Ogre-oid: The rapid decline of American sports culture (and sports in general)

When UK coach John Calipari announced that all five UK players in the draft going in the first round was the greatest moment in the history of UK basketball, he formalized what any remotely realistic and honest person already knew: UK basketball is a professional organization, and the university itself is a sports complex, not an academic institution. Details, details: once any player, from UK or elsewhere, declares for the draft, they are no longer part of the university team! Those players taken in the draft are pro players, not UK players. They stopped being UK players when the disgraceful regional final against West Virginia mercifully ended. Worse still, his comment betrays that in basketball and all American sports, the games themselves are now secondary! Not a final four or national championship, but a complete non-athletic moment--a draft for God's sake--is the greatest moment in the program's history. Yeah, sure, whatever. The promotional sideshow, Twitter gossip, and endless blather from so-called analysts like Jay Bilas--who is a compete fraud, an ex-jock from Duke who tries to pull off the ethos of an intellectual when all he does is speculate about meaningless sports issues, like which player will get drafted by which team and when--have overtaken the fun and excitement of watching a game. There is only one good thing about sports--if there is anything good about them--and that is enjoying the games. Shut the fuck up and put a fucking game on!

America's pseudo-love of soccer, which the rest of the world calls football, because that is what it is. Shots of Americans as people who actually enjoy life and community, getting together at the pub during the workday to celebrate the World Cup and cheer on the team are as fradulent as John Calipari or Jay Bilas. Americans don't care about soccer, and as soon as the U.S. lost to Ghana--a country that doesn't quite have the standard of living America does--appreciation for a truly great game vanished quicker than unemployment benefits. Now, predictably, the image of Landon Donvon's goal against Algeria will be played over and over and over to sell worthless crap that has nothing to do with the game itself.

Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals was the worst game of basketball I've ever seen in my life. Neither team scored in the hundreds--unlike the final scores of the previous four Game 7 finals meeting between the league's most storied franchises. While I appreciate a hard-nosed defensive effort, if you can't score the ball, you can't play. The only thing more pathetic than the performance of the two teams was the referrees' taking control of the game in the fourth quarter by calling a foul on the Celtics every time Kobe Bryant crashed into the lane or flailed his arms in Ray Allen's face. Kobe got his hardware but at the expense of any plausible comparison to the game's greats. Great players don't have off-nights in Game 7 of the finals, and watching Kobe--and the game itself--was painful. There simply should have been no champion this year. Hey, I've got an idea: let's start drafting eighth graders, expand the league to 67 teams, let each player have ten fouls per game, and put more money into marketing. Just let me and my dead grandmother know when tryouts are. Only 21st century America could turn baseball into a high scoring game and basketball into a low scoring one.

Uruguay's deliberate handball at the goal line in the final moments of their match with Ghana exposed a major flaw in the game. If a player uses his hand to bat down what obviously will be a goal--and in this case would have been the winning one--it should be goaltending, just like in basketball, and the goal should count, no free kick necessary. Granted, Ghana missed a free kick to win the game they should have made, but Uruguay's victory is cheap because they shouldn't be rewarded for a skill-less move in the game's most pivotal moment.