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July 10, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
July 10, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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The Eastern elitists who behind the scenes run the program here have been encouraging me to talk about the World Cup and Kit Cats.
I'm not going to talk about Kit Kats, I don't think, but I am going to talk about the World Cup, not because I don't want to.
I actually do want to today.
Because if you didn't see it, believe it or not, something interesting actually occurred.
But before I get to the World Cup, I am going to talk about NASCAR.
I am going to talk about NASCAR.
First of all, it pains me to admit this, but I'm willing to bet the television ratings for the World Cup final yesterday were higher than the ratings for the next L Cup NASCAR race in Jolie and Illinois.
First of all, the NASCAR race was on cable.
I think it was on TNT.
And the World Cup was on ABC.
Secondly, the World Cup did get a little bit more hype.
So more Americans probably watch the World Championship of Soccer than the NASCAR stock car race.
That's a little bit embarrassing.
But people who have been so upset that we have not been more interested in the World Cup, they're wrong about that too.
But I am going to talk about NASCAR.
I don't want to come across as a hater, as we conservatives are always accused of being, but I'm going to I hate Jeff Gordon.
You guys you have to understand, I'm doing the show in New York.
I'm talking to people here.
They have no idea even who he is.
They have no idea what he did yesterday.
You don't know anything about this, do you?
You've you haven't met Jeff Gordon.
The Jeff Gordon or some pitcher for some team, the Jeff Gordon, the driver.
You did meet him.
All right, great.
I've met Jeff Gordon.
Okay, now you're a real American.
There are millions of people in America who do care about this.
Earlier in the year, Jeff Gordon was in a race with Mac Kenseth, and he bumped him out of the way.
These stock cars are now so aerodynamic that if you just bump one from behind, it spins and it spins out of control.
And it's become the way that a lot of guys late in a race will pass if you can't get around a guy.
Just kind of tap his bumper and he spins, and suddenly the leader goes from first place down to 15th place.
Happened earlier this year.
Then Kenseth did it to Gordon.
In another race.
It clearly was payback.
Kenseth tried to apologize to Gordon and Gordon gave him a shove.
All right, here we are yesterday in the race in Joliet, Illinois, which is near Chicago.
Kenseth, and if you're wondering if I have an agenda here, I do.
Kenseth is in the lead and he's dominating the race just as he did last year.
Here comes little pretty boy Gordon up behind him.
Five laps to go, and he taps him, Kenseth spins, and that's the end of the race.
Gordon went on to win the race.
Now, my bias here is Matt Kenseth is from Wisconsin.
As am I, he's my favorite NASCAR driver.
His crew chief is from Wisconsin, Robbie Riser.
Great guy.
His personal hero is Vince Lobardi.
They really want to win this race in Illinois because it's the closest one to their home state of Wisconsin.
Kenseth had the dominant car for the second year in a row.
This time around, as happened earlier in the year, Gordon spun him out.
What I don't like about it is Gordon is now denying it.
Well, it just happened.
Matt sort of slowed up in front of me.
I didn't really mean to do it.
I feel badly about it.
Just admit you did it.
Just admit you did it.
NASCAR is going to allow him to get away with it.
Every week NASCAR's uh boss, Mike Helton, has the meeting with the driver and you know, we've been allowing a lot of stuff to be gotten away with, but this week we're gonna crack down, there's gonna be suspensions.
You can't do this, you can't.
So what happens at the end of the race, Jeff Gordon just spins somebody out, they don't do anything to him, and he's allowed to get away with it, and the guy who should have won and who I wanted to win didn't win.
Which I guess I can accept because I think Matt Kenseth is fully capable of knocking Jeff Gordon out of the way where the situation's reverses.
Don't kid us.
We all saw it in America.
We all saw that Gordon spun out Kensis.
So anyway, Gordon wins the race a few laps later, and does those burnouts right in front of the grandstand that they like to do when they win, you know, do the wheelies and it's kind of the equivalent of a TO move, a Terrell Owens move.
