Ken Copper: Is It Over Yet?

I hear that Germany won the World Cup of "football". Well, whoop de damn do! Now the rest of the world can start paying as much attention to soccer as REAL Americans do, which is to say NOT AT ALL For forty years I have been hearing that soccer is going to "catch fire" in the U.S. and put other professional sports on the back burner. Uh….still waiting.

How UN-American! A game played in short pants.

Angela Merkel pretending that this makes up for losing TWO World Wars.

It's a damn boring game! I tried to work up a little interest in the title game by imagining how many of the players may have been the great grandchildren of Hitler's goons and decided that Argentina may have been the winner there. It's not that difficult to find good wiener schnitzel , a foamy stein and a VW plant or two in the southern hemisphere. After a coma inducing nil/nil back and forth, the boys from Berlin pulled off a 1-nil victory and took the cup home to Angela Merkel and her goose stepping relatives.

That whole NIL thing is part of the problem. We Americans don't say nil. We say: zip, na da, nothing, zero, anything but nil. What this sport needs is new terminology and better play-by-play announcers. A couple of whining Limeys saying things like "good show", "splendid", "fancy that" and--worst of all--"whilst" just doesn't get it done for American audiences. We need a couple of good ol' boys with some down home antidotes and moronic hillbilly expressions to get us in the mood. (Some actual scoring wouldn't hurt either.) What soccer needs is a modern day Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese to call the games. For those too young to remember, Dizzy and Pee Wee were baseball Hall of Famers who were teamed to broadcast baseball's Game of the Week every Saturday back in the 1960's.

The broadcast, sponsored by Falstaff Beer, was the bane of English teachers and moms all over the country. Dizzy was nearly incapable of stringing together a sentence that didn't contain at least five or six grammatical errors (he had a real flare for double negatives) and often, by the late innings, demonstrated the relaxing effect of his sponsor's product. His penchant for head scratching aphorisms and maxims such as, "you can't give soup to a harelip horse" were also part of the magic. Ol' Diz and Pee Wee were appointment television for adolescent boys and true fans of the game.

Dizzy Dean

Alan Mayer

I don't know if there are any retired veterans of the old NASL or MISL who could become the soccer equivalent of the ebullient Dizzy and Pee Wee but certainly, if they exist, that could help boost interest in the game. Alan Mayer might be a candidate. Mayer is a native American who had a sterling career with the San Diego Sockers, the Las Vegas Americans and the Kansas City Comets of the MISL. He is now a coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who has a terrific personality and a well oiled gift of gab. He often was a guest on my morning radio show in Las Vegas and never failed to be entertaining. (How much the always available and ample vodka supply had to do with it I'm not certain.) The guy was funny and showed no fear of a jolt or two from the old juice bar.

So, in my opinion, that's what soccer needs to really make it in America. Some FUN and excitement! It's supposed to be entertainment not algebra. Soccer needs it's own Dizzy Dean to add some flavor to the game.

"And there goes Fox! Nellie Fox has just slud into second base with a stand-up double."

"Mr. Rickey must think I went to the Massachusetts Constitution of Technology."

"Lot's of folks who say isn't instead of ain't, ain't eatin'."