>>>>>>LBJ would get my vote. (Clinton was no lightweight, either). When I was a kid there was a paperback book of news photos with made up words coming out of LBJ's mouth. One I remember was him at some disaster scene and saying, "If ah'm lying may lightning strike this spot."
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>>>>>Welcome back Mike, aren't you at least going to wait until he shows what he can do in Miami before voting for him as President, I thought than only in third world countries a sportsman would be considered as presidential candidate :P
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>>>>I must be rusty because I am missing the Miami reference.
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>>>>Your opinion of the World Cup was probably about the same as mine. I was disappointed, and not because the U.S. and our traditional second choice, England, went down in flames. The first round with the South American teams doing so well was great, because I love their stylish play. When Argentina and Brazil went down it took the wind out of my sails. Germany knocked the snot out of Argentina, and Brazil was already gone by then. The final was a snore, even though I was glad to see Spain win. They both were as cautious as a nun in a frat house. It was nice, though, to see the streets of Madrid with Spaniards celebrating their first WC win. It remains my favorite sporting event, even ahead of the Olympics. Yeah, I know, un-American ;-)
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>>>I found the final fascinating. The unexpected aggression of the Dutch, the inflexibility of the Spanish (they play their game very well but never seem to have a plan B) and also the involvement of the referee who could easily have reduced the Dutch to 8 or 9 players by half time. Also nice to see a world cup played in rain and cold weather.
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>>The one Dutch player was amazingly fortunate not to be tossed out for the chest kick. He has the reputation of being a dirty player and did nothing to disprove it. He got yellow carded but it should have been a red. It's right there in the FIFA rulebook.
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>>As a minor league ref I was very disappointing in the refereeing. One game in particular was horribly botched by a guy from Honduras. One of the commentators, a Brit, said after the game these are supposed to be the world's best referees and they are not living up to it.
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>They're the best referees by region so you will get inexperienced referees from smaller countries who have little big match experience. To me thats part of the appeal of the World Cup. Players would do well to stop moaning and remember that referees rarely make the better team lose but are often used as an excuse by a poor team.

There's probably something to that. I still thought there were some shockingly bad calls.