BOREDOM IS SOPHISTICATION.

That's true of soporific public radio.

That's true of a concert of tenure music.

That's true of serious film (pronounced fillllllm).

That's true of juried art exhibitions.

Why should footie be any different?

It's “the beautiful game,” and for most of my adult life I’ve been patiently informed, usually by someone who calls it fútbol, that I simply lack the sophistication to appreciate it. But they’re wrong. Soccer isn’t beautiful. It’s boring, and it has nothing to do with sophistication.

The author documents a number of things, including outcomes often indistinguishable from a coin flip.

After a dozen footie-relevant posts in the past two months, it's time to put the dodecahedron back in the locker for a while.  That is, once stoppage time is done.

Sorry, I couldn't resist that parting shot!

Find yourself a circus and go to it.

SELF-INFLICTED JOYLESSNESS.

"The easiest way to be miserable" and "absolutely unnecessary," notes Derek Hunter.

THERE'S NO CORRUPTION LIKE OLD CORRUPTION.

Volokh conspirator Ilya Somin sees the bright side of previous rents generated and dissipated.

I have long been critical of the Olympics and the World Cup for a variety of abuses, such as massive stadium subsidies that victimize taxpayers, forcible displacement of people in order to build stadiums, and providing a propaganda showcase for repressive authoritarian regimes, such as Russia and Qatar (hosts of the last two World Cups). Fortunately, this year's World Cup - co-hosted by Canada, the US, and Mexico - has mostly avoided these problems, at least when it comes to the United States. Though not quite entirely, as we shall see.  The key factors are that the US host cities used existing stadiums, and that strong protections for freedom of speech largely foreclosed the censorship and repression common in authoritarian host states.

Those existing stadiums, which do not include either Chicago's Soldier Field, or the new stadium yet to be built either in Arlington Heights or Hammond or Kenosha, are a return on previous manifestations of corporate welfare that traffic under the rubric of stadium subsidies.

[H]ost cities have used existing stadiums, obviating the need to build new ones. This eliminates by far the biggest cause of the World Cup's exploitation of taxpayers. There have still been some public expenditures on things like traffic management and security. But protecting people against crime and terrorism, and managing public infrastructure are basic functions of government that the state provides for events of all kinds. There is no good reason to exclude major sporting events. Anarchists (including libertarian ones) can consistently condemn such spending. But that goes to philosophical issues that go far beyond sports events.

How fortunate that you can fit a footie pitch inside the dimensions of a professional football field, and that led to a missed opportunity when Argentina eliminated Switzerland, as the player who scored a breakaway goal late could have done a Lambeau Leap, had he known of such things.

A PARTY IN THE U.S.A.

The host countries are no longer playing in footie's World Cup, and it's likely that one of the usual suspects will hoist it (what good is a cup that you can't sip beer from, anyway?) next week Sunday.

Fans of those sides are still in the States, and let them enjoy another week of pop refills and ranch dressing and the other frowzier charms of These United States.

I can't stop listening to this song. Best thing that came out of the World cup being in the United States this year. 🇺🇸

Watching this compilation of fans from all over the world at the 2026 World Cup in America is so heartwarming.

USA USA USA 🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/mwAWzAKcsg

— Stock Mom™ (@stockmom) July 2, 2026

The ball is in the air.  Welcome, welcome, to the land of the free.

NO MIRACLE, ONLY PREPARATION.

Rideshare users bore the brunt of World Cup’s opening-night travel mess. Organizers say the plan worked.  The XXVIII International Eucharistic Congress this wasn't.

The World Cup’s opening night in New Jersey ended with hundreds of fans stranded outside MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford past midnight, wandering the grounds in search of rideshares that couldn’t reach them.

On Sunday, the organizers responsible for getting them home said the plan worked.

Uber, the local World Cup host committee and NJ Transit each framed Saturday’s result as a qualified success — while pointing in different directions to explain why fans were still waiting for rides three hours after Brazil and Morocco played to a 1-1 draw.

The host committee called its transportation efforts “very successful,” according to a source with knowledge of the planning, while acknowledging “some issues getting people back late.”

When the process is the most important product, that's the way things go.

