Now Here's An Idea . . .

Let's take the trashifixion of sports to the next level.

My proposal, as rendered by ChatGPT.

On Thursday the United States Men’s soccer team is going to play a totally meaningless game against Turkiye. It is the final game of the first round. The United States has already won their group, and Turkiye has already finished last. Barring a wildly improbable series of events, whatever the results of that Thursday game, the United States advances, and Turkiye goes home as a leftover. None of the statistics from the first round apply to the second round, other than where the teams finish in the standings.

American soccer enthusiasts — most of whom become soccer enthusiasts only quadrennially, and only for a month —are furiously speculating whether the Americans should mail it in by resting their starters for the games that will matter, or play hard in order to keep up “momentum.” I believe these pundits are thinking small. Their thinking is bipolar. There is a third option.

We are in the era of sports vulgarity. It started with home-run derbies and slam-dunk contests. Now it has descended into a shameless billion-dollar betting industry. And, most recently, a crude display of savagery in a pop-up Vegas-style glitz pit on The White House lawn.

Why not use this opportunity to make some real noise? My proposal is that both teams agree to turn the game into an entertaining trash extravaganza, just for one night, just for the big of it. The main appeal would be to a subspecies of humans known as “men,” who, from time immemorial, have been engaging in idiot arguments over questions such as who would have won a ping-pong match in 1952 between Yogi Berra and Wilma Rudolph.

Books have been written about this sort of thing. In 2007, Todd Gallagher wrote “Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan,” in which he field-tested several such questions, including whether, using a frying pan for a racquet, a tennis champion could win a game against an amateur. Other questions the book tested and answered: Could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team? Could an Olympic swimmer beat a regular guy in a race if the Olympian was only allowed to doggie-paddle? Would an all-midget baseball team be impossible to strike out?

I myself have publicly speculated on how the game of baseball would change if it was played with a basketball.

So, that’s my idea. Apply this whole principle to the meaningless U.S. - Turkiye game. Here are some possible themes:

• Play with clown shoes and mascot heads.

• For the whole game, every player must touch the ball only with his less-dominant foot.

• Replace the ball with an American football. You’re gonna see some strange hops.

• Require all the players, before taking a penalty shot, to first do a feisty little Riverdance routine.

• Pair the midfielders up as if for a three-legged race.

• Blindfold the goalkeeper.

• Don’t change the game at all, but allow 12 Labrador retrievers to run wild on the field.

Here’s the thing: FIFA might allow this! The ratings would be huge. Who wouldn’t want to see such a spectacle? And the sports betting companies would go nuts with exotic wagers. Imagine the over-under bets on the clown shoes thing.

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Okay, good.

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Meanwhile, an urgent diversion. Rachel still knows how to fax! Read about it here, and eat your heart out!

Thank you. That’s it for today.

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