The Size of LeBron's Ego Deserves Its Own World Cup

What's that? A post on BluePrints about sports??? Yeah, it's happening. Hopefully I don't make a fool of myself.

So it's been a strange couple of weeks for me in terms of sports. I usually only care about football, but since the season is a bit away, I've been appeasing my appetite in other ways.

First, let's talk LeBron. We'll start with a joke I love and take no credit for: Have you heard about the new LeBron James cellphone? There's a ton of hype around it, but it only vibrates because it has no rings!" Oh nice gravy. Anyway, to briefly recap for our friends who live under rocks or in Finland, prominent but championshipless basketball player LeBron James, in an unprecedented move, rented an hour of time on ESPN to announce which team he'd end up playing for. Now, when I say unprecedented, it's not a compliment. No one has been so egotistical before. ESPN was advertising the crap out of it all week. Now, after a week of attention whoring, one would expect a climactic proclamation with a marching band and enough pyrotechnics to make Michael Bay wet himself. Nope, LeBronze stumbled over his words to say he was going to be in Miami. Literally, he said he was going to South Beach, which made me think he was just announcing a vacation. But no, he's going to play for the Miami Heat. As a Florida resident, I am surprised that this state could get worse. And then I went back to not caring.

On a more positive note, I was also for some inexplicable reason getting into soccer. No, the World Cup. Soccer is a silly sport to me. I have a hard time getting into a game where people can run around for 90 minutes and end the game a 0-0 tie. Yet despite all that, I joined in the great American tradition of not caring about something until the US was doing quite well at it. Yet even after we lost, my interest remained. But the most interesting part to me, other than ESPN sound guys fighting vuvezelas, was Paul the Psychic Octopus, who perfectly predicted the last 8 games. Paul, who is a German octopus, received death threats after predicting Germany's loss to Spain. Yes, angry German soccer fans were calling for the head, or beak, or tenticles of a Precog Cephalopod. That imagery is funny enough by itself, but Paul was presented with a miniature World Cup Trophy. He's probably the most confused octopus in the world right now.

But on a serious note, is it real football season yet?