I think of it as a Ferris Bueller day.

It's just weird, and took us all by surprise. Sure, they were calling for a little snow last night, but all winter the most we've had is an inch or so, maybe three or four times. For upstate New York, that's extremely unusual to say the least. We bought snowshoes and cross-country skis in November, thinking we were moving to a winter wonderland. Not so much. Now we have like 5 inches on the ground, a month into spring. It's hardly glacial, and it's supposed to get into the mid-forties this afternoon, but it'll be nice while it lasts .

Hi,

if youre on facebook, this is rather scarey:

http://socialcam.com/v/Wi2rA91g?autosta ... tiline#_=_

Theres even a couple of LARPers in there.
Even someone with a tail.
Cheers,
KAL

It's probably the eyedrops you bought at Walmart .

Agree, a bit of a weird and scrappy game.  Chelsea will (I hope) get slaughtered in the final next month

red_bus wrote:Chelsea will (I hope) get slaughtered in the final next month

gyg wrote:I really can't see Chelsea winning it, and as a Spurs fan I'd rather they didn't!

Interesting....I didnt quite expect those comments.  I figured with Chelsea being the lone English team left in the Champions League competition, people from England would be rooting for them to win the cup instead of one of the often hated Spanish or German clubs.  If I was a Boston Red Sox fan and the New York Yankees were playing the best baseball team in Japan for the World championship I guess a part of me wouldnt want the Yankees to win.  But on the flip side of that, part of me wouldn't want an American team to lose to a team from another country, regardless of the nationality of its players.

I guess the hatred of rival clubs knows no bounds, even in international tournaments.

Think about this though.  All Abramovich wants is a Champions League trophy.  Once he has that he will probably sell off all the aging veteran players to bring in new talent and Chelsea will suck for four or five years.  

I will probably be rooting for Real Madrid today.  Ribery and Robben are two of the most pathetic divers I've seen so far.  

You guys are making me ill...........soccer...............John, you need to turn in your man card! The UK guys are ok, but an american talking soccer.....oh, no....

bbarsh wrote:You guys are making me ill...........soccer...............John, you need to turn in your man card! The UK guys are ok, but an american talking soccer.....oh, no....

I'd rather watch nearly anything than soccer.  Anything that ends in a tie just shouldn't be allowed (at least hockey had the good sense to introduce the shoot-out).  I can understand how a 0-0 tie might be riveting to some,  but...ok, sorry, not I can't.  A 0-0 tie? Blech. Waste of an afternoon.

I love how they have been saying since I was a kid (70s) how soccer is going to take the US by storm!  And here we are 40 years later and no one gives a damn...kids playing soccer grow up and then go off to football,  baseball and basketball leagues.  Heck, even the kids are bored.  

A funny story, my stepdaughter has never played sports.  When she was in junior high some friends urged her to try out for the soccer team.  She had never played soccer in her life, and immediately dominated. I mean, like, she would enter the game and score three goals herself without ever passing the ball.  And then her team would win 3-0.  She scored something like 10 goals in a few weeks and they won all the rest of their games that year. She was completely kicking ass on every level against these girls who had been playing in soccer leagues since they were tiny. What a joke. Actually I wish she had stuck with it, might have gotten a scholarship or something, she obviously had some kind of natural talent, or the talent at that level really sucked.  In the end she wasn't interested enough (and her coach was an absolutely clueless tool, I wanted to beat the shit out of him a few times when I was watching games) to keep playing past one year in junior high.

Then again, I also hate golf.

Mike B.

Kingofpain89 wrote:

bbarsh wrote:You guys are making me ill...........soccer...............John, you need to turn in your man card! The UK guys are ok, but an american talking soccer.....oh, no....

Meh...whatever.  90% of NFL players couldnt keep up with a soccer player.  They would tire out before halftime.    :P

I don't think they would last that long. I am not saying soccer players are not athletes. They are. World Class. I am just saying that my American Redneckism is alive and well. Hell, someone had to say it!

However, as much as it pains me to admit this, soccer is dominating most youth sports programs. I coach youth football and baseball and I can tell you there are way more soccer players out there than the latter. More and more parents are shifting their kids into soccer rather than football. When my son was six, he signed up for football (real football with hitting). He was just out of kindergarten and two of his friends did the same. Techinically, they were not supposed to play until end of first grade, but it slid by. Point is they could not wait to play. That level is called "instrucitonal" and we had three teams of 28 kids each! That was eight years ago. Now we can barely get 20 kids total. It is not that kids don't want to play. Parents don't want them to play. I hear this all the time. Nobody likes seeing their kid get hit and come off the field crying and hurt (not injured, but hurt). I have lived it for eight years. It never gets easy to see my kid, or any of my players, get hit and get hurt (again, not talking injuries). But when that player shakes it off and begs to get right back in, well, that is magic. Not all kids can do that. Many only play a year or two. But many come back year after year. Those boys are brothers and they have more character than any other athlete I have ever seen. Sure, all sports build character. But there is just something different about a football player.
By the way, those three boys completed eight years of youth football last fall. That is rarified air. They are the only three still playing out of all three of those instructional teams. At the team banquet we brought them up and played a short, two-minute photo collage of them from when they were six until the present. There wasn't a dry eye in the house (Coach Barsh included). That is football. I have been to, and a part of, baseball, basketball, cross country, etc., banquets and nothing has ever come close to that night.

MetamorphosisSigma wrote:I'd rather watch paint dry than either football or soccer. Just saying. And as far as the youth angle, involving your child in either is asking for brain injuries. I'm all for physical fitness among the yutes, but swimming, track, and martial arts (heh, no real contact) is where it's at.

Swimming seems to do the least damage. Full contact sports do the most. Boxing probably the very most. Football ((and I don't mean soccer) is probably the next most damaging sport.