20thStDad

But some banks have free cookies in the lobby. FREE COOKIES!!! I've never seen a parking lot do that.

I agree, it's giving up easy, early goals and not putting an attack worth a crap until at least half an hour has passed. I would argue that we got robbed by the refs, but we got gifted a draw in the last game so karma comes back around.

France is so close to being OUT! haha. I think we kind of have to win tomorrow. If we don't, Slovenia will have 6 points, and we can only get 4. England is going to win a game, so they will likely beat us out for 2nd. So let's not leave anything to chance and just go up 4-0 in the first 12 minutes. WTH on Spain? Totally laid an egg. They can still win out but dang, not a great way to start a march toward a cup trophy.

Just curious, how big was that man-tool looking slug thing? Eewww.

There are certainly things about soccer tactics I don't know, and probably a few rules I've never heard. But is the playbook as thick as a textbook? Is there a playbook? Are there literally hundreds of rules they have to know and possibly use at any time (baseball)? Statistics are not the direct purpose or output of a game, but they hint at how many things are being tracked/measured and give a decent indication of game complexity. Cricket has ridiculous stats, baseball even more, American football a ton. I've seen about 10 for soccer. Besides individual playing time, what is there besides the ones they show on the gamecast (shots, on goal, penalties, off sides, yellow/red cards, and corners)? However, the good thing that comes from how soccer is designed is that the goal means so much. I have enjoyed a good drunken goal celebration overseas, and it's far better than and touchdown high fives you see here (unless maybe your team is in the BCS championship game or super bowl).

Before you (or I) get yelled at more, by easy I mean from a complexity standpoint, not physical. The players are in damn good shape, and spend a good amount of time running (though not close to 100% of the time as RedScare would have you believe). All of the games are done by 3:30 p.m., what awesome job situation is allowing you to hit the bar to watch? I'm stuck at work with the game-cast, which is good enough. I would stream the video from espn3.com, but IT rulemonkeys do not allow such fun things.

I remember that too, he scored an own goal to lose the match. But here it seems it wasn't fans, but some drug lords who gambled and lost on the game. It's wikipedia, take it for what it's worth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_Escobar

That's funny, and they should give him crap for it. But I still think if they progress another couple rounds it will be largely forgotten since it won't have any bearing on their final position.

As long as England make it out of this round, which they should, I don't think they'll kill him for it. If he loses them a game in the next rounds, well he might not be let back in the country.

I'm feeling that too. I mean it was big 4 years ago, but doesn't seem the same. Maybe it's all the new mobile technology, maybe it's because people expect us to do well. Also, it's been 4 more years for all those kids who play soccer to get older and into it. So many kids play now, it's the new default sport. Probably because it's so easy to understand and all you need is 1 ball and a field. And because today's retard parents ("everybody is a winner!!!") get what they want from all the ties. I hate ties. But as rare as scoring is, you have to deal with them. Unless they shrink the field or start playing with two balls, it's going to end in a draw half the time. I also noticed the british anthem tune, that was odd. For some reason I thought I heard God Save the Queen before and don't remember it sounding that way. Maybe I was wasted.

There's no way their goalie should have let that in..but GOOD FOR USA!!! HA. That guy sucks. Our goalies are pretty damn good, all 3 play in the english premier league normally. I still think England is getting behind us too easily. We've had to make awesome stops or have them just miss.

We can come back from 1 goal down, but we almost just gave up #2. Seems easier for them to get free behind us, our defense is not as good as our attack. I think the announcers just said we scored more goals than any team during qualifying. That's promising. Edit: the vuvuzelas are now officially annoying

Ouch. I guess maybe this isn't our year, they made that look easy.

All that does is help to prove my point. 20 times as much happens in 11 minutes of American football than does in 90+ minutes of soccer. Thanks for the help!

The only action in soccer are shots on goal, and each match maybe has 15 of those. Passes and clears, pointless. Nothing happening most of the time. Like I said, I like soccer. But it's checkers, not chess. Don't make it out to be something magical that it isn't.

You didn't make any decent points there. I never said soccer games were too long, I said nothing happens. It's equally slow paced as baseball, but with baseball every pitch and play is a documentable occurrence. Hockey is 10 times as fast and way more exciting to watch. American football has action on every play. Soccer has action maybe 10 times per game, most misses or even don't end in shots. You really lost all credibility when you tried to say baseball was simpler. Baseball has more rules and odd situations than any other sport. I like watching soccer. It might be on par with baseball and cricket for casually watching while drinking. You can get by not really paying attention most of the time. But don't even attempt to say soccer isn't simple or lower on "things actually happening" than other sports.

In a new conference maybe they won't end up 1-7 in conference play every year.

When the grand parkway is done, can I take it to get to south africa to watch soccer games? Seems like it's about that far away so I think so.

Nah, it really is checkers vs chess. There just isn't much to soccer. So when a goal gets scored every other game, it's a huge deal. Starts off with 2 draws, that'll get american viewers interested.

It's definitely an inferior sport to the major ones here, due to its simplicity and lack of anything happening most of the time. But, I like to get into international competitions, so I'm going to be tuned in, especially while the US is still in it. Otherwise, I will pull for annoying countries to lose, such as England (I work with brits most of the time) and Mexico (if they get too far, this city will go just a little bit nuts). And of course, pulling against France because it's so easy.

How many pounds of scrap does it take to get $2? I would think lots.

Are we talking about 2 different places here - C&D the scrap metal place on 25th/Durham is what I think ricco means. C and D Hardware is on 11th. If these are run by the same people, I did not know that.

No it's because I went to LSU, and because we had a bad year by our standards and need more talent.

I wonder how they will approach scheduling once all of this settles out. The PAC 10 plays a round robin, everyone meets at some point. Can't do that any more. Big 11 rotate match-ups, but I think some rivalry ones are every year. They could basically keep this up, but you could see a great variance in schedule strength even within the conference. SEC plays everyone in division, 1 standing rival from other division, and 2 rotating from other division. I like playing everyone in the SEC west every year, it gives more of a legitimacy to being the SEC west champ. Not playing everyone just opens the door to all of the idiotic tie-break scenarios that the big 12 has screwed up recently. Does super-conferencing bring us closer to a playoff? I think it does. At the very least it will shake up some of the bowl tie-ins.

I know people say Texas is the big prize here, and they are to an extent, but the numbers are misleading. Texas was far and above any other school in terms of athletic revenue in recent years, but one of the main reasons for this is the Big 12's poor model of sharing earnings among all schools. The Big 10 and SEC distribute the wealth to a much greater extent, and have benefited from it. This is why you don't see a Florida or Ohio St with higher $$ than Texas. So in the end, Texas is likely to lose some $$ since a greater portion will be shared with whatever new conference they end up in. On expansion, the SEC has little motivation to go beyond 12 right now, even if the Big 10 and PAC 10 expand. There are some logical regional choices like Clemson, Miami, and FSU, but those moves don't really do anything to make the SEC better. It's the same market they already own.