Why Soccer Sucks

12/17/22

With all due respect (a sure sign you’re about to be disrespected) to our international readers specifically and soccer fans in general across the globe: Your sport is bass-acward stupid as shit. Respectfully.

I know, I know: The World Cup final is Sunday and packed with personal drama, national pride and fans that make Packer diehards look like they’re holding a jolly royal tea.

Your sport still blows. Lemme count the ways:

  • Four-year wait. What’s up with one event every four years? The World Cup, the Olympics, The UEFA European (futbol) Championship, Rugby World Cup, all have a 1,400-day wait list for athletic revenge, redemption, repetition, etc. That may have been practical when gathering the world’s top competitors was a Herculean feat. Those days passed with him.
  • http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team/kent-kunze Deaths. Soccer has to be the deadliest sport known to humankind. You’ve got Qatar’s legion of construction dead, the soccer matches that inevitably end in riot or stampede, doping — and that doesn’t calculate the concussive injuries to players who would no more consider a helmet than a pocket protector.
  • 1-nil games. Defensive masterpieces are great. We love no-hitters. But defense is dull when it’s off a diamond. How many Super Bowls would you watch if the score were routinely 7-0, or 14-7?
  • NO HANDS! This is the sports most egregious foul on humanity. What dumbass came up with this brilliance? ‘Yeah, tossing this ball around is fun, but what if you couldn’t use the most delicately articulated instrument in the universe? You know, the thing that literally separates us from every species on Earth? I’m also tinkering with backward 50-yard dashes and piano concerts played only with big toes.’

And the tears and the flopping! Jesus, I babysat a kid who did less griping, and he was an asshole. At least he had the excuse of being six. What’s yours?

Even your clocks don’t work. Vague extra time! A game ends when a referee lets you know the match is over! Fuck that: Shot clocks define nerve.

This sounds too harsh. My apologies. I guess I’m just jonesing for the Tigers or Celtics or Red Wings.

You know, teams in real sports.

Good luck to your bunions!

Take Me Out to The Corn Chip

Some historians consider Cracker Jack America’s first junk food.

Cracker Jack’s early marketing warned prospective customers about the effects of the product. “Do not taste it,” one 1896 article cautioned. “If you do, you will part with your money easy.” Some historians believe that the caramel-coated popcorn and peanut treat jump-started the American snack food industry around the turn of the 20th century. It may even hold the title of the country’s first junk food, though the types of junk food popular today didn’t make their appearances until the 1950s. It all started with Chicago candy and popcorn peddlers Frederick and Louis Rueckheim, German immigrants who crafted a nonsticky caramelized popcorn as a way to stand out from other popcorn vendors. Their version — with a sweet, crunchy coating that was different from the salted popcorn and kettle corn available at the time — became a hit after it was mass-produced in 1896.

It was a song, however, that helped cement Cracker Jack’s snack status. In 1908, songwriter Jack Norworth — entirely unknown to the Rueckheims — composed “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” after seeing an advertisement for an upcoming game. The song, which mentions the snack by name, led to a surge in sales that forever linked Cracker Jack with sports. Four years later, the Rueckheims sweetened their popcorn business with a marketing gimmick that would eventually be replicated by cereal brands, fast-food restaurants, and candymakers for decades to come: a toy in every box. By 1916, Cracker Jack was the bestselling snack worldwide.