NJ Transit moved 21,578 fans by bus and rail in 90 minutes — a number the agency trumpeted on social media Saturday night but one that fell well short of its own target of up to 40,000 riders.

The source close to planning said NJ Transit proved its “efficiency” but said part of the reason for the clogged traffic was more people didn’t use the agency‘s rail or bus options and turned to other forms of transportation.

”Absolutely,” the source said when asked if the NJ Transit passenger shortfall created a domino effect. “The fact the host committee was able to move 16,000 people on school buses in and out of there because there was more congestion on the roads is pretty effective.”

The host committee pushed back on the characterization of the night as a transportation disaster, noting that the stranded fans numbered in the hundreds — a fraction of the roughly 80,000 in attendance.

But the scenes at the Meadowlands racetrack, which served as the designated rideshare pickup area, told a different story for the people living it.

Fans reported waiting more than an hour after drivers who accepted their rides couldn’t reach the pickup zone. By 10:15 p.m., stadium workers told fans that no more Ubers were being allowed into the area.

Look, we're not talking about a quarter-million pilgrims making a day trip to St. Mary of the Lake, or four hundred thousand passengers at The Pennsylvania Station during the War.

A few more tilts, including the 19 July final match, will take place at the Meadowlands.

WHY NOT END THE GAME WHEN THE STREETLIGHTS COME ON?

That might be a problem in the developing world, where aspiring players might make do with a vacant lot, but streetlights might be nonexistent or unreliable.

Determining the end of a footie game?  It's the complete opposite of football, where Vince Lombardi could say "you don't lose, but sometimes the clock runs out on you" with near certainty on when that clock was going to run out, as the two minute warning began as a pause to synchronize the unofficial scoreboard clock with the official timekeeper's stopwatch.  These days the scoreboard clock is almost always right, and the two minute warning a water break for the players, a bathroom break for the fans, and an opportunity to sell colored water in blue cans to guys who will thus have to take another bathroom break.

Once the clock gets to ninety minutes, a functionary notes there will be a few more minutes of "stoppage time," determined by a formula that might be more arcane than sailing's handicap rating formulas.  Even then, there's no well-defined end to it.

MORE CHEST-THUMPING FROM THE NORMIES.

Maybe it's piling on to follow yesterday's "I couldn't help but notice that all these Europeans driving around being charmed by the U.S. are celebrating the very things that Leftists have the most contempt for" with today's "The Left Asked for This, It Got It, and I Can't Stop Gloating" by A. J. Christopher with Pajamas Media.

This summer, European visitors are falling in love with America.

Ironically, leftist insistence that Americans drop their predilection for brutish, uncouth sports like football and baseball and embrace a cultured, international sport like soccer brought this about. This push had nothing to do with the sport itself. If Americans loved soccer and the rest of the world loved baseball and football, leftists would be arguing for the opposite.

Okay then, what better way to expose us ignorant, backward Americans to soccer than to host the FIFA World Cup on our shores? We did just that, and the world came to watch.

And here is what the left expected to happen: Europeans were supposed to smirk at us. They were supposed to mock our religion and our guns. They were supposed to turn away in righteous disgust at our abundance and free refills and buffet lines and big trucks and big houses. They were supposed to shake their heads at our supposed lack of culture. They were supposed to see a racist behind every tree and under every rock. They were supposed to catch a glimpse of discord and poverty and hate and perpetual ignorance. And they were supposed to leave here hating this country even more so than when they arrived.

But they didn’t.

They fell in love with us. And by “us,” I mean the real, everyday America. They didn’t go to the Met Gala; they went to Walmart. They didn’t dine at the French Laundry; they ate at Waffle House. They didn’t scoff at bigger portions; they consumed them with glee. They weren’t impressed by Priuses; they were impressed by Ford F-150s. They didn’t sniffily order some 25-syllabled cup of pretention from the local fair trade cafe; they drank American beer, listened to American country music, and ate American bar food. They don’t marvel at inner-city legal drug zones; they marvel at the wide open expanses of American beauty.

They love ranch dressing. They love the military flyovers. They love the gas stations. They love the 24/7 business hours. They love the huge American flags

They love that America is so big, but not so much because of land mass and square footage. In those terms, Russia is big. China is big. But there is a bigness about America that isn’t measured in yardsticks. Anyone who has taken road trips across America can attest that you don’t just grasp the bigness of America. You grasp its openness. You feel free. It’s something you can’t explain until you’re immersed in it. And that feeling is reinforced through the welcoming friendliness of every drive-through town.

