This Day in Revisionist History

December 15:

“Without rules, there is no game. Without a game, there are no rules. Is any of this making sense?” – a rambling James Naismith to several confused, restless youths at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts as he attempted to introduce the new game he called “basket ball.”

If there’s one thing every American knows, it’s that there’s nothing better than seeing two teams go head-to-head on the gridiron. But you may not know that in Europe, what we call “football” is actually called “soccer,” and at one point in the United States was called “basket ball.” The inventor of this sport was a doctor by the name of James Naismith, although his version of the game bears little resemblance to the fast-paced action of the modern NFL. He posted the original rules of his newly crafted game on the wall of the gymnasium, which NPI has partially reprinted with the permission of several United States courts, which over the years have firmly established that claims of copyright infringement cannot be filed in cases of “common knowledge”:

Monday Medley

What we read while changing our opinions on the morality of condoms…

• Ron Paul condemned the new airport body-scanners, but TSA insists that they are here to stay. Well, at least we know America’s airports are safe! This also presents an interesting Fourth Amendment (the second best!) question.

• Speaking of law, the New York Times ran a fascinating article that empirically establishes that Sandra Day O’Connor relied on her clerks to write opinions more than any other contemporary justice.

• LeBron James isn’t the only Akronite who hasn’t exactly reaped the benefits yet of taking his talents to South Beach. Michael Kruse delivers an interesting feature on journalist Brian Windhorst, whose career arc has mirrored that of James.

• The New Yorker tries to get some perspective on the recent late night wars by looking back at Dick Cavett. Speaking of NBC, the network unveiled its midseason schedule last week. It got at least one thing right…

• This video only proves what I’ve been saying all along: Soccer sucks.

• In a special for Sports Illustrated, Benjamin Hochman tries to answer a question everyone in Denver has been wondering these last two months: Why did Kenny McKinley choose to die? Hochman references this stunningly introspective and affecting piece by Woody Paige on his own battles with depression.

• It’s always fun when the Brits tackle masculinity.

• Not that NPI wants to feed the media’s obsession with all thing Sarah Palin, but the Times ran a story on her “inner circle.” (We draw the line at any and all links having to do with DWTS.) It recalled, of course, New York‘s previous feature on the Palin brand.

• We’re sure James Frey is none too pleased about this piece on his fiction factory. Meanwhile, this book review is OK by us. Or is that O.K.?

• When will teachers learn that yawns are involuntary?

Monday Medley

What we read while our goals were mysteriously disallowed…

• BP’s first smart move in the wake of its massive oil spill may have been lessening Tony Hayward’s role in the spill response. He had become one walking gaffe since the disaster–he probably doesn’t have a role in Damon Lidelof’s (fake) movie about the spill.

• As if we needed another reason to hate the World Cup, it is apparently distracting Billy Beane, who has become such a soccer fan that he almost missed Dallas Braden’s perfect game last month. Joe Posnanski is called it “the day Moneyball died,” which John S predicted last summer. That’s not the only way the World Cup is invading Major League Baseball, as seen at Sun Life Stadium on Saturday. Of course, we’d probably watch more of the matches if they looked like this live.

• Philadelphia Magazine (hey, we embarked beyond NYC!) tries to answer the question that has been bugging a lot of people who saw this or read this (what is a douche juice anyway?): Why is Buzz Bissinger so mad all the time? (We do find his absolute trashing of LeBron, with whom he just wrote a book, pretty fascinating. And in the interest of equal time, Deadspin‘s series with Tim Donaghy analyzing the officiating of the NBA Finals was compelling, as well.)

• Our pals at Dead Homer Society are busy reviewing the ninth season of The Simpsons, which is when, in their words, “the show started becoming more Zombie than Simpsons.” Here’s their take on “The Cartridge Family”–an episode every Simpsons fan we know has recently watched for its brilliant opening send-up of soccer. “Oh, I’ll kill myself if Portugal doesn’t win…”.

• Our favorite retrospectives on two fallen sports figures: Posnanski on John Wooden and Sam Mellinger’s premature eulogy for Manute Bol. That both work(ed) at the Kansas City Star may or may not be coincidental.

• We at NPI aren’t fans of this “fail” meme (we like grammar, remember?), but here are the 50 biggest hip-hop “fails” of all-time.

• Michael Ian Black defends selling out on Twitter. Amanda Rykoff attacks #ff (Follow Friday for the uninitiated).

• Psh…we’re pretty sure we can lose Monopoly in fewer than 21 seconds.

The Problems With Soccer

John appears to have already stirred the passions of the soccer fanatics with his rant on its lack of scoring. While I generally agree, I’d like to elaborate with soccer’s most egregious offenses to an American sports obsessive:

5. The Imprecision of Time

Against Soccer

For those of you who have been appropriately ignoring this year’s World Cup action, Saturday saw a semi-surprising tie between the United States and soccer-loving England, thanks to a blunder by British goalie Robert Green. Now, whenever a World Cup rolls around it provokes a tired debate in America between the rabidly pro-soccer and the staunchly anti-soccer. This debate is stupid: While many Americans have the same passive, nationalistic faux-fan relationship with the World Cup that they have with the Olympics, soccer is self-evidently awful.

There are many complicated and deep theories about why soccer is awful—soccer is un-American, soccer embraces “Outcast Culture,” soccer doesn’t attract the best American athletes, soccer is too hard to understand, etc.—but the real reason was evident as the ball slipped out of Green’s hands: Soccer is too low-scoring.