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I’m So Gay I Don’t Even Care about Football
According to Blue Yeti, if I post a piece under a headline like that I’ll get lots of traffic.
But it’s true. Football — or soccer, as you will insist on calling it — is a yob’s game. I feel no more shamed or embarrassed by England’s premature exit from the World Cup than I would had we, say, been knocked out of the world tiddlywinks championship or, let’s pick an even sillier game, the Super Bowl.
That doesn’t mean, though, that I haven’t been enjoying the World Cup enormously — as I explain here in more detail over at Breitbart London.
Check out, especially, number 5: I just love that swastika reefer Pope guy.
You Americans seem to be doing jolly well, though, considering it’s not your sport. And that pleases me greatly too. If you get through to the next round — or even win it, that would be the best thing ever. We love to support the underdog here in England. And you in the U.S. like sporting victory. So that would be a win-win situation for both of us, wouldn’t it?
Published in General
This is a good world cup, no doubt. But there’s something missing…can’t quite put my finger on it.
Oh, right. This.
Is a yob a wuss or something worse? British venacular seems to have more creative terms of derision than our sanitized American speech. I suspect the swatika reefer Pope guy got more press coverage across the pond than he got here.
Eat it Germany! *checks odds of defeating or drawing Germany*
Well there’s no need for any of you guys to try and be heroes Germany. Let’s just have a nice friendly game.
Well, the title did pique My interest, but then I saw the picture and decided not to read the post or comment.
Looks like it’s working.
And here I thought all the worst actors were on CSPAN.
He is not a “swastika reefer Pope guy.” He is the Nazi Pope of Marijuana. A little respect, please.
The low spark of high heeled boys.
Piers Morgan announced on Twitter that he wouldn’t be able to come back to the States if we advanced further than England.
USA! USA! USA!
FWIW, I find watching any sport boring. Sports are something you play, not something you watch. I decided to boycott all professional sports when I was around 14 years old, and I did not watch a single professional sporting event on TV from that point until I was in Guantanamo Bay one year for the Super Bowl and literally had nothing else to do.
I’ve never understood the fascination with local sports franchises. Hooray, a small group of multimillionaires who live in huge mansions in very exclusive neighborhoods made millions yesterday by playing a game. Exactly how does that relate to my life in any way? And if they lost, they still made millions. Who cares.
And don’t get me started on college sports. I have no shared cultural experience with those guys. Most of the guys you see on the field / floor are just throwing away a half-a-million dollar education on worthless degrees in hopes they get to the show. When I see the quarterback at the library at 2 AM cramming for his physics final, then I MIGHT feel some connection, otherwise, they are just “celebrities” that live in my town.
The stakes are higher then ever.
I only enjoy watching (American) football, and then mostly SEC football. But I won’t devote every weekend, let alone every afternoon for months, to watching as many games as I can. For me, it’s a casual enjoyment.
Unfortunately, that’s counter-cultural in the South. A man can’t call himself a fan of a team without keeping up to date with all the players, the games, and the histories. Women can, but men can’t. A man is either a raving fanatic or a hopeless nerd. There’s no middle ground.
I’m a hopeless nerd, but I pretend to care because I don’t want my two sons to be the social paraiah I am. It’s probably too late, but I’m doing my best.
We do “jolly well” at any sport we choose to undertake; that’s our raison d’être, dontcha know?
Counter-cultural? Boy, that’s near blasphemy in the South. It’s sort of like when my cousin declared for Alabama in a game because he thought Auburn fans were obnoxious. (Great-granddaddy was heard spinning in his grave.) They call the South the Bible Belt, but we all know the true religion is college football.
Aaron; in my family, women are held to equally high standards and being from the Midwest, Arahant should know this as well as I do.
I was merely commenting on his apostasy, not being specific about every odd view he holds.
On second thoughts, let us not go to the World Cup. It is a silly place.
A little back story here: James and I were texting back and forth on Skype this morning. I asked him why wasn’t recording a podcast this week and pointed out that he should have plenty of time now that there was no longer any reason for him to watch the World Cup. That led to this post.
I live in Columbus Ohio, and am well acquainted with Buckeye madness. I am the son of an ardent OSU fan, but am a sports illiterate. Am thankful I ditched TV years ago so I don’t have to hear a darn thing about any sport.
Delingpole is envious little troll, who has had an easy life because of rich parents backing him up. Not a real journalist. Its nice see same people weep when you tell them that Top Gear is crap.
“Football — or soccer, as you will insist on calling it”
You do realize that the word “soccer” is a British invention right?
Sorry to break this to you, James, but England has already been knocked out of the Super Bowl this year.
My wife was recently in a focus group looking at insurance commercials featuring some quarterback. Jaws, pencils, and coffee cups dropped when she said she had no opinion, that neither her father, her husband, nor her son paid any attention to professional sports. She could have added her father-in-law.
It was my aunts that almost made me a sports fan. They met some of the Catholic Washington Senators during spring training, and the guys would visit when they were in town. It was little boy heaven to visit my grandmother’s and meet Ed Yost, Jim Lemon, and their Red Sox buddy Jim Piersall, who gloated “Royalties!” when I asked them to sign my Wilson Jim Piersall model glove.
But my real hero was Senator slugger Roy Sievers (LF/1B). After Cal Griffith sold him in 1960 and the next year moved the franchise to Minnesota, I never again put my faith in men (perhaps contributing to my immunity to the Kennedy charisma).
Sports activity? You bet, from pick-up touch football at family picnics to national circuit fencing. But for the fate of teams of strangers I have never cared a coyote’s jockstrap.
Gasp!!
In this case, calling that game Football will get more outrage than throwing “gay” in the title.
If English fans like backing an underdog, they should consider supporting England.
But seriously, England’s players aren’t half bad. It’s just that, as a nation, they suffer from a collective self-hatred that leads them to feel a bizarre historical obligation to fail — and it shows on the field. It’s the exact opposite of America’s approach to everything, which has traditionally been: “We’re not really sure how to play this game, but we know we’re better at it than you, because we’re American. Even if you beat us today, it’s only a matter of time.”
But they gave us the common law, Magna Carta, and Nigel Farage, so I can’t complain.
What’s funny is that England used to have that exact same attitude when the sun never set on the British Empire.
I typically view England as typifying exactly where we will be in 40-50 years and I see all kinds of signs that America no longer wants to win. I view the ruckus over the redskin mascot as another brick in that wall.