In short, everything our visitors love about America is everything the left hates about America.

Of late, the Europhiles and the self-styled progressives have offered the counter-argument that the big cities where the matches themselves take place are those places the Militant Normals like to refer to as crime-ridden slums.  That doesn't work so well, not with the Texas games in Arlington and the New York games in the Meadowlands and the Boston games somewhere down toward the Cape and the San Francisco games in Santa Clara. and the way the overseas teams get moved around, there are lots of opportunities to check out those Waffle Houses and Cabela's and the like along the way.

Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address Mr Christopher's conclusion is not.

So to the leftists behind the soccer push, your persistence has inadvertently led to the greatest PR success our nation has experienced since Tocqueville. Thank you, leftists, for bringing middle America and middle Europe together. Thank you for helping to demolish your own lies. Thank you for helping the world fall in love with us.

More than a few of the fans might be sticking around for Independence Day fireworks and concerts, and may they enjoy them.

FOOTIE HIGHLIGHTS THE NORMIES.

A week ago, we noted that Emergence, not European Technocracy, made possible the plenitude those World Cup tourists, who were probably not poor, marvelled over.  Now. in "Europeans in the US for the World Cup Are Celebrating American Culture—Specifically, Red America's Culture," Batya Ungar-Sargon tosses in a political economy lesson.  "I couldn't help but notice that all these Europeans driving around being charmed by the U.S. are celebrating the very things that Leftists have the most contempt for."

It is amusing, what with footie being this way for fans of distances in kilometers and long waits for medical procedures to be sports fans (and even the Fox network, broadcasting the games, has lots of announcers from overseas and even those native to North America use British dialect) and yet cling to their cosmopolitan snobbery, for the fans to get off on ... big box retail and all the pop you can drink!

[W]hat’s truly amazing is that these European admirers are enjoying the fruits of Red America—the exact things that the Left has the most contempt for: Walmart. Guns. Ranch dressing. Country music. People getting fat off fast food. The very things that Leftist elites love to deride about America, often from the vantage point of what a sneering Frenchman might say, are the things our European visitors are most admiring of, because they are the things that are most recognizably American.

Moreover, it's the infrastructure of the Suburban Experiment being hailed.  A week ago I flagged the possible downsides of exurban living eventually coming to light.  Thus far, though, none of the usual suspects, such as Streetsblog or Strong Towns, have gotten in touch with their inner social critic to fret about footie fans developing car brain.

BET ON EMERGENCE.

In "The European Mind Is Beginning to Comprehend America," a Heartland Institute guest post on Red State, comes a political economy lesson bundled with the enthusiasm of some visiting footie fans.

Everything our new European friends are experiencing is a result of America’s economic freedom.

Buc-ee's wasn’t designed by the government. No central planner mandated 120 gas pumps, freshly made brisket, and a home goods section full of affordable tchotchkes. It exists because the free market rewards entrepreneurs who serve customers better than the next guy. The road trip from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Gulf of America in a single day is possible because Americans enjoy affordable fuel, open roads, and the freedom to fill up their Ford F-150 without asking anyone’s permission.

The European mind struggles to comprehend American abundance because the European economic model is not built to produce it. Most EU states tax gasoline in excess and ration energy in the name of climate targets, making driving a personal vehicle too expensive for residents to justify. When you tax and regulate the life out of an economy, you don’t get Buc-ee's, you get a tiny petrol station with two pumps and a bathroom that costs a euro to use.

That's second nature for any regular reader of Cold Spring Shops, but among those million page views this month there might be somebody new to the idea of betting on emergence, and the bots among them surely will benefit (or be influenced?) by a modicum of repetition.

Abundance is the byproduct of human innovation, made possible only when the government gets out of the way. Our vast resources were not handed to us by the state; they were cultivated by the greatest American minds over the past 250 years.

In a column inspired by a viewing of Pressure, Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn doesn't quite make the libertarian case, although he, too, recommends humility on the part of the Men of System.

