Skip Bayless on the Jim Rome Show... and I agree

i do wish though that american soccer fans make more intelligent and articulate defenses of our sport sometimes. we can't keep falling back on the old "you don't understand" anymore...

 

jackasses like Skip and Rome will never like footy because they're too busy proving that they're cool enough to talk about sports, even though they're total douches who've never dropped sweat on a field in their life. Honestly, think about how hard they try to prove they're macho in order to deflect any questions about what athletic prowess they've ever displayed. It's pathetic really.

What i will pay attention to is the (literally) dozen or so people in my office who had zero to little soccer knowledge who're stopping by my desk everyday for insight and analysis into the Greatest Tournament in the World. I gotta say, despite the US laying a stinker in two games, and despite the refs and the diving fiascos, these guys are following the games and DVR'g them. . . and. . .(brace yourself). . they are offering feedback and opinions on a sport they knew little about two months ago!

I love it. The games being recast at night and the power of DVR have allowed a larger portion of people to fall into the sport and track the tournament.

When 3 guys are in my office at 9 am to talk about Zidane and why would he dare retire, then i know that Rome and Bayless can put all the socks in their panties they want. . .they represent a type of person who only hate it because its the "cool" thing to do. . .well. . it WAS the cool thing to do.

 

Great points about baseball umpires and basketball ref's, very true.

I think you're way off on the physicality of Soccer though. I think Americans just don't realize how physical the game is. Soccer players are certainly hitting each other and the ground more than Baseball and Basketball players do.
I tend to think it can be argued that Soccer is just about as physical as Hockey and Lacrosse. (I played LAX, I didn't play Ice Hockey but was a big fan growing up)
Basketball was my 2nd sport. Soccer can be much more dangerous to the body than basketball. Think about it, merely touching another player in basketball is a foul. I was often the Center in Basketball, I understand bodying out underneath the basket and that does require strength but the physicality of Soccer is much much greater than Basketball.
Baseball is basically a non-contact sport.
Due to the increased exposure to Soccer from FSC and ESPN, most Americans are learning how great and physical (in a great way) the game is.

My response to people about the falling in Soccer after minor contact is
to use a Basketball example. When someone is driving to the hoop, you get your feet planted and when he makes contact with you, you emphasize the charge by falling with a bit of exageration. You see it all the time in pro games. Guys emphasize fouls in basketball all the time and are heralded for being good at drawing fouls. Remember, the court is much smaller than a Soccer field so less acting has to be done to assist the ref in seeing the foul.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the cheaters of the Soccer. I was disgusted with Portugal yesterday. To me the diving without any contact simply yells out
"I am not a good enough Soccer player, I need to cheat to accomplish what real players can do without cheating".
The over-emphasis after contact in Soccer, I can see why players do it.

 

When people moan to me about offside I always bring up the fact that American football has a version.

"That offside rule proves soccer is anti-American, you should just be able to go for it."

"Why can't the defensive end just up and crush the quaterback?"

They're usually left without an argument at that point.

 

Football is high scoring? Use your head for a minute.

Football is soccer scoring in dog years. A 21-14 NFL game is really a 3-2 soccer game. Don't let the 6 point touchdown's fool you.

And referees can't influence a game? There are 45 men in Seattle that would beg to differ with you. Did you watch last year's Super Bowl? Referees in the NFL screw up tons, and they have 8 of them on the field at one time.

Yes I agree the injuries and diving in soccer are too much. You will never see an NFL player give up on the play and fall to the ground. They go hard until the whistle blows and then plead their case.

One thing that makes the NFL more appealing is that your defense can make an absolutely HUGE play. In soccer besides a goalkeeper making a huge save, stopping the opposing team and the NFL equivilant of making the other team punt.

 

Acting, diving, rolling around.....they are all part of the game for some teams. Do I hate it? Yes. Can I live with it? Yep.

By the way, Skip Bayless knows NOTHING about sports. His college football analysis is shite and clearly slanted towards Texas teams. I hope he meets Ken Lay soon.

 

A needed change would be to have video replay for all PK calls in televised matches (which would cover just about every important match there is).

After a PK is called it always takes a minute or two to set up anyway so why not have a quick look at the replay before the kick is taken. Much better to kill the flow of the game for a couple minutes than to kill the game itself.

If the PK was awarded based upon what is seen to be an obvious flop in the replay then the ref should give at least a yellow card for the dive.

 

Exactly right. The junior high school students at my son's school razz him good-naturedly about playing a sissy sport. Then when he plays against them in basketball -- a man's sport by their reckoning, in fact probably the single coolest sport of all -- with soccer-style physicality, they freak out.

