Watching Paint Dry

Compared to the World Cup, this is riveting.

With so much interesting going on in the world (oil spills, college football realignment, political corruption, Laker fan riots, etc.), you would think I would want to run my mouth about it all. Instead, I'll just pick the most boring topic of them all: World Cup.

Full disclosure: I don't particularly care for soccer, so the World Cup had an uphill battle to sell me on this event. As much as they were hoping for my support, I'm sure FIFA is re-tooling their entire marketing campaign for 2014 in an effort to win me over.

I was once indifferent to the sport, but a strong dislike for it grew deep within me the more I was told that I should like it because the rest of the world does. I don't take kindly to this argument as I inevitably turn the debate into a political one whether my opponent ever intended it to go that route or not. "What? Should we just forgo capitalism and indoor plumbing because the rest of the world just loves the alternatives?"

I began to let go of some of my negativity as my nieces and nephew began to play. I recently gained some respect for the high school version of the game (where people actually score) through my own involvement with it at work.

As ESPN became the World Cup Propaganda Network, I decided I could try one more time to like the FIFA version of communist kickball. There was supposedly this monumental game between the U.S. and England that was going to be so crucial...so mega-huge...so vitally important to everything America doesn't care about, that nearly everyone I knew was going to watch. I might as well watch and try to like it, right?

"Dude! World Cup's on! You're missing it!"

If you didn't watch the game and think you would fall asleep reading a description of a soccer game (I actually dozed off writing the description below...seriously), I'll try to sum it up in terms red-blooded Americans (particularly Georgia fans) can hopefully stay awake through. If I remotely cared about the World Cup or soccer, this is what that game might have felt like:

Imagine Florida jumping out to an early 2-0 lead in The Game Formerly Known As The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Imagine nobody scoring or coming close to scoring for almost the entire game. Imagine no one even hitting each other for an hour or two (because UGA President Michael Adams has decided the game is too violent and insisted that it be changed to flag football).

Imagine a Flag Football Cocktail Party where the ball stays between the 40-yard lines for 95% of the game. Every time someone sniffs the red zone, they miss a field goal. And every time a team misses a field goal, the opposing team's fans go bananas like it's the most amazing thing they've seen since Barack Obama. Now, imagine that the Dawgs' only score occurs because Tim Tebow tripped and fell down in his own endzone, tying the game at 2.

And, finally, imagine that time expires and everyone just shakes hands and goes home talking about what a great game it was (because Michael Adams has decreed that overtime is too much fun and declaring a victor might hurt some feelings). That's pretty much what happened in the U.S.-England game and everyone but me seemed to be okay with it.

This doesn't look so bad.

Because I don't care in the slightest about the World Cup or soccer, this is how it actually went:

Surprisingly for anyone that knows me, I was late to meet my friends and missed one of the two "exciting" moments of the game. England accomplished the rarest of all feats in soccer: scoring. England was up 1-0 for what seemed like an eternity. For all I know, it was probably only 5 or 10 minutes. I honestly had no concept of time for the next hour or two and spent much of it staring at my phone hoping someone would call or text me about anything other than soccer. Maybe an email coupon from Borders? A forward from Bill Gates? Some spam? Anything...

I occasionally looked up and watched in awe as the people around me were entranced by what I can only compare to a super slow-motion game of ping pong in which no one ever scores. Every now and then, someone almost scores. The crowd perks up for a second, claps, and even cheers as if someone just scored. But the thing is...no one scored. No one ever scores. Ever. Anyway, the audience is quickly lulled back to sleep with another 40 minutes of people kicking the ball back and forth nowhere near the goal. Somewhere in there, the English goalie fell down, the U.S. scored almost by accident (again in slow motion), and the game was tied.

"I think someone is about to score...nope. False alarm."

I'll admit that for that brief moment, it wasn't terrible. I think I might have clapped or smiled. Go U.S.A. Sadly, before the crowd quit cheering, I was already wishing there was some paint drying nearby. Now, that would have been action-packed! There was some hope in me that I'd witness the soccer equivalent of a no-hitter (the rarity of two goals scored by the same team!), but as time wound up (as opposed to down like every other sport on the planet), it became clear that I would not be so lucky. At least there's overtime or penalty kicks or something, right? Wrong.

Time expired AND...game over. Supposedly the biggest game in American soccer history...the match plugged endlessly by ESPN for weeks...this earth-shaking matchup that the entire country had to drop what it was doing to watch...ended in a 1-1 tie. Wait...what? Just as I let myself get remotely interested because it supposedly meant so much, it didn't mean enough to determine a winner. Seriously?

Only three more weeks of World Cup! Savor every precious second!

