Spectacular EU Championship Blow-Out!

I'm still shaking from the excitement of last night's EU Championship match. O! you could've cut the tension with a knife! Greece and Czech went back and forth, up and down, requiring just 105 minutes of game time to score ONE FREAKING GOAL!

Jeez, soccer sucks. I just don't get it. I mean, I understand the rules of the game. I'm not one of the Americans that sit in the crowd and say, 'man, he better tuck that ball in and run before he gets creamed out there!" It's just that it's mind-numbingly dull.

It may be the way that the Europeans play it. I can't stand watching grown men trying to fake injuries to draw fouls. It's OK to take a dive every now and then. Lord knows, in my college hockey days I drew my fair share of bullshit penalties, but you have to draw the line somewhere. In any soccer game, there will come a point where play is stopped by somebody laying on the ground, literally screaming in pain, holding their knee while their teammates beg the referee to Put an End to This Carnage! This usually happens after the guy gets the ball taken away from him. When they show the replay, though, it's obvious that there was no contact whatsoever. Still, this guy stays on the ground, screaming and crying, until a couple of trainers come out and take him to the sidelines. Once play starts again, he'll stand up, start jumping up and down, and be back in the game within 5 minutes. You can count on it.

Bob Baun wins the Stanley Cup on a broken foot, then drinks a martini

Football's just as manly as ice hockey, if not more so. Linesman in football break every finger on their hands at least twice a game. Sometimes the fingers will just fall off, laying there on the field until someone notices they lost it and sticks it back on. And I don't think anybody who saw it will ever forget the infamous Lawrence Taylor/Joe Theismann pile-up. Taylor, who weighs about 300 lbs., fell on Theismann's leg, snapping it like a twig. Halfway between his knee and his foot, Theissmann's leg was bent at a 90 degree angle, right there on Monday Night Football. It was a sight so gruesome, you can't even find pictures of it on the Internet. Taylor damn near tore the man's foot off, and didn't even get a foul. Manly!

Just compare this:

To this:

If I were a soccer referee, things would be a little different. Every time some whiny little Brazilian throws himself on the ground after a near-collision, holding his leg and howling in pain, he would be forced to watch that Theismann video 10 times. "If that happens," I would tell him, "you may cry, scream, or do whatever you want. But if you try and pull that fake injury shit with me again, you mincing little dandy, you'll be wearing a tutu on the field from that point on."