Yesterday's Super Bowl shocked the hell out of me. Not just because of the Pats loss and poor, arrogant coaching calls (going for it on 4 & 13 instead of kicking a field goal and airing it out with 30 secs on the clock and 3 timeouts), but even more because of the title "World Champions" bestowed upon the Giants. How annoyingly arrogant.
I watched baseball dub World Series winners "World Champions" for years, despite the strength of teams in places like Japan. Finally, they did away that title after Japan won the real world title in world-wide contest a few years ago. Hell, the U.S. didn't even make the playoffs! In fact, Canada--who cares about baseball about as much as Bush cares about the economy--beat us!
In sports like basketball and football, though, our winners are still "world champions." Really? We've been getting killed in world basketball tournaments, mostly because half of what happens in the NBA is called and our fundamentals are so bad. Guess what? Running from half-court with the ball or even the key, into a slam dunk is actually traveling. In football, some Canadian teams might very well give us a run for our money. They play a much tougher game there (to be expected from the folks who invented a sport like hockey and whose national sport is lacrosse). The goalpost is at the front of the endzone and is unpadded; you hit it hard, you just go down. The field is like 20 yards longer. You only get 3 downs, not 4. Defense lines up a yard off the ball, not on top of it, making it much harder to run. You can hit the quarterback. You can bump receivers. Plus, if we had to play in Canada in the winter... well, when Green Bay is considered Florida, you've got trouble...
When will we stop the arrogance of calling our teams "world champs?"
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