And fans are pelting beer bottles down on him and booing him.
See, Jeff Gordon is not liked by NASCAR fans and never has been, who somehow they just think that he's not enough like Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, and he's a little bit too much like a Formula One driver.
So now he goes, Kens is a popular guy, and he's doing this, and they're throwing beer bottles out.
The TV announces are deployed.
What's terrible?
You're not a real fan of NASCAR.
They're plastic bottles, they are in class.
He's in a car, it's not like anything was going to happen.
I'm not defending the beer bottle throwers, but right there, I would have thrown a straw or something.
The difference, though, this is all going to come together.
There's a point in telling the story other than just me getting this frustration off my chest because Kenseth should have won.
There is a point of the story, and it does tie together with the World Cup.
My point isn't just that NASCAR is a superior is a superior sport to soccer, although it is.
My point is this.
The difference between American drivers in NASCAR and these French guys who are playing soccer.
Is our guy cheated to win, the French guy cheated to lose.
You got to think about what this is.
What's his name?
Zidane, Zidane, Zidane.
His nickname is Zizi, right?
Zizou.
He's apparently like they keep saying, well, he's the greatest soccer player in the world.
Didn't they tell me four days ago that this Rolando was the greatest soccer player in the world?
And before that, Beckham from England is the greatest soccer player in the world.
They're so busy hyping things they can't even get their hype straight.
But he's apparently great, and this was to be his last game.
The score is tied.
What a surprise.
It's always tied.
The shock was that it wasn't tied nothing nothing.
It was tied one to one.
And there's ten minutes left in the game.
And Zidane, for some reason, decides to headbutt one of the Italians.
And I saw the replay.
You you watch ESPN, you saw it at nauseum.
He just decided to crack the other guy with his head.
Which is a weird thing to do when you think about it, but I guess they're so used to using those heads to bop the balls around that he decided to headbutt the other guy.
So they bring out one of those cards, a pink card or a blue card or a yellow.
I don't even know which card is for which, but I think it was a red card, which is when they throw you out of the game.
So now with the game tied and ten minutes left, Zidane is thrown out of the game.
Gets even better.
See, unlike real sports, where when you're tied at the end of the game, you just keep playing until someone wins.
In soccer, they go to the penalty kicks, which is the equivalent of if you decided the NBA champion.
Let's imagine game seven of the NBA finals was tied.
And instead of playing in overtime as they do, you have a game of horse.
That's what soccer does.
They have these penalty kicks.
So now Zidane, who's France's best player and apparently a brilliant goal scorer, if you can be a brilliant goal scorer in a sport that never scores any goals.
Zidane is not available for his team to participate in the penalty kick round, and they go on to lose.
Italy wins, Italy wins the World Cup.
First of all, this whole thing reinforces every stereotype that you're ever going to have about both the French and the Italians.
The French display, incredible, brazen, arrogant stupidity.
What a shock that is.
A France guy got headstrong and did something incredibly arrogant and incredibly brazen and got caught red-handed, and it cost his country the World Cup.
In the meantime, the Italians are corrupt.
The entire Italian team plays for this team in Italy called Juventus, which is under indictment in Italy for throwing matches for rigging matches for gamblers.
So the Italians are corrupt, and the French once again are losers and come across as incredibly idiotic losers.
In France today, according to the news reports that I am reading, there is considerable consternation about all of this.
French officials are very, very concerned about what this is going to mean for the country.
Sports Minister Marie Georges Bouffet said Zidane's act was unforgivable.
Now, why do you figure the sports minister of France figures that this act was unforgivable?
Well, the logical answer would be because it cost them the game.
No, not in France.
This was unforgivable because now remember, France is the ultimate lefty nation.
It is unforgivable because its effect on the children watching the game.
We can't excuse this gesture.
How are we going to explain this to our children, this act of brutality?
I don't know.
