gotcha Roehl!! You listened to Tony Kornheyser talking to Bob Ryan on the radio this morning, didn't you?! ha ha!
"Many high school football programs are barely able to exist because young people today want take the easy road and play the no-skill, no-work game of soccer instead of being dedicated to lifting weights and working hard in the off-season to gain the rewards of football. " I found this to be the most entertaining portion of the article. You gotta love when a Football supporter calls soccer a "no-skill game". Football coaches, players and fans will tell you the sport of American Football has SKILL POSITIONS. Which suggests that the rest of the positions are NON-SKILL POSITONS. And what are skill positions? They are those positions that, get this... get to 1) RUN WHILE HOLDING THE BALL 2) CATCH THE BALL or 3) THROW THE BALL (QB's, RB's, WR's) WOW, Running, catching and throwing. Those are fascinating skills In fact they are so hard to do, that of the 11 players on the offensive side of the football only 4 or 5 are skilled enought to do it. Football is clearly a game of skill. hey, i love college football actually, but for the love of god that was a stupid article
It's not a joke - it's Western Pennsylvania. The letter reads like practically every ErieVern ESPN message board post. Here's an example from today: http://boards.espn.go.com/cgi/espn/request.dll?MESSAGE&room=soccer_mls&id=42929 http://boards.espn.go.com/cgi/espn/request.dll?MESSAGE&room=soccer_mls&id=42937
Oh Christ, run to the hills, some old curmudgeon in a small town wrote a letter to a small paper and, *gasp*, he doesn't think like us!!!! Surely, you people have more to worry about. This is a non-story if there ever was one.
What did you do Chicago1871. I was thinking of sending a bag of flour and a note that says, "I guess we're all terrorists, enjoy the flour". But that would be stupid like him.
Dear Fred J. Harlan, Please come out to SoCal and visit me on Easy Rd. We can throw the pointy ball around awhile and then if your not too exhausted I will gladly show you how us terrorists get our exercise. Don't worry after 20 minutes of you chasing me around, I will gladly put you out of your misery with my elbow and then we can spend the next half an hour pulling my foot out yer ass before your plane leaves for Pigfart or whatever back water, brother's my uncle town you were birthed in. Am I kidding?
God i hope this guy is kidding. But some how,i don't get the feeling that he is. I like the way he evokes the security of America with the playing of that foriegn sport. It must be a plan by Al-Queda or the Masons to overthrow America from within. I can picture what this guy looks like,he's probably a middle aged high school football coach that wears those tight gym shorts and talks really LOUD.
Lets just say he is now considered a superfan by ussoccerfan.com because he signed up for everyone of their online newletters. PS, I think the entire situation is just funny. His orginal letter, along with some of the pro-Fred responses made me laugh out loud.
HEY! Now let's not go overboard, giggs. C'mon, don't knock bald. Bald is beautiful. Deep down you want to go bald, don't you...don't you. C'mon, grab the clippers man and go for it. Bald is beautiful. No, I don't have a complex....
What sarcasm? That's just one really stupid person..So by his account, Donovan and Mia are targets of the war on terrorism....If it was Ms. Foudy on the other hand... Just Kidding, btw... Disclaimer: Have never had ill feelings towards WUSA or Foudy
Straight time for a moment... Was he using hyperbole? Yes. Being funny? That's in the eye of the beholder. Serious? Half. He won't mind if people take on the word association that he's otherwise joking about, because he believes it scores points for his sport. In that vein, can we start invoking Rae Carruth and Ray Lewis to say that the steroid-induced thugs are out to get us? BTW, the steroid issue is about to go full blast, so get your "it's what's IN the shorts that counts" jokes ready.
"two of the worst things ever to hit this country, soccer and women's sports" "soccer's slow strangulation of real sports" "the ritual that is high school football" and the kicker -> "young minds and bodies are being wasted by continuing the slide into the soccer abyss" the soccer abyss? are you kidding me, you guys think this is sincere? fred harlan=sockpuppet. it's probably someone posting here on big soccer.
Since it was publish on a newspaper, what he meant to say doesn't matter (joke or whatever) but how people take. And it's obvious that anyone that only read the headlines is going to think that soccer is the sports of terrorist. This is the e-mail I wrote to the newspaper and to him: If you play a sport that we don't like, you are terrorist The article "Soccer, sport of terrorists" is the most disgusting article I've read in my whole life. It's very obvious that the title doesn't have anything to do (at all) with the article. After reading the article it seems like Fred Harlan picked the title of the article not to let people know what the article is about, but to put in most people's mind, especially those that only read the headlines, that soccer is a evil sport, that soccer players are likely to be terrorists and in few words create a relation between soccer and terrorism that would make people hate anyone that play the soccer. That's a very immature way to view the decline of football players in High School because they like soccer. I believe the name for that is "Instigating fear in people to persuade them". Let me quote a few of the things that Fred Harlan wrote on this article: "High school football programs around the country have nearly succumbed to the foreign-sports terrorism know as soccer" On what do you base the relationship between soccer and terrorism. Did you know that soccer is the most popular sport in the World? Are you saying that most people in the World are terrorists, including million of Americans? "I witnessed parents allowing their children to play this anti-American sport instead of exposing them to the ritual that is high school football in western Pennsylvania" What's anti-American about soccer? Soccer doesn't threaten freedom, democracy, liberty or free-market economy, so how is soccer anti-American? Does soccer hate America? "Just look at the recent and past U.S. failings in the World Cup as evidence that soccer is time and effort wasted" I'm amazed that you are so concerned about what's good for America and you don't know that the US soccer national team has greatly improved in the last few years. The US has been ranked in the top 15 teams in the World out of 202 teams for more than a year. "All real Americans need to seize this opportunity to squash this game and save real sports while there is still time." You seem to have a lot of hate against soccer, so much hate towards a sport that you use patriotism and terrorism to bring it down. Why don't you criticize golf, hockey, tennis, swimming or track & field? I really hope that your newspaper doesn't agree with the hateful things that this person said about a sport just because he doesn't like it. This person is obviously extremely closed minded and seems to think that anything that can be considered foreign is a threat to the US and should be called a terrorist, even if it's a sport.