Part of it is marketing -- some Italian guy with an accent isn't going to be as cool as NBA rapper. But the diving, rolling, and crying doesn't help.

 

Um.... if he watched those two games... and his problems were with the refs deciding the game... did anyone ask him to point to an incident in those games where the ref decided it?

 

Mike Vick got touched by Dan Morgan once and when down out of bounds like he had been shot. This cost Carolina 15 yards, and a wildcard.

 

I must admit, I love the Jim Rome show. I also love soccer & it is my #1 sport.

When Jim Rome goes on his soccer bashing crusades, most of his arguments are legitimate. It is usually about hooliganism (all true), flopping (all true), and the US team's lack of success in meaningful matches (mostly true).

I don't agree with him on every thing, but these are the 3 issues that keep the casual fan away.

I have a friend in Mississippi, he's not a "soccer guy", but is open minded enough to have listened to me and watched some games in MLS and the World Cup. He said he "doesnt mind" soccer and has had the ESPN2 game on a few times.

2 weeks ago in Germany, there was a mild clash between English and German fans that resulted in some arrests. A few days before that, the same thing with some Polish fans.

My friend calls me and says: "I know you love soccer, but what is the deal with the riots and violence?"

Those were minor incidents but they completely soured his mild but growing interest in pro soccer.

Jim Rome, to his credit, has also given legitimate interviews to Alexi Lalas and Tony Meola in the past (years ago). They were good solid interviews.

How many other nationally syndicated radio hosts have done that?

Rome also acknowledged, that for the first time, the US team in the World Cup had a legitimate buzz going. Then blew it with there performance. He's right about that too.

James

 

Those clashes would have happened in any sport. The would have happened at an Opera. The english brought toy models of WWII fighter jets to wind up the germans, they vandelized a Church and were getting drunk. Those are all ingredients for a fight.

 

Pffft.

I don't give a rat's ass if guys like Skip Bayless "don't get it". Let him enjoy his 6-hour American League pitching duels.

With the number of kids playing soccer in the US, dinosaurs like Bayless, Rome, DeFord, et. will be replaced - and soon - in sports media by people who do understand the game.

 

it was never the cool thing to do, if you want to hate soccer, hate it for what it is, but not for silly reasons like offsides. I hate baseball and basketball, but it's not because I don't understand the sports, it's because I find them boring and un-interesting. Some people just feel the same way about Soccer, but if we had better offerings we might have a better chance of converting people. I've seen the best Baseball and Basketball have to offer, I'll never come around...but Soccer still has a chance with a lot of Americans.

As for Rome and Bayless, who cares...they are just another pair of people with a show you spout off inanities about Soccer because it's the world cup time. You think they would be doing this during a regular MLS season...?

 

1) Bayless is a talentless dork who does a show no one watches as co-host with an ugly lesbian. He wishes he could be "controversial" and get a decent gig like Jim Rome or Kornheiser and Wilbon but the bottom line is he's just not terrribly bright.

When DeFord bashes soccer it's because he's an arrogant curmudgeon who thinks his opinion should matter because he's The Great Frank DeFord.

When Bayless bashes soccer he does it because he's pandering to the simpletons, and he figures playing to the prejuduces of the terminally ignorant mouthbreathers will make him seem like "one of the guys" instead of a slightly limpwristed east coast snob.

It's just posing. Screw him.

2) I agree that FIFA should use modern technology, but not during a game. Rather, they should review each match for diving and unnecessary rolling around on the ground with two hands covering the face shrieking in agony.

Slow-motion replay is wonderful at making the cheating obvious. Automatic two-game suspension and hefty fine for anyone found guilty of clearly trying to make a mockery of the game.

Would go a long ways toward instantly solving the problem.

3) Soccer gives more power to it's officials than any other sport. It's the way it has to be. Not everyone is comfortable with that.

Add to that the fact that in all "American" sports, there's no leeway: a foul is a foul, holding is hlding, a clip is a clip and a ball is either fair or foul. You see it, you call it, you move on.

In soccer, the official has to decide not only whether it's a foul, but also whether blowing the whistle and awarding a DFK might help the offeder more than the offended, in which case even though we all AGREE that a foul occurred no whistle will blow.

And in soccer, not just the action but the CONTEXT has to be considered: a foul committed around the center circle can be blown, set and restarted in a few seconds, but the identical foul when a forward is about to go one-on-one with a keeper can draw a red card sendoff.

Soccer asks a lot of it's officials, no question, because it's a free-flowing game with some killer nuances. It's what makes it so cool. If you - or Skip Bayless - prefer a game with seven seconds of play followed by two minutes of standing around, more power to you.