How have Frenchmen have been explaining their country to their children for these last hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years?
So it actually was kind of interesting.
The way they end these World Cups is really, really stupid.
Why not play in overtime until somebody scores?
I guess their fear is that that could be a matter of days, weeks, or even months.
But what other sport ends its championship by having a little kicking contest.
At the end of the Super Bowl, they play over, they would play a sudden death overtime until someone scored, right?
They don't have a field goal kicking contest.
Yet that's what they did in soccer.
Anyway, I find this at least somewhat interesting.
It's kind of funny what happened to the French.
They would have been absolutely insufferable had they won.
As for the fact that the United States largely ignored the World Cup until yesterday.
We are being lectured by the rest of the world and lectured by our media about this.
This is the most popular game in the world.
You should be into it.
They've been jamming soccer down our throats since the late 70s, really the early 80s.
This thing started to get into the schools, and it got into the schools for good reason.
It's a good workout, it's a good thing to use physical education courses for.
And it's a way of getting kids who aren't really athletically inclined, active because they get to run up and down the field.
All right, there's a good reason that it started.
Then they formed all these leagues and parents got involved, and all these kids were playing soccer, and we were told now it's only a matter of time because all the kids are playing, eventually they will grow up and they will become fans.
Guess what?
They grew up and they're not fans.
They're paying as little attention to this as people who never played soccer.
And we should not feel badly about this.
The rest of the world is into soccer, and we're not because the rest of the world doesn't have the better sports that we have.
Football is better than soccer.
Basketball is better than soccer, baseball is better than soccer, and yes, stock car racing is better than soccer.
Soccer is about on the same level as kids' hockey.
Kids playing hockey can't score.
Even regular hockey is better than soccer.
Soccer is a sport that is very rudimentary, played on a large field with a very simple concept.
Try to kick the ball into the goal.
We've developed things that challenge us more, that we find more interesting.
And there is nothing wrong with us not being into it.
This is not to say that there's anything wrong with people who are interested, but they shouldn't be so upset that no one else is.
I'm a fan of horse racing.
I know nobody else pays attention to horse racing.
That doesn't bother me.
I don't run around lecturing why are you not into horse racing the majesty of the horses?
It's so beautiful, it's so exciting.
Plus, you can even bet on it.
I don't care if nobody else cares about it, but people have been trying the people who are into soccer feel as though everybody ought to be into soccer, and it's our duty to be into soccer.
So you got your World Cup, which is a great event.
They do it only once every four years.
Italy won the thing.
It was exciting, France blew it.
You have a controversy and something for people to talk about.
Just don't expect us to have to adopt this as our national sport because we never will, because we don't find it that interesting because it isn't interesting.
Nonetheless, you want to comment on yesterday's World Cup final, France blowing it.
And my xenophobic condescending view toward the whole sport.
The telephone number here is 1800-282-2882.
I'm Mark Elling in for Rush number one.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
Now that the World Cup is over, does this mean that we Americans don't have to have our USA today filled with soccer stories for now four years?
You know, nobody, you know, nobody was reading those stories.
Nobody knows anything about this.
The only soccer guy they ever knew was Beckham because he married a spice girl.
And now we know this Zidane because he's another arrogant Frenchman.
Remember Jean Vandeveld, the guy that had this big lead on the final hole of the British Open Golf Tournament a few years ago, about three or four years ago?
Like he could win with a double bogey and he triple bogeyed, hit the ball into the crick, and then hit it in the crook again, hit the hit it in the crook again, and everyone can't believe that he would be so he's French.
I can't believe Zazan would just decide to headbutt someone at the end of the.
This would be like Albert Pool Holtz in game seven of the World Series tie game in the ninth inning when he's coming up to plate and has a chance to win, instead takes the bat and hits the umpire over the head.
That's the equivalent of what he did.
It gets better.
You know who they named the MVP of the entire World Cup?
Zidane.
How can he first of all their team didn't win?
