I caught a segment of Blue Collar TV the other night where the lead guys were declaring silly beliefs. Jeff Foxworthy, for instance, professed, "I believe that you can not study for a rectal exam." Ron White's drawling smoking drinking West Texan persona, so far from my own, nonetheless provides a consistently amusing performance. We showed our differences, though, when he proclaimed, "I believe a bad halftime show at a football game is still better than a soccer game."
I'm not so discriminating. I just like to watch football. I like real football with the amazing displays of skill, speed, and stamina and I like American football with the amazing exhibits of breeding, chemicals, and violence. I'll even put up with the weaker variations. The NFL ended it's season at the beginning of February, but the Arena Football League has been showing up on NBC in the weeks since then. Today I even caught some NFL Europe on Fox.
I've been tuning in to Azteca America and Univision and Telemundo to catch le Liga Mexicana and regional qualifying games for the 2006 World cup. The language barrier means that I miss some subtleties. Like the semifinal game yesterday between the Monarcas and the UAG Tecos ended in a 1-1 tie. The Monarcas were the home team, but the Tecos advanced to the finals. In American sports we tend to give the home field advantage to the higher seeded team. I don't know what the conditions were that gave Tecos the advantage and I wondered until the end why they weren't more aggressive in the second half of the match.
When I was at my mother-in-law's satellite subscribed home I found two or three separate channels dedicated to the world's favorite sport. Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV are two of the names I remember. I got to watch lots of matches from lots of leagues, including the English Premiere League, Ligue 1 (France), and La Liga in Spain. Plus highlights of Asian regional World Cup qualifying matches. I even sat through bits of an MLS match or two. It was handy to have an injury as an excuse to lay on the sofa and hog the TV.
Since I don't keep up with news almost at all, I wasn't aware of our exiting mayor's push to bring an MLS team to our town. Apparently he was attacked a lot for trying to do this. I'm sorry to hear that. But from the big laugh Ron White got, I can see that getting support for world class football will be a long uphill battle.
Posted to Family and Home at May 22, 2005 2:16 PM