 

I think Skip Bayless is actually pretty entertaining on his Cold Pizza segments. He's very opinionated, so if you don't agree with him he's going to sound like a boob. But the back-and-forth between him and Woody Paige is fun because they're both opinionated boobs. Paige is just funnier.

Not everybody likes everything. Bayless doesn't like soccer. That's his business. It doesn't particularly bother me.

 

Err, except in football you can decline the holding, clip, etc. I actually use that example to explain that in soccer the rule of (1) advantage and (2) why players have to go down (if you get fouled and maintain possession then no foul). In other words, if the team is not harmed by the clip, then they can decline the penalty and take the play; essentially the same with soccer except it's the ref's decision to "play on" instead of the player's. Call it the "no harm no foul" principle.

As far as diving goes, I've started to come around a little bit and can use it to help explain the international flavor of the game. I can explain that Americans, as well as Brits, Australians, Scandinavians, etc., generally look with disfavor on diving and whining (look at the terms we use), and we do it considerably less. We do, however, appreciate the physical aspects of the game.

As was explained by an Italian fan on another thread a while back, they don't look at as cheating, but merely part of the passion of the game. It's like complaining about all the violence ruining boxing. We might counter that we'd rather lose than play cheating like this, and they would argue that they would rather lose than play "ugly" (i.e., without flair), which is something we have a hard time getting our Yankee heads around -- isn't it pretty just to win?

You can try explaining it, saying it's the same in other sports, but you can also say "that's why the World Cup is great -- different countries have different values and views of the game." Just one idea.

 

I'll tell you what's killing the game: the so called "Fair Play" when a team immediately kicks the ball out of bounds for an injured player. The game comes to an abrupt halt, the inured player walks off the field, other team throws it back to the team or kicks it back....... Remember the old days when the trainers would come onto the field during play and the game kept moving!! I am sick and tired of this unspoken rule.

 

Isn't almost every basketball game 100-100 with one minute to go? And that last minute almost always involves mulitple fouls and near fouls.

 

what?

how exactly? It's just that the press here don't exactly cover up football violence, and there was no mention of that here.

 

that never happened. Players just stayed down (or eventually got up) until the ball went dead.

The rules were changed to make refs stop play for head injuries, and for some reason both refs and players seemed to extend it for pretty much any injury.

 

I heard someone got drunk and kicked a ball off a cathedral. Not a football, a ball that was part of the structure. It wasen't a group of people, just one fool.

Of course, a Scot told me this.

 

you know, this is one of those areas in which I'm so torn. On the one hand, I'd rather they just play through it and let the guy stay down until he's able to get back up. On the other hand, I've seen the results of more closed head injuries than I want to remember and think you've got to check on the player for their safety just in case it is a closed head injury. Maybe one FIFA official/trainer, like the 4th or 5th official, should be allowed to come on the field and check out the player to see if he is ok or not while play continues. As long as the player isn't in the middle of play or a dangerous position then what harm could come from it? There is lots of incentive for faking players to quit faking and get up and moving while if a truly injured player would result in a stoppage and removal from the field.

I also like the other previous posts which mentioned post-game video analysis for the purpose of finding and punishing divers and/or poor officiating although I think what we would find in the end is lots of "inconclusive" situations that would allow divers to get away with the practice for more often than not. Athough, on the positive side I think it could allow officials to be more restrained on giving out yellow cards during games in situations where giving a yellow isn't clear-cut since they know that they player will get caught by the video-tape after the game. That way, the referee is less likely to impact the game negatively while at the same time FIFA maintains the ability to punish players if they did, on review, commit a cautionable offense.

 

most americans dont understand the athleticism of soccer ive played pickup football games at the park and they get surprised say ey your fast. Is easier to get on the level of someone whos my age and all they play is basketball then for them to be on my level of soccer im not saying im great or anything but i could play basketball or football better then they could play soccer. im used to playing with mexicans and central americans and well ya know the physicality of concacaf nations and how they play. i live by alot of hispanic where for us soccer is known as a man's sport ive never talked a a person like skip in real life but if i did ill tell him to come play with some <snipped by moderator> to end this soccer is for sissys talk once and for all

 

What are people's feelings about a second official. My experiences from my youth with two referee systems where mostly negative but the two referee system in those days excluded Linesmen. A system with two on-field referee's and two asst. referee's would be different, I would suppose. On the one hand, I fear that it would degenerate the game with even more foul calls, more cards, and no more clarity or improvement in overall officiating. On the positive side, it would mean that one official should always have a good view of the play and be close enough to the play to observe it much closer. What do other people think?