He cost his team.
This would be like in an American football game if a quarterback threw an interception at the end of the Super Bowl, costing his team the game that you'd make him the MVP.
No, Zidane is the MVP in what do they call what they get?
I think the golden ball.
They voted before the foul.
I think they win the golden ball, which seems like something that you should win for being a porn star and not a soccer player, but that's what he got.
All right, to Fort Myers, Florida, Joel.
Joel, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark.
Hi.
Hi.
I was kind of angered at you uh coming on the radio knocking soccer.
Oh, I'm discussing soccer.
You should be happy.
On Russia's program, you're actually getting a segment that's dealing with soccer.
Yes, but how dare you come on the radio and say NASCAR is a superior sport?
Because it is a NASCAR sport.
I would think it's more of a skill.
Well, whatever.
Whatever.
It's more interesting to watch.
More stuff happens.
And you know what?
We can weekend and week.
See, here's my point.
You can like soccer.
I have no problem with you liking anything esoteric.
There are people who collect stamps.
Hardly anyone else does, but they get great joy in collecting stamps.
There's nothing wrong with being a fan of soccer.
However, you shouldn't be trying to force it on the rest of us or try to convince us that it's interesting.
Week in and week out, more Americans would rather watch those stock car racers than watch a game of soccer.
That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with us.
And I know why they'd rather watch a soccer race than a game of soccer, because stuff happens during a stock car race and almost nothing ever happens in soccer.
Do you know how lucky soccer is that Zidane did this headbutt?
Because if he didn't, there would be nothing to say about that game yesterday.
Oh, did you love that great 47-minute stretch where both teams ran up and down the field and nobody scored?
Other than that, what is there to say about yesterday's game?
Joel.
Well, I thought it was a good game.
Obviously, you don't like soccer.
Tell me one thing interesting that happened in the game other than the headbut.
The goals are both interesting.
Why?
What was interesting about their great shots?
And I'm not condoning what Zidane did, but it's on the same level of a bunch of rednecks throwing beer bottles at a NASCAR race.
It is on the same level.
If Jeff Gordon, remember those the people who did that though are the fans, and by the way, I don't think you should put up soccer fans as being the most behaved fans in the world given their proclivity to riot whenever that whenever they lose a game.
This would be like if Jeff Gordon got out of his car while he was leading and he threw his helmet at another car.
That's the equivalent of what Zedan did.
But even you yourself in describing those two goals.
In describing those two goals, you actually don't remember them, do you?
Yes, I do actually.
You do?
Tell me one thing about them.
First is the penalty.
Yeah.
Which was, you know, a lucky shot on Zidane's part.
Okay, you can't.
No point discussing.
That's my point about soccer.
It's not that interesting.
You're saying there's no point discussing the goals.
The only point I'm trying to make here is that those of us who are bored by soccer and do not find it interesting should not have to put up with people telling us you must be interested in this.
It's your duty to be interested in this.
After all, the rest, the rest of the world is interested in.
It's the number one sport in the World.
They tried that with uh they tried that with us on the metric system.
You have to adopt the metric system.
The entire world used, well, we didn't adopt the metric system.
You know why?
Because our system was better.
It made sense to us.
We don't have to like soccer when we have real football, which is a far more interesting sport.
It's a more complicated sport.
It's a sport that has more strategy associated with it.
It's a sport that has a variety of different skills.
It is a sport that has personalities that people can relate to, and instead of just kicking the ball around the field, you actually can pick it up and run with it and you can throw it.
Things that you can't do in soccer.
And in football, when you commit a penalty, they don't always throw you out of the game.
I admit it is kind of prissy that they throw those flags around in football, but it's better than these referees running around with the little card in the red card, red card, red card, your guns in on.
I'm Mark Bellings sitting in dubiously, at least for Rush Limbaugh.
And another thing.
Admit it.
We're all kind of glad it Italy won.
