none of what you’d just seen actually mattered because the video assistant deemed Raheem Sterling’s shoulder to have been a centimeter or two beyond the last defender’s shoulder, making him offside and annulling the goal.

FOR WEEKS I legitimately did not shut up about how the MLS Cup Final was in a stadium with over 70,000. The atmosphere is bananas.

“You claimed the foundational structure of the league is *cosplay*.”

Weird that they never cover Mexican soccer*, which is more popular than MLS in the United States, and is a league which also has playoffs.

Pro/rel would work in the US if soccer were as ingrained in the culture as something like college football. Ole Miss fans would follow them if they were relegated into CUSA regardless. But soccer isn’t, and “new” fans aren’t going to follow a second division team.

Billy Haisley: *cums*

Professional sports exist to make money. Playoffs make a shit-ton of it. The end.

they have three official mascots

As long as the women are full-time employees of US Soccer (in a strongly pro-USWNT article, The Guardian had their pay scale at $100,000 / year plus NWSL salaries of between $60K & $67.5K / year https://bit.ly/2ITTatr — much of it paid by the USSF, which suggests the USSF fact sheet is pretty accurate) it will be hard…

certainly wasn’t a lack of evidence. Definitely a lack of cooperation, i.e. - $$$.

Swimmers Upset Swimmer Won’t Piss, In Pool

I was expecting some egregious bullshit or a judgement call thing that takes too long when I saw the headline but this is...entirely correct.  I’m confused as to why anyone would be angry about that VAR call.

Deadspin: We Don’t Like the Right Thing Unless We Say It’s the Right Thing

I gotta say, it sure seems like all of Deadspin’s soccer writers dislike VAR (as a thing AND its application) even though, virtually 100 pct of the time, it proves its worth and gets things RIGHT.

Looks to me like VAR did exactly what it was supposed to on that call. You couldn’t tuck your arms in any further to try to avoid the handball than that defended did. Textbook ball to hand in my opinion, but I can see why the ref originally called a handball in a split second decision.

If that had been Terry Francona we’d be having a *very* different conversation. 

Part of the point of sliding is to avoid overrunning the base.

At least the Red Sox chose a brand to honor Ted Williams at the same time.

Not only is Deadspin upset, Twitter user Malinda is upset. Some of them tweets had up to 8 likes! Deadspin would have been the laughing stock of the internet had they not published this story.

USWNT provides graphics for American teams to use for shows of support in order to push their brand.