Alright, I confess, I'm fully aboard a soccer bandwagon that, if fate has any sense of timing, should barrel headlong into a shattering wreck this afternoon.
Luke keeps bugging me to learn soccer, so I picked up 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa and toyed around with the two-button controls, just to learn spacing and some fundamentals. I also played it on amateur difficulty. This simulation predicted a strongly favorable result for the United States against Ghana today, something like 7-nil. And if the most accurate video game simulation in world football says its so, then we can't possibly lose, right?
You might notice we don't have a Game of the Week for the second straight week. It may have been a little ambitious to expect folks to write in with recaps of their derring-do in sports every week. We're still going forward with Box Scores as an open sports thread, at least through the World Cup, because it's all anyone's really talking about on the weekend. But you can help save Box Scores by sending in a couple of paragraphs on anything you've played in the past week, just so long as you make it sound reasonably interesting. Either email me or post your braggadocio in the comments here. I'm lifting the requirement for pictures, I can illustrate things with screenshots. Just include your commenting handle for proper credit.
Here are your televised sports highlights in the U.S. for the weekend.
- World Cup
I really should not have to tell you this. The United States' high-spirited tour of the World Cup Finals either soldiers on through today or comes to a crashing end against Ghana, who ran the Americans from Germany four years ago. That is 2:30 p.m. The winner gets the winner of the Uruguay-South Korea match that just ended.
Sunday, Germany and England face off at 10 a.m., followed by Argentina vs. Mexico at 2:30 p.m. Those could be some fantastic, desperately contested matches involving the major names among footballing nations. ESPN is broadcasting the 10 a.m. matches; ABC has the afternoons. - Mixed Martial Arts
Fedor Emelianenko and Fabricio Werdum at last have their heavily anticipated bout in San Jose at 10 p.m. A fight of this size is not free, but you only need Showtime, it's not pay-per-view. - College baseball
Both games of Friday get rematches today in the double-elimination tournament: UCLA and TCU play at 2 p.m. on ESPN2; blood enemies Clemson and South Carolina renew hostilities at 7 on ESPN. Four team enter, two team leave! - Tennis
Wimbledon continues its early rounds on NBC at noon. I scarcely imagine how the Isner-Mahut supermarathon of Wednesday - for which both men received special awards at the end - makes the rest of the tournament anything but anticlimactic.
- Motorsports
The Grand Prix of Europe is on a same-day tape at noon Sunday, on Fox. Closed-wheel racers will beinterested in NASCAR's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 on TNT, 1 p.m., Sunday. - Baseball
More interleague play: Fox's game of the week is at 7 p.m., rematching either the 1906 World Series (Cubs at White Sox), the 1912 World Series (Red Sox at Giants) or nearly every goddamn World Series (Yankees at Dodgers.) Check local listings.
Sunday, Atlanta and Detroit really should begin their game with a re-enactment of the Doyle Alexander-for-John Smoltz trade of 1987. It's about the only meaningful interaction these Original Sixteen franchises have had with each other. That's 1:30 on TBS. WGN handles the Cubs-Sox at 2 and ESPN's game of the week is Yankees-Dodgers, 8 p.m.
Remember, you may send Game of the Week nominations to owenATkotakuDOTcom, and flag it "Game of the Week" in the subject header. Please include your commenter handle for proper credit.