Unless you're French, and maybe not even then.
Nobody would nobody in this country wanted France to win, did we?
We're better with the Italians.
Although, you know, Zidane head headbuts this Italian.
He's on the field writhing around in pain as if he'd been shot.
I mean, come on.
Come on.
He was just trying to get the call.
I would presume, you know, I know the laws of physics.
If you if I bang somebody with my head, it presumably has to hurt me as much as it hurts him.
They're after all both still skulls, but the other guys in the ground, oh he's riling around and it's what he was doing.
Tom in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Yeah, hey, Mark Nascar, loving dittoes.
Um I think you got your uh some of your facts mixed up there.
It was Kenz that started the fear between him and Gordon.
I tried to get a World Cup discussion going, but inevitably invariably the discussion goes back to the more interesting sport, NASCAR.
Now what did I get wrong here?
Okay, what happened was Kenzh got bumped at Bristol with a few laps to go by Kurt Bush, and he fell back a few positions.
Gordon was running third, and Kenzett just drove right into him, just dumped him, sent him right into the wall.
And Gordon ended up finishing 25th or 21st in that race.
And that's when Kenseth tried to exp he tried to apologize to Gordon and Gordon shoved him, right?
Didn't something happen before then, though, where Gordon did something to Kenseth.
No, they've they've never had any kind of altercation in the past ever.
Oh.
And then uh what happened yesterday is basically, you know.
Gordon rammed Kens.
Well, I don't think he did it intentionally, but he definitely didn't feel sorry.
Come on, Bill Clinton.
He didn't do it intentionally.
Yes.
If you if you were watching the race, you know Gordon had the faster car.
You can't think that was dominant.
He did.
That's why.
See, and I don't know that I even have a problem with it because these guys have been doing this in stockcar racing forever.
You bump a guy to get by him.
The difference, I mean that I love Richard Petty.
He did that all the time.
So did Deal Ernhardt.
The difference now is these cars are so aerodynamic that when you bump one, he just spins.
It's not like you shove them out of the way a little bit.
They spin around and they spin around and they wreck.
Uh there is a big difference though between the two sports.
In auto racing, you take these several thousand pound automobiles and you're smacking other drivers around, and they allow you to get away with it, and you just worry about retribution the following week when you could literally kill the guy.
In soccer, they wave the little red card around.
To uh San Bernardino Brian.
Brian, you're on Russia's program.
Hey, uh Mega NASCAR ditto.
Um I'm trying you soccer fans.
For all of you who say it's the number one sport in the world that it's so interesting.
I'm trying to get a soccer call on.
I can't help it that the audience finds NASCAR more interesting.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you get you know, you get you take man and the ultimate machine and combine it with science, you've got the ultimate sport.
Well, it's way up there at least.
Yeah.
But anyway, about that, you know what?
You're talking about how aerodynamic the cars are.
I don't even think Jeff bumped him.
I think he just got so close that he took the air off.
No, I mean he touched him, but that's all you have to do is touch him, and that that's the that's the end of it.
Yeah, but you do want you do understand you're not buying this nonsense that he didn't do it on purpose, right?
Oh, no, no, no, I'm I'm sure he did.
But of course he did it on purpose, and they ought they ought to just admit that.
I mean, it what what's the point of what's the point of denying it?
So you what?
You saw it yesterday, huh?
Oh, yeah.
Did you see the World Cup?
Did you see the World Cup?
No.
You watch any of the World Cup?
No.
Why not?
It's the number one sport in the world, you know.
I can't believe you didn't watch the World Cup.
We're the only nation not watching the World Cup.
Why didn't you watch the World Cup?
Well, uh, it's just not interesting to me.
I never miss a race, but that wasn't interesting to you.
Now people will argue.
This is because we Americans are I think we're just a more developed society.
We need a sport that has more action, that has more strategy, that has more different kinds of things going on.
And soccer doesn't offer any of those things.
Thank you, Brian.
