{"id":355,"date":"2006-06-28T10:13:46","date_gmt":"2006-06-28T10:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/28\/this-isnt-sportscenter\/"},"modified":"2006-06-28T10:13:46","modified_gmt":"2006-06-28T10:13:46","slug":"this-isnt-sportscenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/28\/this-isnt-sportscenter\/","title":{"rendered":"This Isn&#8217;t SportsCenter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Miscellaneous sports-related items (mostly soccer talk, because other than the World Cup, there are no sports going on now worth watching):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Before getting to soccer, some really important sports news: Williams College won its <a href=\"http:\/\/nacda.cstv.com\/sports\/directorscup\/spec-rel\/061906aah.html\">tenth Sears Cup in the last eleven years<\/a>, as the best athletic program in Division III. They also topped the US News rankings for liberal arts schools. Eat our dust, Amherst.<\/li>\n<li>On to soccer: I didn&#8217;t get to watch any of Tuesday&#8217;s games, because I have a day job, but Monday&#8217;s games were pretty ugly. Australia lost to the Italian national diving team on a late penalty kick, and Ukraine beat Switzerland on penalty kicks, in a game that both teams seemed determined to have end in a 0-0 tie. What a bunch of crap that was&#8211; this is why most Americans think so littlle of the game.<\/li>\n<li>Tuesday&#8217;s games were apparently more entertaining, with Brazil beating Ghana 3-0, and France beating Spain 3-1. Brazil&#8217;s Ronaldo broke the record for career goals in World Cup play, with a sweet cross-over move that completely flummoxed the goalie. Somebody with more soccer knowledge than I have can determine where this puts him in the pantheon of all-time greats.<\/li>\n<li>While poking about idly waiting for something, I was reading previews of the Spain-France game, and ran across a reference to Spanish striker Fernando Torres, shown <a href=\"http:\/\/fifaworldcup.yahoo.com\/06\/en\/w\/photos\/esp.html?i=14&#038;d=1\">celebrating a goal against Tunisia<\/a>. I wondered what the hell that tattoo on his arm is, and as always, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fernando_Torres\">Wikipedia provided the trivia answer<\/a>: &#8220;He has a tattoo on the inside of his left arm that says &#8220;Fernando&#8221; in tengwar.&#8221; Yes, that&#8217;s right, a striker for the Spanish national team has a tattoo in Elvish. Question: Is this more or less dorky than the waitress I met who had the inscription from the One Ring tattooed on her shoulder blade?<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of soccer and nerds, <a href=\"http:\/\/cosmicvariance.com\/2006\/06\/27\/fiddling-with-the-world-cup\/\">Sean Carroll suggests some rules changes<\/a> to improve the World Cup. I mostly agree with them, but it&#8217;s the comment thread that really takes this topic to the next level, particularly the equation of soccer and guerilla warfare in <a href=\"http:\/\/cosmicvariance.com\/2006\/06\/27\/fiddling-with-the-world-cup\/#comment-100028\">this comment<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Not related to actual soccer, but pretty amusing: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.studioaka.co.uk\/html\/projects\/parkfootball\/quicktime.html\">Park Foot Ball<\/a>, a QuickTime movie of little colored blobs playing soccer, among other things. It&#8217;s surprisingly entertaining. (Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.drinkatwork.com\/2006\/06\/world-cup-mania-or-how-portugal.html\">Drink At Work<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And that&#8217;s about enough of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Miscellaneous sports-related items (mostly soccer talk, because other than the World Cup, there are no sports going on now worth watching): Before getting to soccer, some really important sports news: Williams College won its tenth Sears Cup in the last eleven years, as the best athletic program in Division III. They also topped the US&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/28\/this-isnt-sportscenter\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">This Isn&#8217;t SportsCenter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}