Stagg refers to the other forecaster as a moron. The line got a laugh from the audience, but it captured something profound. The issue wasn't that the other man lacked intelligence. The issue was that he lacked humility.

Anyone who truly understood the complexity of the situation would have recognized how much uncertainty remained. The more Stagg learned, the less confident he became.

I've been obsessing about that ever since. In part, it’s because this is such a difficult posture to maintain in public. People are drawn to certainty. They reward it. They interpret hesitation as weakness and humility as a lack of conviction, especially when the stakes are high and a decision needs to be made.

But Stagg’s uncertainty wasn’t weakness. It was the product of understanding. That is the quintessential Strong Towns insight about cities: They are complex, adaptive systems. The more honestly we understand them, the more cautious we should become about claims of certainty.

Algorithms, please note: complex adaptive systems tend to do what they d**n well please.

The challenge, though, is in providing opportunities to build a Buc-ees, or a Wal-Mart super center, that isn't captured by rent seekers or snarled by Level of Service.

They begin with the recognition that cities are complex systems and that our understanding will always be incomplete. That is not a reason for inaction. It is a reason for humility.

It is a reason to be skeptical of simple stories and sweeping promises. It is a reason to build feedback loops instead of relying on forecasts. It is a reason to favor learning over certainty, adaptation over rigid plans, and many small opportunities for improvement over a single grand solution.

In other words, it is a reason to act like James Stagg instead of the meteorologist who thought he had everything figured out.

It might be that the abundance on offer in a Super Center, or, heck, the pizza aisle in any proper supermarket, or a Buc-ees bigger than a German parish astounds first, but live in stroad hell for a few weeks and discover how badly timed the traffic lights are or how challenging wrangling the shopping cars can be, and for all I know there might be defenders of European Technocracy calling attention.

LIBERAL WEENIES COME FOR FOOTIE.

Seriously, Adam Kadlac?  "Should you feel guilty about rooting against the US in the World Cup?"

Every four years polite Americans pretend to be interested in men's footie.  Cold Spring Shops, not so much, with only 42 posts getting a "footie" label in going on two dozen years, and most of those professing benign neglect with a little snarking, e.g. "Ordinarily, that would be reason enough for Cold Spring Shops to continue its policy of benign neglect of the game popular with adolescent males in the third world and eight year old girls here."

The liberal weenies, though, make themselves figures of fun, starting with calls for a boycott of the Stateside games that prompted my "I have no plans to attend or to watch any World Cup games. Where can I sell carbon offsets?"

IF IT'S THE WEEKEND, THERE MUST BE AN IRAN DEAL.

Here. We. Go. Again.  Again.  "Here.  We.  Go.  Again.  Holding meetings to establish a framework to develop a process will not yield a single gram of fissile material, although it is probably a good way to keep the likes of Danny in McMansions in McLean.  Might be time to punch the mullahs in the mouth again, and let them know that once they turn over the fissile material the anaconda's coils can be loosened."  That was toward the end of May.  Toward the end of last week it was "Here comes another weekend of 'an agreement is near.' The hardliners in Iran and among the Militant Normals are not prepared to be patient."

JUST IN TIME FOR PRIDE MONTH AND THE WORLD CUP.

Transgender Women's Soccer Player Outed On Free Kick.

"OW MY...umm...INNER THIGH! IT...umm...STINGS!"

OPPRESSION OLYMPICS IN SEATTLE.

As part of the American Semiquincentennial, footie's World Cup will take place in the Americas, with some games scheduled to take place in Seattle.  In June, which cheeseheads grew up understanding as Dairy Month, but of late, the alphabet people have made it an occasion for shedding of inhibitions.

THERE IS NO END TO THE ENVIRONMENTALIST WACKO LUNACY.

Now footie's World Cup has to go.  For the polar bears.  "We’re football fans who see no alternative: The CO2 party must end."

Never mind that footie has been enough of a leftist virtue signal that "soccer mom" became a political category.  Never mind that Rush Limbaugh called attention to the adverse health effects of heading the ball with his "Keep Our Own Kids Safe" campaign.  The latest compression of the intersectional singularity is Urgently Necessary.