To San Ramon, California, Bob.
Bob, it's your turn on Russia's show.
Hey, Mark, you did a fantastic job.
I'm skeering uh soccer.
I've got two girls that play it.
It has been a chore to go out and watch them.
This is the most boring game in the world.
Uh and I think it's interesting that it ended up that the the two military powers in the twentieth century, the French and the Italians, ended up playing together, and it was decided by cheating, headbutting, and drama clean.
I mean Well, you gotta you gotta remember that one of them got there by beating Germany, which when push comes to shove in any international competition, uh they're going to lose.
You know what the really fascinating th I can't say anything's fascinating about soccer.
You know what the most fascinating thing about this is the one team the Italians now, obviously they're the world champ, the best in the world, the one team they couldn't beat was us.
That was the team we tied.
Remember that we tie in Italy.
They couldn't beat us, but they beat everybody else, and we're we're clearly we're clearly not very good.
Now, you mentioned your girls.
Women are the American women have come to dominate world soccer, and the difference is if you're a talented athlete, female, there are no real sports out there where there's tremendous money.
So the the great female athlete may well go into soccer.
The great American athlete is going to go into basketball, football, or something or something else.
LeBron J LeBron James could have been great in whatever sport he chose to be in, yet he chose basketball for a lot of reasons.
The reason we're never going to be any good in soccer is our best athletes choose not to go into it.
And again, there's nothing wrong with that.
Well, you know, the the thing about this game is that they don't use the upper body.
So I mean, with women, they're, you know, if if you're looking at upper body strength, that's not a determinant in this game, which which I think is there.
By the way, I am understanding that they're probably gonna put in a new rule change instead of PK's, uh, these penalty kicks.
They're actually gonna now have the games decided by the Hague.
And therefore they won't have all this messiness and and the Europeans will be able to control who wins much better than than they actually have the international community decide.
You know, there is an upside to this.
If the international community decides, they'll just ban us from participating, and we won't even have to go into the thing and get humiliated by not doing doing well.
They will they won't allow us to be in it.
Thank you for the call, Bob.
Say enough for you soccer fans to think I'm being too sarcastic about all of this.
Bob was more harsh than I was.
I'm not denying, and I know have you gotten any hate calls yet from soccer fans?
They're coming in.
And I'll get the emails.
You're a boar, you're an a you're a xenophobic, whatever.
I know I'll get all of that.
I am not saying the World Cup isn't a great event.
First of all, anything that only happens every four years is by definition a great event.
That is a great championship.
And I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with people who are into soccer.
There isn't.
You can get into any anything that you want to be into.
The hang up that I have is this attempt to force feed the United States on it and tell us that we have to be interested.
The television ratings were not very good.
They generally got twos and threes.
Whereas in the rest of the world, the ratings were in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in terms of their rating shares.
We're not into it.
We're never going to be into it.
We see a game that has all sorts of flaws.
Now you could jerry rig the rules of soccer and make it more interesting to Americans.
For example, you could have a smaller field.
You could put up a fence on the side that would keep the ball in play.
It would simply ricochet off and you wouldn't have all those infernal out of bounds plays.
You could make the goal even bigger.
There are things that you could do.
It would no longer be soccer, but you could alter the game to make it more interesting for Americans to watch.
It wouldn't then be soccer, but that's kind of the point.
We don't find soccer to be an interesting sport.
Mount Shasta, California, Wayne, it's your turn on EIB.
Hello.
Yeah, I got a little bit of a bone to pick with you on the soccer thing.
Not that it really makes any difference.
I enjoy it.
You don't, that's fine.
Uh I'm an American.
I played American football.
Uh in my when I turned about 20, I worked with a guy who was from Germany who played soccer with the German team, asked me to come out and practice.
I went out and practiced with him, thinking that I'm the big bad weightlifting football player, and I'm going to show these little foreigners how it's done.
And they made a fool out of me.
And I learned in during the case.
