Soccer vs. Football

The WSJ online today had an article that will give plenty of ammo to fans of soccer over football, that is, American football.

WSJ: "According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes. In other words, if you tally up everything that happens between the time the ball is snapped and the play is whistled dead by the officials, there's barely enough time to prepare a hard-boiled egg. In fact, the average telecast devotes 56% more time to showing replays."

A three hour telecast of football - 180 minutes - provides 11 minutes of real action. That's a remarkable number; of all the time one watches, only 6% is truly productive. That is so pathetic. Ridiculous. Compare that to soccer. The "action" in soccer is nearly continuous while the clock is running. No huddles, no time-outs. Almost 90 minutes of real "action".

Alas, that's the problem with soccer. The "action" is .... almost non-existent. Rules make it very difficult to score; defense is paramount. Too many games are decided by penalty kicks.

A pox on both their houses.

Rugby is far, far superior to both: Non-stop real action, running plays, tackling, passing, kicking, no blocking, no pads. Watching a top quality game in London last Spring, I saw a drop kick goal made. In rugby, a skilled back seeing he's about to be tackled can kick the ball downfield, then run quickly to catch his own kick and keep on going. It's a very exciting game and fun to play, too.

There are clubs and leagues for rugby in the US in most major cities. Find out the schedule and go watch the game. Or find rugby games on the international channels on your cable or satellite TV. It sure beats sitting on one's butt watching all that non-action on TV in either soccer or football.

Markets

The grind goes on. Intel numbers were good. Today is option expiration day. Soon I expect another pop up. Krypto Fund has plenty of long exposure. I don't see much to speculate on the long side. The only postion of 1-2-3 Fund is VVUS, which is a long term play on some promising drugs. Fido Fund has RIG, DVN, COF, CLF and CCJ. A few of those are approaching levels that I might consider sales.

Word of the Day

"Disingenuous" - adjective [$10] an old one from the file
Disingenuous means lacking in candor.
Sentence: These arguments against the new tax on bank liabilities by pundits and politicians in the pocket of the the big banks are disingenuous beyond belief. Consumers will pay ? Haha, 15 basis points is not even noticeable compared to the huge rates gouged from them on credit card loans. And those probably are off-balance sheet anyway, so not subject to the tax. Banks are recovering and it's not the time to tax them. Haha, they are paying huge bonuses to their internal speculators while not making loans to small business. This tax will be born primarily by trading house banks who leverage up with hedge fund loans and their own "bets" - that is, the reason the Street got into trouble in the first place. In my opinion, it's rather well-crafted.