Sports Rant: July 18, 2011
Maxim chats with sports blogger Drew Magary of Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber about this weekend’s athletic hits and misses.
Maxim chats with sports blogger Drew Magary of Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber about this weekend’s athletic hits and misses.
bigdaddydrew: Your gender let us down yesterday.
MEN WOULD NEVER CHOKE LIKE THAT.
Largely because they’d fail to make the quarters.
maxim: It was a huge bummer. Though I was watching in a bar (reppin’ the brand–I don’t just write for Maxim, I LIVE IT.) and maybe this is actually a sad statement on women’s sports, that this is how low I set the bar, but I was psyched that people were INTO it!
bigdaddydrew: I think it was a great game regardless of gender, and it proved to me that women’s soccer can be as exciting as men’s. As with women’s and men’s tennis.
There isn’t that huge gap like you see with the NBA and WNBA.
You saw people just liking the event for what it was, and not getting caught up in the gender politics of it all (except for Jay Mariotti, who’s an idiot), and I think that’s kind of the whole goal, you know?
I think you just want people to be naturally passionate, and people were.
maxim: Yeah, that’s what my friend and I were discussing as we watched. It’s not like people were like, “This is exciting…for women’s sports.” It was just exciting, period.
bigdaddydrew: Yup. And thank God for the WWC, because the sports world is DEAD.
Also, game wise, that first Japan goal in the shootout was weird.
Hope Solo just fucking stood there.
And I was like, “Did someone call timeout?”
Like, she stepped one way, then the ball went the other and she was like, “Oh, it’s going the other way. Oh, well. No sense going after THAT!”
maxim: Yeah, it looked better on the replay, but only slightly. In real time it was almost impossible to tell she’d committed in the opposite direction at all. In slo mo, you could kind of see her leaning right but then yeah, just watching the shot go left, like, “Well, I’ll have five more chances to stop them, so…no biggie.”
bigdaddydrew: And I’m sure it wasn’t any kind of slack off. It just LOOKED weird.
maxim: Right.
Things that didn’t look weird? Abby Wambach’s goals. That chick’s head is deadly. And her goal in penalty rounds was the only solid shot anyone on that team took.
bigdaddydrew: Yeah. She’s like Wayne Rooney, if Wayne Rooney were a girl and didn’t love whores.
maxim: My friend theorized that she’s so good because she has “soccer hair.” And the Japanese team overall had lots more soccer hair than the US team, and that’s why they won. Because they went full-hog into giving up their hair for soccer, not trying to look pretty while playing.
Not the worst theory I’ve ever heard as to the keys to victory.
bigdaddydrew: True.
Every Japanese player had Fozzie Bear hair.
Might have been plastic hair.
And I don’t like it.
I much prefer a sexy, saucy ponytail swingin’ round.
maxim: Totes. But those ponytails, they can swing in your eyes in a key moment and–boom!–you hit the crossbar instead of the ol’ “onion bag.” (Just a little soccer lingo I picked up.)
maxim: So supposedly, for real this time, we are MERE DAYS away from the end of the NFL lockout!!!
Thursday. D-day.
bigdaddydrew: All hell will break loose next week. It’s gonna be a fucking nutty month.
maxim: How’s it gonna work with getting free agents signed? Are they just gonna have, like, a Super-Signer Weekend Extravaganza or something?
Teams are gonna have about five minutes to do a lot of practical business.
bigdaddydrew: I think they’re trying to figure that out now.
In a perfect world, they just cancel the first two preseason games and give it more time.
But you know they won’t do that
maxim: No way. They have to take our hard-earned dollars for those meaningless pre-season games!
What do you think about the James Harrison kerfuffle?
bigdaddydrew: It’s the kind of thing that raises a stink because there’s a news vacuum.
Otherwise, he’d have been fined and suspended by now and we’d be past it.
But because the lockout is still on, you can drag it out.
OOOOH WHAT WILL THEY DO TO HIM.
You already knew he was a loudmouth.
maxim: Yeah, I was not particularly surprised. I actually thought it was kinda funny that he called out Roethlisberger.
bigdaddydrew: Because you know deep down everyone on that team still hates him.
maxim: Oh yeah. It’s fun to imagine the shit they must say about him.
bigdaddydrew: LOUSY RAPIST QB OF OURS.
But there will be some serious shifts in the league power structure. If Nnamdi signs with Dallas and the Eagles jettison Kolb and leave themselves open to getting killed if Vick gets injured…
It’s gonna be nutty.
maxim: Yeah, Nnamdi needs to go somewhere where he’s not wasted.
Oh, crap–I forgot the British Open.
Yay? That nice older gentleman won his first major, so that was good?
Of course all any sports journalists in America can talk about is how an American hasn’t won in a while and oh my God we’re not dominant anymore and “puts Tiger’s legacy in perspective” etc.
bigdaddydrew: Yeah, I think it got overshadowed by the ladies.
No Tiger and no Rory in contention means no one cared.
Rory is the new Tiger for extremely casual golf fans.
Or at least, that’s what I’ve been ordered to believe.
maxim: Right. It’s a bummer that that sport can’t generate more than one star at a time.
maxim: Alright, any parting words for Roger Goodell and NFL owners in this, the theoretical-maybe-practical Last Week of the Lockout?
bigdaddydrew: GET IT DONE, FUCKOS.