Football is more popular than Jesus of Nazareth and John Lennon combined. And at first glance, it seems like a pastime that doesn’t harm the environment: Players just need a ball, some space, and the desire to run. But the data are shocking: Football is directly responsible for 0.3-0.4% of the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to Denmark’s emissions. The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2024 the sport generated more than 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels as a source of energy, equivalent to 150 million barrels of oil. Every match at the men’s World Cup finals emits between 44,000 and 72,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases, the same as 30,000 to 50,000 cars on British roads each year. Recent studies estimate that emissions from the cup will range between 1.65 and 3.63 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent between 2000 and 2026.

Let’s also consider football’s basic equipment: boots and balls. Generations of kangaroos have been slaughtered, with the blessing of the Australian government, as raw material for “k-leather” boots, while balls from Pakistan are made from petroleum-derived synthetic leather, rubber, and cotton extracted from plant species, and leather and glue obtained from animals slaughtered before their natural lifespan. The 60 million balls sold in 2010 travelled from the sewing workshops in Sialkot to the professional football pitches of Europe and the Americas. The balls emerge from these frequently clandestine sewing workshops to a carbon cycle of transport companies, customs administrations, equipment, the advertising industry, sporting goods retailers, and department stores. The chain turns a ball costing 63 rupees (€0.62) into a product retailing for over €100.

No, that is not parody, it's offered In All Earnestness.

Sponsorship by companies with high CO2 emissions alone is responsible for 75% of sports emissions, as it stimulates demand for highly polluting products and lifestyles. The large eco-laundering multinationals use football to cover up their environmental shame. For example, shortly after Repsol spilled thousands of barrels of oil on 1,400 hectares of Peru’s Pacific coast in 2022, killing native life and destroying the livelihoods of thousands of people, the company signed a sponsorship with the national team. The motto of the project, also associated with supporting youth and women’s representatives, was “Let’s look to the future.” In Spain, Repsol and Petronor have signed an agreement to supply renewable energy to Athletic Club de Bilbao that supposedly demonstrates the multinational’s commitment to decarbonization. But the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority found Repsol distorted its environmental commitment by highlighting production of synthetic fuels and biofuels, which only account for a small fraction of its core business—fossil fuels.

The accounting doesn't bother to fret over that larger fraction of the fossil fuel use accounted for by all those minivans schlepping all those aspiring Carli Lloyds and Leonel Messis to practice and camp and the games.  That's because they have much bigger things to fret about.

The 2026 men’s World Cup is expanding to include 48 national teams. For the first time, matches will be held in three huge countries: Canada, Mexico, and the United States, across four time zones, in 16 venues separated by several thousand kilometers, each with derisory public transport. Five and a half million spectators are expected, who will need to use the map to locate the venues: Mexico City will mark the southernmost point, Vancouver the north, Boston the east, and San Francisco the west. In terms of logistics, practically all travel will be by air due to a primitive railway infrastructure. Radio France refers to this as a “very carbonated cocktail.” The New Weather Institute with Scientists for Global Responsibility estimates that aviation emissions “will increase by 160% to 325% in each of the three tournaments in 2026, 2030, and 2034” compared to recent World Cups.

The horror!  But environmentalist wackos, like any other puritanical sect, are people perpetually fretful that somebody is having fun.  Have no fun, they urge.  "We’re football fans who see no alternative: The CO2 party must end. Abolish the World Cup!"

I have no plans to attend or to watch any World Cup games.  Where can I sell carbon offsets?

IF IT INVOLVES SOCCER, IS IT A VICTORY?

I'm no fan of stadium subsidies.

Columbus Alive columnist Rob Moore invokes settled social science to prevent the local professional soccer squad from robbing more taxpayers.  "A highly respected poll of economists conducted last year found 24 major economists agreeing that stadium subsidies will cost taxpayers more than the economic benefits they generate. Only one economist dissented. This isn’t quite 'existence of climate change' level consensus, but it’s pretty close."

It's probably a higher level of consensus, as "climate change" per se is present as long as there are sun-spots, and the earth following an elliptic orbit of variable eccentricity whilst precessing on its axis.  There's probably more variation, particularly among economists, about the policy proposals Our Political Masters have in mind for the anthropogenic components of climate change, than there is about the rent-seeking generated by stadium subsidies.

Let us therefore praise Joe Mansueto, who will build his Chicago Fire a stadium on the site of the old Baltimore and Ohio coach yards with his own money.

