatest greatest sporting event in the history of mankind, why is it that I'm not hearing these kind of comments from the same people about the Good Will Games?
Now, I know those people are out there, and I know they have heard of it, but the difference is that they, along with the most die-hard sports fans, really aren't watching this thing.
Ted Turner's half Olympic-style sporting event half Baby Boomeresque love-in is so boring and non-eventful, I don't even have the energy to yawn at it.
Can you imagine the ego of a man from the deep south who wakes up and decides one day "You know, I'm such a rich and powerful man, I think it's time for me to compete with the Olympics."
Now, I'm only speaking for myself, but I have never watched one single minute of any of the past nor present Good Will Games. I can't even tell you what edition this is of his global sports mini-series.
What I am, is a frustrated, pissed off soccer fan. How can soccer continue to get such criticism by the Bubba's of this country but not make a peep about the Good Will Games?
Maybe it's because the Good Will Games aren't a threat to anyone!
It seems that those people I know who have a great disdain for soccer are huge fans of America's traditional sports-football, baseball and some basketball. These same people see the rise in popularity in soccer as trespassing on the athletic landscape.
I know many grown men with kids who play soccer, but most of them have told me once the kid gets junior high age, it's bye-bye futbol hello football.
Soccer is unfamiliar, foreign. A pinko-commie sport where grown men named Henrik and Gipetto run around in striped socks and silky looking shorts. The Good Will Games, on the other hand, threaten no one. I doubt the International Olympic Committee is sitting around worried that Turner's competition is infringing on their turf. It doesn't even look to me like a training ground for Olympians.
That's precisely why no one makes fun of it. It's so pathetic! And I know all my friends named Bubba know what that feels like.
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