Columnist Who Says Canadian Soccer Should Stop Whining Admits He Turned Off The Game After 35 Minutes [Soccer]

Tuesday's Olympic semifinal between the U.S. and Canada was one of the most thrilling, dramatic games you'll ever see. It also had some damn curious refereeing.

First, goalkeeper Erin McLeod was whistled for holding the ball too long—the rarely enforced six-second violation. (U.S. players said she had been warned multiple times about time-wasting, while McLeod says she was "reminded" by an assistant referee, which she didn't take as an official warning.) Then, on the ensuing free kick, Megan Rapinoe's blast deflected off Marie-Eve Nault's arm. A handball was called, and Abby Wambach scored on the PK, knotting the score at 3-3 with 10 minutes left in regulation.

So there's every reason for the Canadian team and its fans to be upset. (FIFA is looking into players' comments implying the match was fixed.) Enter Toronto Star columnist Damien Cox, who thinks you should all just get over it.

[L]et's move on. It wasn't so long ago that it seemed Canadian women's soccer was going in the wrong direction, and today, despite the loss to the Americans, few would say that. So let's not make it about the officiating. Let's make it about a daring, attacking team that competed valiantly but didn't quite get it done protecting their own net.

Understand what went right and what went wrong. Don't make this like Leaf fans who still believe the Leafs were robbed of the Cup in '93 by Kerry Fraser.

Cox is a hockey guy, so of course it comes back to the Leafs. But here's something that may not make angry fans feel any better about being told to simmer down: Cox admits he only watched a little bit of the game.

Here's weird thing about reffing at the CAN-US women's soccer match. Saw only opening 35 mins, and even then it seemed weirdly one-sided.

— Damien Cox (@DamoSpin) August 7, 2012

That'd mean he'd turned the TV off when Canada was up 1-0, before any of the shady refereeing went down. This doesn't mean he's not allowed to have an opinion. What would columnists do if they couldn't blandly "weigh in" on the pressing sports topic of the day, even if they weren't paying attention, even if they don't have a strong opinion? (In that case, they just take the contrary one.)

Then there's this, which is just flat wrong:

From the bad, four goals allowed in any soccer match, even if one was of the very dubious variety because of officiating error or misjudgment, isn't usually going to get it done. Were we really going to score five?

Well, the whole point is they wouldn't have had to score five without that refereeing. They already had three, and the U.S. was stuck on two, and that should have been enough.

Cox's overall point isn't a bad one, even if it is obvious—complaining won't change the result. But Canada, don't ever let anyone tell you you can't kick and scream over the cosmic unfairness of sports. Tuesday's game was shaping up to be, and probably should have been, one of the biggest upsets in the nation's history, and against the big bad friendly neighbors to the south. By all rights the glory, and a guaranteed medal, should be yours. And now it's not. Not because the game was fixed, but because referees are terrible sometimes, and sometimes at the exact perfect moment to crush a country's soul. It happens to all of us, and what would the point of sports be if we weren't allowed to spend a lifetime bitching about that time we got screwed? Canada 3-4 USA is part of your identity now. Embrace it, and don't ever, ever get over it.

London 2012: Canadian women's soccer team needs to move on, Cox says [Toronto Star]

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On His Way Out The Door, Ryan Lochte Admits He Pees In The Pool [London Olympics]

This has been reported all over the place, usually without much additional comment, and Lochte has yet to clarify that he was joking, so I guess it's a real thing. From TVGuide.com:

According to Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, it's common practice for athletes to pee in the Olympic pool.

"Of course," Lochte responded Friday during an interview on Ryan Seacrest's morning show, when Seacrest asked him if swimmers really do use the pool as a toilet.

"I think there's just something about getting into chlorine water that you just automatically go," the gold medalist added. "[I didn't] during the races, but I sure did in warm-up."

Maybe it's because the first mention of it came out on Friday afternoon, but for whatever reason, the reaction was mostly along the lines of, "yawn, the second most famous swimmer on earth pisses in the pool while he warms up, he says everyone does, they're all swimming in their own piss, whatever, moving on." Jezebel found it "unsurprising," these guys said the habit represented a "similarity to most people," The Daily Mail used it as a pivot to get back to that one-night stand thing, and Sports Illustrated made half a joke about endorsements. Examiner.com said, "If there was any point to be made, it is this is why celebrity hosts do not belong at the London Olympics."

Au contraire, Examiner.com. There are a lot of other points to be made. Such as:

• What?
• He just pees right in the pool?
• Other swimmers also just pee right in the pool?
• What the fuck?

OK, so I guess there aren't "a lot" of other points to be made. Still, it seems like a good time to note that the London Olympics, once touted as Ryan Lochte's coming out party—his appeal is "through the roof" and he's "the rock star of the swimming community," remember?—resulted in one individual gold medal and a bunch of articles suggesting that he might be sort of an annoying moron. His Olympics is over (the US Men's team still has races to swim, but none involve Lochte) and on the way out, he admitted that he was peeing in the pool the whole time.

With only a couple more events, the oldest male swimmer to win gold in London was Lochte himself, at age 27. When the 2016 Olympics in Rio roll around, Lochte will be 31. Um...jeah?

Image via Shutterstock

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