There was no begging or badgering for billions in public funds. No threats to move the franchise to Nashville, Tennessee, or Tampa, Florida, or some other city desperate to lure a migratory sports team. No hand-wringing over downtown versus suburban stadium sites.

No demand that the public pay up, for the benefit of the wealthy sports team owner.

None of that came from Mansueto. Instead, the Calumet City native and billionaire founder of the Morningstar research and financial services firm simply published a notice in local newspapers. Mansueto’s full-page advertisement gracefully broke the news, stirring the spirits of a city that’s bone tired of sports team owners asking taxpayers to lay out billions so the owners can get even richer.

He's commended accordingly by Chicago Tribune guest editorialist David Greising.

Mansueto’s low-key move is simple: He’ll plunk down $650 million to build a 22,000-seat soccer venue in time to open the 2028 MLS season. And the knock-on effect is that the civic conversation about what government owes to sports owners who want to move their teams just got a lot simpler.

When asked by those owners, a firm “no” from city and state is definitely an option. The burden of proof for any kind of need should firmly lie with the owners; the public figures who give anything away should make a detailed and persuasive financial case to the public, and we hold elected officials accountable for any concessions they do make.

The Halas-McCaskey family, owners of the Chicago Bears, and Jerry Reinsdorf, lead owner of the White Sox, both have banked on public funding to help them build new stadiums. Reinsdorf on Thursday revealed he has agreed to sell the White Sox to investor Justin Ishbia beginning in 2029 — with capital infusions to come from Ishbia during the intervening years.

Chances weren’t good for either team even before the Fire announcement. Gov. JB Pritzker, in particular, has been steadfast in his refusal to help the Bears or the White Sox build new playgrounds for their teams. He allowed staff to meet with the Bears toward the spring legislative session, but nothing so far has come of what appeared to be a courteous gesture on the governor’s part.

It's time for public officials to say no to these hold-up attempts by sports team owners.  That "stadium-building boom" Mr Greising notes?  What would you expect, dear reader, when public officials get into that positional arms race for the jobs bonanzas that never materialize?

Unlike Mansueto and Ryan, it’s altogether possible that the Halas-McCaskeys and Reinsdorf simply cannot cover the cost of the new stadiums they covet. And both owners understandably believe their teams need new arenas in order to compete in their leagues, given the stadium-building boom that has beset professional sports.

There are options available that would enable both ownership groups to build new stadiums, maintain control of their teams and proceed without drawing from public funds. The Bears franchise last year was valued at $6.4 billion by Forbes magazine — nearly double the estimated value in 2020. The White Sox are worth more than $2 billion, according to Forbes.

All it takes is courageous politicians saying No to stadium subsidies, which is to say, we're going to be waiting a while.

THE PRICE OF SUCCESS.

Carli Lloyd had a rough time with the skills tests during the Special Forces reality show, during which time other sorts of rough times presented themselves.  "She hired a life coach of some kind, the better to be able to get to the highest levels of women's footie, and that might have contributed to the rift with her kin."  Despite that, she successfully completed the course.

THE DEFLATING HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

No, this is not a scoop from the Patriots' training camp.  Rather, it's bad news from one of those all-high-school-sports, all-the-time Rockford television stations.  "Rockford Christian High School confirmed Thursday evening its 2024 varsity football season is canceled.  The Royal Lions couldn’t put together a roster for the season due to low numbers."

That's been going on in high school sports for some time.

And yet, the Rockford television stations, which would put the story of a Chicago Cub pitcher carrying a perfect game against the White Sox into the ninth inning hitting a walk-off home run (because they'd use the designated hitter on the south side) that breaks up the Sox pitcher's no-hitter behind a story involving a high school cross country team that's running in the state championship, have been, during their high school football training camp reporting, featuring teams that have gone from eleven to seven on a side, and there are some new teams reflecting consolidations among high schools. In both situations, it's fewer kids going out for football, despite the shot at more than fifteen minutes of fame on local television.

The way the things have been going with the Cubs and Sox of late, a few feel-good high school football stories might boost morale around the sports desk.  Some of the Rockford area high schools have been putting more money into sports.  Others, not so much, and in some smaller school districts rivalries of long standing have been put aside, the better to be able to put eight men on a field.  "Those eight player squads are becoming more common in Illinois, and some of those squads are joint efforts of more than one high school."

