June 26, 2006
Turn on a World Cup game, and within 15 minutes you'll see a grown man fall to the ground, clutch his leg and writhe in agony after being tapped on the shoulder by an opposing player. Soccer players do this routinely in an attempt to get the referees to call foul. If the ref doesn't immediately bite, the player gets up and moves along.Is it machismo? Is it stoicism? Are we suppressing the little girl inside all of us? Perhaps. But faking an injury to gain an advantage is just so...wussy.Making a show of your physical vulnerability runs counter to every impulse in American sports. And pretending to be hurt simply compounds the outrage. Basketball has floppers, but the players who do it--like Bill Laimbeer, whose flopping skills helped the Detroit Pistons win two NBA championships--are widely vilified and, in any case, they're pretending to be fouled; they never pretend to be injured. When baseball players are hit by a pitch, the code of conduct dictates that they can walk it off, if they must, but by no means may they rub the point of impact. And pretending you're hurt? There's not even a rule against that--every red-blooded American baseball cheater knows nobody would ever do that.
Not to mention that a scroll through the most recent posts at "Caption This?" doesn't exactly reinforce a "manly" image of the sport.
Posted by: Gary at
12:18 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 268 words, total size 2 kb.
Posted by: ding at June 27, 2006 01:08 AM (6RVEW)
Posted by: Gary at June 27, 2006 07:54 AM (QoxB+)
114 queries taking 0.0659 seconds, 228 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.