Weekend full of links

As many of you may know, well ok some of you may know, today was the World Cup Draw, an event that is one of the most watched television appearances of the year. The World Cup draw always fascinates me as it takes what is an essentially a ten minute event and streches it out to cover over two hours.....and Dick Vitale is in no way involved! It of course is also great because it puts the incomprable Tommie Smith on television (the Irish guy that is short and looks like a toy), who talks lovingly about Wayne Rooney and Ruud Van Nistelroy, individuals who are some of the world's most famous people but could walk the streets of Manhattan and be run over by fans chasing down Nicole Ritchie. The event features a BBC feed of the actual drawing which allows us to hear comments with blatantly racist overtones that we would never hear in the US such as when Cobi Jones (an African American) drew out the name of the Ivory Coast and the announcer opined, "that is a very special moment for a black man to be drawing out his homeland." Of course Cobi was born in New Jersey, but you get his drift. The United States had what many consider to be a terrible draw as they ended up in a group with Italy, Ghana and the Czech Republic. While we will save the World Cup breakdown for another blog, suffice to say, this draw has some interesting stories. The match with Italy will put the United States up against the only country in the world where pasta is considered a pasttime. The match with Ghana will pit the US against the home place of Freddie Adu, while the match with the Czech Republic will be huge for the large Czech population in Floyd County. I have no idea whether the US will come out of this draw, but I do know that if Terrell Owens decides to sing a song about Hillary Clinton, it would be a bigger story than whereever the Stars and Stripes finish in the competition. Now to the links, many of which were soccer-inspired: While soccer may not be very big in the US, watching Canadiens play basketball is a huge deal. Thus this video of Steve Nash playing around with a soccer ball will make you very happy. I admit that most of my soccer knowledge ended with AYSO, but I cant understand what the point of doing this would be for any player. It would seem to offer very little to your team. I can however get behind this site, which seeks to let everyone know that a big part of soccer is dancing, something we can all agree on. I admit to being fascinated with the quicktime video of the demolition of stadiums. This week, two have been released on the web. This is Stanford Stadium which once hosted an Olympics, Presidential nomination and World Cup. And here is Cardinal Stadium, which hosted a great deal of steroids in the Mark McGwire era. So all is not gloom and doom however, here is quick time video of the new Cardinal Stadium being built. Good stuff all around. Finally, if you havent heard Shaquille O Neal has been sworn in as a cop. I am not sure what is more bizarre about this story.....that Shaq is a cop or that everyone seems to think that is ok. Go Cats tomorrow!