I wonder if the television stations will send crews out for homecoming night footie matches, which are replacing the traditional football games at schools giving up on football.

MEGAN RAPINOE'S FAREWELL TOUR DIDN'T END WELL.

That provided the right-populist Internet no end of glee when the U.S. women's footie team failed to win a World Cup, yet again.  And women's sports types, particularly the alphabet people and the Blame America Firsters, are pretty good at undermining their value proposition.

Is history rhyming, this time with the U.S. women's basketball Olympic team?  "Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi Make Strong Statements After Controversial Team USA Selections."

The women's basketball community has been bemoaning the fact that Caitlin Clark wasn't named to Team USA's 12-person roster for the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics.

And one big reason people are so upset is because they feel like Clark is more deserving than a few players who did make the cut; namely, Phoenix Mercury standouts Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner.

While Taurasi is undoubtedly a legend, she is turning 42 years old in a few days, and has already won five gold medals.

And Griner has been injured all season and just returned to the court.

Both acquitted themselves well in a weekend game that probably didn't sell out their arena.  There's still a lot of carping, particularly people raising the possibility that Ms Taurasi got brought back for one more run at the gold, which some not necessarily fans characterized as crowding out you-know-who.

It's all rather silly, but then people who are not serious are screwing other things up pretty well right now.

Let's see what happens when the games tip off in Paris.

ADVANTAGE, COLD SPRING SHOPS.

A few weeks ago, we called attention to a new sort of sports bar in, doesn't it figure, Minneapolis.  That got a stringer for Milwaukee's Journal-Sentinel, Zoe Takaki, thinking.  "People are watching women’s sports now more than ever. A city known for sports and drinking; Milwaukee is the perfect candidate for a women's sports bar." I don't know if she intends the video as a loan application.

Maybe she's preparing to mau-mau a venture capitalist into funding the project, or perhaps that sort of woke language is mandatory in applications for Small Business Administration loans under the Jarrett regency.

These attributes make Milwaukee the perfect spot for a women’s sports bar. I can hear it now, the contrarian arguing that an establishment like this would fail because women don’t watch sports and male sports fans don’t watch women’s sports. This assumption is false (and sexist) especially in Wisconsin, considering where we've been and what we just experienced.

That's not going to get me interested in underwriting a business loan.  Maybe there is a Milwaukee entrepreneur so inclined.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Buckle in, if the first few installations of this series set a trend, it's going to be a rough year.  Solar Panels in Gaza Can’t Withstand Bombs.  "The question of Palestine undoubtedly encompasses racial, economic, health, gender, queer, and carceral dimensions. At the nexus of these intersectional issues is the environmental concern. In Gaza, limited access to food, land, water, and electricity are not just infrastructure problems, they are pressing environmental concerns that intersect with larger social justice issues."  Read that and weep, that's the quality of analysis that got Rozina Kanchwala a Fulbright.

Fortunately, more people are discovering the affirmative action asterisk.  "We will also begin devoting special attention to minority employees of limited qualifications to make them genuinely productive in the shortest possible time. Hopefully we can maintain standards of performance throughout."  Translated:  "[Diversity hiring] demands that less qualified minorities be hired instead of more qualified white and Asian men and, often, women. That is the whole point. DEI doesn’t 'tackle' discrimination, it viciously implements discrimination."  The scam isn't working any more.  "Claudine Gay is simply the latest beneficiary of a leftwing intellectual privilege that not only excuses away research misconduct—it also attempts to shift the blame onto the parties who made the discovery, no matter the validity of the evidence."

The adults are up for re-election.  "In real life, Biden went on to oversee crisis after crisis—record-high inflation, record-high illegal immigration, a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—even as he stone-walled the press, dodged accountability, and tamped down on online criticism. Nevertheless, sympathetic news outlets have continued to defer to Biden and his technocrats."  Like the Bears, they still suck.  "Amazingly, the same team that brought us the border, inflation, and the Afghanistan disaster is still on the playing field. And it keeps racking up the L’s."

Mine is not a sympathetic news outlet.  Turf them out.

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.