I'm not sure how to express my thoughts and feelings at that moment. I didn't care enough to be outraged. After all, it's only soccer. It was more along the lines of sheepishness. I felt like I should have seen this one coming a mile away. I felt duped by the handful of soccer junkies I know, ESPN, and the sports world as a whole.

I was bracing for the punchline from Chris Fowler. I could already see him looking directly into the camera and through tears of laughter taunting me: "Ha ha, sucker! Ha ha ha ha ha! Mike Sprayberry, that's what you get for making fun of Stuart Scott! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hee hee ho ho ha ha ah! HA HA ha ha ha ha ha...Whew! Wait...wait...hee hee ha ha...hold on a sec...let me catch my breath...whew. Okay, I'm good.....ha ha...no, okay...seriously...I'm done...So, in the early matches--Buh buh buh buh buh buh POW-er!...AAAAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! (etc.)"

The inexplicable bad call the other day didn't do my love for soccer any favors, but I can't say I was surprised. At this point, I fully expect the World Cup to end in a 31-team tie (with the U.S. team disqualified for scoring too many goals, of course).

Stuart Scott Raises the Bar

Stuart Scott counting his fans out loud.

There were few things on television that I liked less than Stuart Scott. Often inserting the dumbest parts of popular culture into sports highlights, running 20-year old slang into the ground, and trying way too hard to be funny, SportsCenter's version of Jar Jar Binks has almost single-handedly killed my love of sports.

For several years now, I have managed to avoid Scott almost completely. Rarely watching SportsCenter or ESPN in my own home at all, Scott's fingernails have only managed to find my chalkboard when I've been too polite to wrestle the remote out of my host's hand, forge it into a shiv, and stab his HDTV to death with it.

George Lucas' version of Stuart Scott almost single-handedly killed the Star Wars franchise.

Enter Old Spice Odor Blocker commercials. Thankfully, the miracle that is DVR spares me almost all commercial interruptions. For some reason, I have become careless with my own remote control management lately and exposed myself to the one thing more annoying than Stuart Scott: "Block, block! Block, block! Buh buh buh buh buh buh POW-er!"

As if the commercials themselves weren't dumb enough (blocking odor and destroying buildings with martial arts), this freak of a human specimen has to shout and sing the most mindless jingle in the history of advertising...all in nothing but his underpants. More importantly, if his (or anybody else's) body odor is bad enough to require a product that strong, medical attention is long overdue.

Old Spice guy appears to be watching Stuart Scott narrate sports highlights.

Anyway, from the moment I saw this commercial, it annoyed me. It was probably playing in the background as I skimmed War and Peace and I probably made a face and reached for the remote. Then, somehow, it crept into every commercial break I stumbled across for an entire evening. By the time I actually paid attention to it, I wanted to collect specimens of body odor, cultivate them in a top-secret lab, and create the ultimate weapon to secure that vile creature's demise.

Fast forward another hour or three. By some cruel cosmic coincidence, I found myself unable to turn away from SportsCenter after an enjoyable game of baseball. Glutton for punishment that I am, I even subjected myself to highlights of Game 2 of the NBA Finals, complete with (of course) Stuart Scott. I could have fast-forwarded, but my curiosity was twofold:

1. Watching Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals at the beach as a kid is a relatively fond childhood memory.

2. Stubbornly holding to my position that the NBA is the tanning salon reality show of professional sports, I asked myself if I'm missing something about the NBA.

I vow to you, loyal reader, I will not make this mistake again. In less than three minutes of highlights, Scott uttered the following:

"Kobe Bryant was strug-gl-ing." Not creative, but not too obnoxious. I can deal with this.

"Missed two shots, called for travelling, Kobe's like 'WHAT?!?' (high-pitched voice)" Kind of dumb, but still no silly catch phrase. Blood pressure still relatively normal.

"Holl-ah!" Uh oh. Here come the catch phrases. Kind of 1995, but at least I've heard this one.

"Boo-yow!" See above. Only rolling my eyes at this point.

"Rondo, get at me son!" What?

"This is what you call freakin' 'em with the okey-doh!" I kid you not. He said this. I really thought his next gem would be "Now that's what I call a double dose of rippity rappity slip-slap on a triple scoop of shlibbity shloppity shlooptee-doop!"

And, last but not least (in fact, this was one of the first ones, but it was by far the most infuriating)...In describing a successful three-point shot (and therefore NOT blocked), Scott chooses to shout and sing the following:

"Block, block, block! Buh buh buh buh buh buh POW-er!" Baffled that two paragons of irritation could be married so perfectly to form such an unholy union of nausea, I found myself paralyzed with fear and unable to speak for hours.

When I awoke from my coma just a few minutes ago, the doctors assured me that my CT scan was normal, but that I should probably lay off television (ESPN specifically) for a few days. I'll get you, Stuart Scott (and Old Spice commercial guy), if it's the last thing I do.