"Eventually, the players were escorted to the prison soccer field, which was lit for the night. Escobar came out in sweat pants and a soccer jersey, and played left midfielder, 'even though he was right-footed.' Pareja's teammate, Carlos Alvarez, had to guard him, a most delicate job. Guard him too lightly, and Escobar would feel disrespected. Guard him too closely, and Escobar would feel humiliated. Either way, it could mean his neck. 'Don't kick me,' Escobar told Alvarez with a grin, 'because (if you do) you will stay here with us.'" —Colorado Rapids coach Oscar Pareja tells ESPN's Rick Reilly about the time he was summoned to play [...]
You’d be forgiven for thinking it the height of silliness to try and tease out some deep cultural truth from the contemporary action movie—an art form in which Sly Stallone mentioning that some kind of vague bad political and/or drug stuff sometimes goes on south of the border passes for trenchant political commentary. But then you may not be a fan of the action movies of one Jason Statham and you may not have had his most recent punch-fest, The Mechanic—an otherwise well paced, competently shot affair, with no wince-inducing dialogue and with plenty of stoic Statham ass-kicking—marred by the fact that the only gay character in the movie [...]
Here is a slice of a dispatch from today's ESPN presentation in New York City that confused me: "Coca-Cola is looking at aiming its World Cup advertising not only at Hispanic consumers, Mr. Tripodi said, who traditionally follow the World Cup closely, but also African-Americans and the general market, particularly 'soccer moms.'" Hold up — I understand the desire to expand marketing efforts, but I thought soccer moms were dubbed such because they spent a fair amount of time ferrying their children to activities like soccer, and not because they had a passion for the game? If the latter were true, certainly attendance at Major League Soccer events [...]