I didn't say it was easy to be good at it.
I didn't say it.
I didn't say it was an easy game to play.
I said it was a boring game to play.
Well, it's boring if you don't understand it.
No, I understand it.
They always say if you don't understand it, I understand soccer.
What is not to understand?
You try to kick the ball, the the ball into this great big goal, and you try to get it around the goaltender who's running around back there.
In the meantime, you have to show incredible footwork.
You have to show incredible speed and stamina.
You have to have be very athletically talented to be able to hit that ball with your head and direct it in the in the direction that they directed.
I understand all of those things.
They s you guys keep saying it's because we don't understand it.
We understand it.
It's not very complicated.
We just don't like it.
Well, I I don't think you're right there, but let's go to football, for example.
I am about about the I am right.
Hardly anybody in America cares about the World Cup.
Hardly anybody in America follows the outdoor soccer league that we have here.
It is a niche sport, and it will be never be anything greater than that.
And there shouldn't be anything wrong with that.
Those of you who are into it shouldn't be as bothered as you are by the fact that most of your fellow Americans have found a lot of things that are more interesting than soccer, even baseball's more interesting than soccer.
Well, I disagree there.
I used to be a great baseball fan.
I don't watch it anymore.
Football, they play two and a half to five minutes.
The rest of the time they're standing around, they're in the huddle, they run fifty yards, they go sit out two plays.
Yeah, but you know what?
In that two and a half to five minutes, they usually figure out a way to score, which is something that never happens in soccer.
That's what makes a goal in soccer so good is because it it's not like basketball that should start out at eighty and eighty and play five minutes.
And by that definition, then soccer would be best of all if nobody ever scored.
Which is pretty close to the way it is right now.
By the way, why is it so hard to score?
Well, because those goals are as big as Alaska.
How come they never score?
And if you have you noticed that when they miss a goal in soccer, it never let you know, and hockey, forever they're always hitting the post with their shots.
Okay.
Just missing.
In soccer, there's there are these guys are twenty-five feet away and they miss by forty feet.
Okay, you take a uh uh a football quarterback who throws a twenty-yard pass off the fingertips of the guy, and they say, What a great pass.
He's throwing it with his hands.
These guys are doing it with their feet, and they're catching the ball with their feet.
And they're running constantly.
They're not standing around breathing on occupation.
If they just thought about it and they allowed that guy to pick that ball up and throw it, Americans might find it more interesting.
Thank you for the call, Wayne.
I really don't mean to offend you, even though this is going to be even worse than what I took on Immigration the last time I was here.
This time I actually think most people agree with me because nobody was watching this.
Let me pull the delegation.
Did you watch the World Cup final?
Our new trainee, did you watch the World Cup final?
I know you watched Mr. France, who took his vacation in France.
You watched the World Cup final, didn't you?
Yeah, you did.
It was the only no, the stock car race was on.
There was there was probab there was I meant to you watch it here yesterday.
You you had to.
You had to.
Okay, yeah, I had to.
That's what every guy I know who watches American Idols says.
I have to.
My kids.
I'm Mark Delling sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I don't know what Russia's attitude is towards soccer, although I'm in his studio here and looking at his memorabilia.
I see all these footballs and football helmets.
I don't see a single soccer ball up there.
So I think I'm okay on that.
As for you soccer fans, I can prove a point here.
You can't come up with anything to say about yesterday's game.
There is nothing interesting to talk about.
One of the things that Americans now demand of their sports is we have to have the ability to analyze it, to argue it.
Did this coach do the right thing?
Should this guy start?
Should that that guy not start?
You watch ESPN in most of the programs, baseball tonight.
Should this guy be doing that?
Who should be doing that?
What are you going to say with regard to soccer?
What strategy do you discuss?
What move do you discuss?
There's no argument.
Should they have called this play?
Should they do that?
Should they have gone for first down on this play?
These things are things that Americans get into.
We want to be able to talk about our sport.
