Are You Ready For Some Soccer?

           I attended my first soccer game twenty years ago.  It was an epic showdown battle between Evergreen Playschool and First Baptist Church’s Mother’s Day Out.

            Although I had never been to a soccer game before, I really got into it.  No, I didn’t blow one of those silly horns for two hours or paint my face green and white, the official colors of Evergreen Playschool United.  But I did yell at the referee so much that I almost got cited with a yellow card. 

            My enthusiasm had nothing to do with the game of soccer.  It had everything to do with the fact that Evergreen Playschool United featured a forty pound mid fielder named Will Haltom.

            In the following decade, I spent many a Saturday morning prowling the sidelines at soccer games as I watched my sons and later my daughter play the world’s most popular sport.

            But when those Saturday morning games were over, I’d throw the kids and soccer balls into the minivan, drive them home, plop myself on the sofa in my den, and spend the rest of the weekend watching …football!  And when I say football, I mean real American football!  My Volunteers versus the evil Florida Gators on Saturday afternoon!  The Colts or the Titans versus the evil New England Patriots on Sunday!

            And when Monday night rolled around, I was ready for some football, because all my rowdy friends and I forgot about soccer on Monday night!

            Over the years I tried (really, I tried!) to learn to love soccer.  But the only time it interested me was when the USA woman’s team won the World Cup, and one of their star players started celebrating by taking off her clothes.  Well, just her jersey but the mere glimpse of a black sports bra made me a soccer fan for the moment, and it also gave a whole new meaning to the term World Cup. 

            But otherwise, I relegated soccer in my couch potato sports spectator life to one of those strange foreign sports I used to see on ABC’s Wide World of Anything That Can Conceivably be Considered a Sport, such as Cricket, Curling, or Synchronized Swimming.

            Frankly, I’d rather watch the finals of the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee Championships.  In fact, I have.  I still remember that incredible moment a few yeas ago when that little boy fainted while trying to spell onomatopoeia. 

            But this past Wednesday morning, a strange thing happened.  I watched a soccer game that did not involve either of my children or a woman in a sports bra.  It was the World Cup match between USA and Algeria, and I watched it in my law firm’s main conference room, along with a large crowd consisting of my partners, associates, paralegals, and legal assistants.

            My firm literally blew hundreds of billable hours in the course of one ninety minute soccer match plus four minutes of something called “stoppage.”  (Why don’t they call it overtime, for crying out loud?)

            And here’s the really strange part.  Not only was I watching a soccer game when I should have been working, I found myself actually caring about the outcome.  For over ninety minutes, the game was a scoreless tie.  No surprise here, since one thing I have learned about soccer over the years is that ninety percent of the games end in scoreless ties, the other ten percent end with a score of one to nothing. 

            When my kids were little soccer tykes, their games featured lots of scoring.  For example, I think the final score of the Evergreen Playschool United-First Baptist Mamma’s Day Out game was 15-14.  It was actually tied 14-14 at the end of regulation, and then Evergreen won on a shoot-out during the stoppage. 

            But by the time my kids were playing on competitive teams in middle school, all the games were either scoreless ties or ended with a score of one to nothing.

            And so, true to form, the World Cup match on Wednesday morning between the USA Americans and the Algeria Algerians was about to end in a scoreless tie when suddenly Team USA did something you seldom see in a big time soccer game.  They scored a goal.  And not only that, when they did it, some third world referee did not blow his whistle to wipe off the goal for some phantom foul that he refuses to explain. 

            When the USA scored the goal, I was momentarily stunned.  I waited a few seconds for some referee from the Taliban to wave it off and then eject the entire USA team with a giant red card.  But there was no foul and no card of any color.  And then suddenly, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Yes!”  I hadn’t screamed like that since my honeymoon or the 1999 Fiesta Bowl.

            Forget about the Miracle on Ice!  This was the Miracle in the Law Firm Conference Room!

            And so, am I now a born again soccer fan?  Well, I am definitely one at least through the upcoming “knockout round” game between the USA and Ghana. 

            Come Labor Day I’ll be back on my sofa watching the Notre Dame Fighting Irish beat the Coast Guard Academy or my Vols lose to Florida for the 47th consecutive year.  But for this week, at least, Landon Donovan is the new Peyton Manning. 

            And so this weekend, I’ll be propped on my sofa cheering America’s Team, and I don’t mean the Dallas Cowboys.

            Lord forgive me, but I hate Ghana almost as much as I hate the Florida Gators.