Well Shut my Mouth

England won the Ashes test against Australia for the first time in 18 years, shame I wasn't there to join in (although I'm wearing my England football shirt for my own l'il celebration). When is the next Cricket World Cup?

At Scott Tworek's Still Bar performance last night, Jill was the first American I've heard actually want more football (or soccer for the uninitiated), going against the suprising amount of vitriol/apathy I've heard from most Americans. Football has very little in the way of stats, is a national game (ie you have a national team that plays others in international tounaments) and the scores are low per game (compared to basketball, American football and baseball), so I never figured it'd be that huge over here. Combine with this the cultural aspect (football/soccer has always been seen as a "yuppie" sport in the States, it seems) vs the more traditional aspects of baseball et al.

I got a book a little while ago about Football and globalization (an interesting mix; Farid seemed to like it) and the final chapter is about football and American culture, with part of it devoted to various people who just don't like football and want to tell everyone that fact. One guy said that if other countries could afford baseball, basketball and American football leagues maybe they'd like those sports just as much as football, which is pretty stupid. NFL Europe blows, and while there are basketball leagues they're just not on the same plane of popularity as golf, let alone football (there must be leagues outside of America as the US got their asses handed to them by several at the Olympics last year). As for Baseball? Forget about it. It's practically inpenetrable with all the stats, and outside of Central and Latin America no attempt is made to market it.

Personally I like baseball and American Football a lot (haven't seen any hockey and I don't really care too much about basketball), but only because I had people to walk me through the game and explain what the hell was going on. Now it's fun. Go Colts!