What do you even say about yesterday's World Cup match, other than Zidane should not have headbutted that guy?
There's nothing else to really say or analyze.
And as for the act of Zidane doing it, what American athlete would be dumb enough to do that?
There's only one I can think of.
We have one athlete in this country dumb enough to do what Zedan did.
Mike Tyson.
In fact, he did do that.
Didn't Mike Tyson do that against Holyfield and get disqualified or something?
No, I think he headbutted before he bit the year off.
Didn't he headbutt somebody once?
He's the only athlete we have in this country as dumb as Zidane.
Uh Glenn Allen, Virginia, Tom, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark.
I got a few things for you.
First, I was a fan of yours until you started dogging soccer.
I got a couple of things.
You should be happy I'm discussing it.
Well, listen, I'm not trying to say that soccer is the best.
I'm I'm a soccer fan, but I think football is the best sport.
Okay.
By far that's the best sport.
But if you look at American sports, take hockey, baseball, and basketball.
Every year the number of foreign players increases.
So we don't have, and if you look at the world championships of all these sports, we don't have the best players in those sports.
Well, we we actually do, but it is a strength of our sports sports that the rest of the world wants to play them.
The NBA has gotten better since foreign players like Dirk Nowitzki have added it.
It is a credit to baseball, which was an American-invented sport, that it is becoming one of the great sports of the entire world.
These are all good things.
They're not bad things.
But by and large, the better players still are largely American.
But I have no problem with internationalization of a sport.
I'm merely saying that Americans who choose not to be interested in soccer aren't doing anything wrong.
Well, no, but what you don't have to do is you don't have to, as a, as an announcer, you don't have to publicly demean it just because you know, just because you don't like it, you compare it to NASCAR and football, and you say, well, it's not football.
Well, nothing is football, but in soccer's not saying that they are football.
The only demeaning of it that I am doing is in response.
Don't say it's the number one sport in the world.
I am so high tired of hearing it's the number one sport in the world.
There are a lot of things that are number one in the world that we don't do and for good reason.
We have evolved more than the rest of the world has evolved.
The point that I am trying to make is in response to all of those who keep saying it's the number one sport in the world.
You must be interested in it.
No, we don't have to be interested in it.
And there are a lot of good reason sport.
Now you tell me what's so great about a sport that you can't score in.
Mark, let me ask you a question.
You're not gonna answer it because soccer fans can't answer it.
They secretly wish the games were nine to seven and that they were more exciting.
You do wish that that was the case.
All right, now give me one interesting statement about yesterday's game.
Say one interesting thing about the game yesterday.
I think the set pieces that Italian had that the Italian teams had were great.
They just missed their chances of fewer.
What was the what was great about them?
What did they do?
The way they brought the their corner kicks were right on.
The one that I don't know the guy's name, natural.
Thanks, Tom.
No, no insult to you.
I just don't know where you go with that.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Uh the hate mail is coming in.
You give Americans a bad name.
I just realized you're from Milwaukee, which explains it all about your rant on soccer, all you guys have is the Packers, which is a lot being a longtime Packer fan, shows your ignorance about sports.
Have a sausage, sit back, drink some bad beer, and watch the Brewers lose.
This is what I'm getting.
I'm not done though.
The uh international community's version of auto racing is Formula One, which is never really taken off here in the United States, and we're lectured again.
You should be into Formula One, that's real auto racing.
Instead, you like that mindless stock car racing.
Announced yesterday, Juan Montoya were a champion in Formula One, great international driver, just announced he is retiring from Formula One.
You know why?
He's gonna come to the United States next year and race in NASCAR.
Having said all of that, I do want to praise a true international champion, Roger Federer, winning Wimbledon four years in a row with the kind of dominance that he has.
He is one of the greatest tennis players of all time, and he is a true inspiration to his dedication, and we all ought to applaud him.
And to the Italians, congratulations on winning the World Cup.
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