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Eduardo Galeano & Dave Zirin (on FIFA)

In a frankly celebratory column at The Nation, its resident sports-and-social-justice scribe Dave Zirin wrote, in his usual blunt and acerbic style, of the arrests of the FIFA 14. The Federation Internationale de Football Association has long been accused of the most egregious forms of authoritarianism and corruption, and its slogan, “For the Good of the Game”, feels like satire in the wake of this sudden yet seemingly inevitable clampdown. (Having described FIFA’s leadership as “cartoonishly evil”, the satirist John Oliver nods his head vigourously.) Zirin is not waving pom-poms for the United States Justice Department — he’d be among those who also see a satiric tint in the name of that organization — but he has been calling for action on sporting corruption of many kinds for years. He wrote the book on Brazilian activism against global giga-events that you may have heard of.

Another writer to know better, who knew better than you and me about many things. Including the wearing of blue berets. (Photograph: Pablo Porciuncula/AFP/Getty Images)

Another writer to know better, who knew better than you and me about many things. Including the wearing of blue berets. (Photograph: Pablo Porciuncula/AFP/Getty Images)

Fittingly, Zirin invokes the late great Uruguayan journalist and histori-contrarian Eduardo Galeano. His Memory of Fire series of books on the colonization of South and Central America is a landmark of “people’s history”, and before that came the monumental Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. For many, though, his football opus Soccer in Sun and Shadow was his greatest literary gift. It’s among the most important and eloquent books on any sport, ever. Early in Zirin’s column, he quotes Galeano,

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NCAA Hoops Lookback: The Fatal Four

Due to, in no particular order, the following factors –

  • a super-concentrated acidic splash by John Oliver, indicting and ridiculing the entire NCAA basketball enterprise (can’t hyperlink right now, but it’s here: http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/john-oliver-ncaa-rant-players/2015/03/18/id/630823/ ),
  • my own manic attention to the CIS version of March Madness, spent watching the games of the (Ontario University Athletics) Wilson Cup and the following week’s Final 8 in Toronto (and a blizzard of hoops-related words that can be accessed just down there),
  • we don’t have a television hook-up, and apparently one of Howdy’s Current Foundational Principles (HCFP) is the refusal to pay for live-streaming of games on my laptop,
  • I don’t have many basketball friends,
  • increasing miles on the spectator-sport odometer, games-related grumpiness, impatience with commercials, crankiness over announcers’ clichés, and
  • (possibly?) growing good sense –

I didn’t watch any of the opening weekend of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. (HCFP No. 2: the “play-in games” earlier in the week to decide the last four Cinderellas invited to the Big Dance of 64 do not count. Round 1 of the tournament starts Thursday, not Tuesday. Lines must be drawn. <cough> Ahem. Right. It’s not climate-change denial or global terrorism, but from tiny seeds does a mighty apocalypse grow.)

(None of which explains why I’m writing about it so late. I plead lethargy, sloth, intermittent apathy and mild existential angst. And books. I was tired of writing there for a bit — well, my own, anyway. Glad that’s all over now!)

Okay, and since truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues, and I do aspire to virtuosity of some kind or another, I clarify: I did invite myself to Bernie and Wendy’s living room for the second Gonzaga game in the opening weekend, in case they failed again to make it to the Sweet 16. The Zags did, though CBS had switched to Oklahoma/Dayton, which had very little interest for me even though Dyshawn Pierre is an Ontario kid I liked reading about from China last March, during the Flyers’ stirring run ascent to the Sweet 16, to national jock consciousness and, lest we forget, to millions of new dollars flowing to a previously obscure Ohio school. (Well, obscure from an athletic point of view, that is. To me. I know nothing of its standing in biomedical research or the teaching of the humanities.  And who would care about THAT?)

Yes, and I waited ‘til the actual weekend of the second weekend — also known as The Elite Eight — jimmied the rear door at Wendy and Bernie’s (twice), and lingered like an especially blue-cheesy smell in their otherwise pleasant back kitchen. Here’s what I saw:

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John Oliver (on the “cartoonishly evil” FIFA)

“There are now allegations that some FIFA executives took bribes to put the World Cup in Qatar. And I hope that’s true, because otherwise it makes literally no sense….You are hosting the World Cup somewhere where soccer cannot physically be played [because of the heat]. That’s like if the NFL chose to host the Super Bowl in a lake….FIFA is just appalling, and yet, here’s their power: I am still so excited about the World Cup next week.”

John Oliver (1977-) is a British comedian and satirist. His “Last Week Tonight” show on HBO is not unlike Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show”, where he got his start on the west side of the Atlantic. So: though many Americans are reflexively antagonistic to somebody with an accent (different from theirs) on their airwaves, he has a pretty big fan club. He’s no Republican, though, and many Americans must hate him because he’s “smug” (all Brits and Frenchies are smug) and he laughs at stuff that might otherwise make him scream. He can mock himself, too, but it’s mainly the rich and entitled that he skewers. Mockery of the powers that be is a guilty pleasure. I’m slightly conflicted about it, but I’d rather laugh than rage. Mostly.

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