aud’acious

“How Soccer Explains the World” is the title of a book I got yesterday from a conference on sports and how they affect society.  My friend and colleague, Maggie Nassif, who works in the National Middle East Language Resource Center (NMELRC) really wanted me to go so I headed up to SLC to check it out.  Very interesting.  There was a cross section of people from various periods of my life which made it all the more spicy.  For example, my professor from whom I took Sports History at BYU was there, Maggie presented with whom I work to improve my Arabic, and my principal was there from PHS.  It’s interesting because sports, according to these people and I agree, is not just about physicality.  There’s so much of sports that reflects society and human interaction, etc.

But the coolest part is we all got tickets to the Real Salt Lake game in the season opener at the new stadium.  We froze in the stands but it was fun.  I decided that watching soccer can’t be about the score because after 90 minutes it was a tie 1-1.  But, they did all these cool moves and those guys do a lot of running.  I’d go again.

Actually I have to say I’ve been wanting to go to a pro-futbol game for a while.  When I lived in England, you couldn’t talk to guys very long without hearing about futbol (soccer).  Pretty soon, whether you were in to soccer or not, you knew the main teams and the biggest players.  I wanted to go with the guys to a game but we never got around to it because we were so busy.

This last picture was during half time.  They had a mini game with young players.

“In the history of hooligan warfare, no battle has been quite so spectacular.” Franklin Foer, “How Soccer Explains the World” pg 15