A Couple Notes on Monday

Last night Superma- excuse me, Ryan Howard, was officially presented with his National League MVP award. He deserved it. While you statheads out there could make a legit argument for Pujols, the bottom line is, the Phillies won more games than the eventual World Series champs, ridiculous as it seems. Is Pujols a better baseball player than Ryan Howard? Yup. By a decent margin. Did Ryan Howard have a better year? Yup. He was pitched to approximately 3.5 times after September 1st and he still finished with 58 dingers and 149 RBIs. Those are MVP numbers...

In a column today, Bill Simmons called the Super Bowl "the world's biggest sporting event". Um, that's horseshit Simmons, and you know it. The biggest sporting event in America? Sure. By far. But the world? Um, roughly 5.7 billion people might disagree with you on that one. The World Cup is unquestionably the biggest sporting event in the world, putting all other happenings across the globe on hold for a month while the world's greatest game holds center stage.
Even if you don't like soccer, it is 100% impossible to make the argument that the World Cup is not the biggest sporting event in the world. Now, the Super Bowl certainly comes close to being the biggest day in sports, at least in terms of viewership and ad revenue, but I'm still pretty sure the World Cup final outdoes it. Rougly 80-90 million Americans tune in for the entirety of the Super Bowl - a large number indeed - and to be safe, let's say the total number of earthlings watching the game is 200 million (and this is a generous estimate), this comes nowhere near the amount of people tuned into the World Cup final. More people in Europe alone watched the final game of the World Cup this past year, which featured two European nations, than will watch the Super Bowl next week.

Quite frankly I'm a little surprised Simmons - someone who claims to have watched a great deal of the 2006 World Cup - made such a statement. I'm sure it was innocent enough, but I'm not letting it slide. I love the Super Bowl. I really do. But in my opinion, soccer is the greatest sport in the world. And while many may disagree with that opinion, this much is fact: soccer IS the biggest sport in the world. And that is something (American) football will never be able to claim.