Are You Ready for Some Football?

Of course, by football, I’m referring to European football. Now it doesn’t take me much to get revved up for the World Cup. Unlike the Olympics, which also come around every four year (well two alternating summer and winter), there is no overload, because it’s only one sport to focus on. And this years Cup will be extra exciting this year because this will be the first time I’ll be participating in a fantasy World Cup run by ESPN.com. Unfortunately it strays away from the tried and tested fantasy behemoth, March Madness brackets because you can change your pick to win the game up to the start of the game (Germany time of course). Since the bracket are set ( Winner of bracket A plays the 2nd place team in bracket B and so on) they should have set it up much like March Madness where you had to choose the top two teams for each bracket, giving a point for each one right, then two points for picking the right quarterfinals and so on. Maybe I should copyright this idea for an office pool in 2010 (um, I mean I already copyrighted it, so don’t try stealing my idea). But using that idea, here are my pick for who will compete in the round of 16 and so on:

Sweet 16
Germany vs. England (1A vs. 2B)
Argentina vs. Angola (1C vs. 2D)
Sweden vs. Costa Rica (1B vs. 2A)
Portugal vs. Netherlands (1D vs. 2C)
Czech Republic vs. Croatia (1E vs. 2F)
France vs. Ukraine (1G vs. 2H)
Brazil vs. United States (1F vs. 2E)
Spain vs. Switzerland (1H vs. 2G)

Quarterfinals
Germany vs. Argentina
Sweden vs. Netherlands
Czech Republic vs. Ukraine
Brazil vs. Spain

Semifinals
Germany vs. Sweden
Czech Republic vs. Brazil

Finals
Brazil over Germany (3-1)


Then back stateside, the biggest story is of Jason Grimley whose house recently got raided because of Human Growth Hormones. And of course everyone’s favorite oversized dome is prominently featured in the story. According to Grimsley’s attorney, the reason why his house was raided was because he refused to wear a wire in hopes to dig up dirt on Big Head Barry. And some of the Monsters also appear as Grimsley has been teammates of both Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa. And to add intrigue to him naming names (which you know will come out within a week) Grimsley became a Yankee around the time they were winning a bunch of World Titles as well as my hometown Indians when the had the massive offensive explosion in the mid-nineties well he also made a name for himself by crawling through the air ducts in Chicago to steal Joey Bell’s corked bat.

And here’s a lesson to all those people out there who watch too much Sopranos, if the Feds com knocking out your door asking you to do something, unless you have a mob boss backing you up, do it.