With little to do during the holiday weekend other than spend time at the office with my esteemed colleagues, it's given me time to ponder a few sports topics.
In no particular order, here we go:
• The World Cup is a large-scale version of the NCAA Tournament.
As the world's party has unfolded during the past few weeks, it has struck me on more than once how many parallels exist between it and the culmination of the college basketball season.
Both bring with them an almost-slavish devotion to your television, or mobile device, or computer monitor, that few other events can match.
Both feature multi-week formats that hit you early on with games that may present mismatches, but also provide the opportunity for upsets. That makes you want to watch as much as possible, lest you miss out on those unlikely results.
And unfortunately for both, they share the likelihood those upsets are unlikely to happen soon after the first round is done. Out of the 32 teams to start the World Cup, 16 advanced. In the round of 16, how many of the eight group winners won their next matchup? Yep, all eight.
And it doesn't stop there, as none of the teams you would consider the "underdog" in the four quarterfinal matches advanced.
It's much like NCAA basketball, where the traditional powers, or "blue bloods," are the only teams likely to win it all. The number most agreed upon by reputable sources says there are currently 196 countries in the world. Out of that many, how many countries do you think have won a World Cup? Eight.
So it's not like there's a ton of parity when it comes to claiming the top prize. Out of the four remaining teams, only the Netherlands hasn't won before, with the rest being Brazil (five titles), Germany (three) and Argentina (two). It's like Kentucky, North Carolina and Duke making the Final Four.
• Just when you think women's tennis has become compelling, think again.
Saturday's Wimbledon final was supposed to be an intriguing matchup of the next wave of tennis, the first Grand Slam final to feature two women born in the 1990s. So what did we get? Barely anything.
It took Petra Kvitova just 55 minutes to roll to a 6-3, 6-0 win against Eugenie Bouchard. That's five minutes less than the "Breakfast at Wimbledon" preview show that preceded the match. It's pretty close to the amount of time the players spent warming up before the rout.
It's safe to say today's men's final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic can't put on a worse show. At least I hope not.
• From something that was too short to something that's too long, namely, baseball.
While I genuinely like the game, I like it in small doses. Like 2 1/2-hour doses.
Despite saying on a semi-regular basis it's trying to work on the pace of the game, Major League Baseball doesn't have a clue how to do it. As a result, we keep games that almost encourage you to tune out.
If I have to hear one more person tell me how boring the World Cup has been because the games take too long, they're going to find themselves on the wrong end of a rant from me.
Case in point: Saturday's World Cup quarterfinal between the Netherlands and Costa Rica needed regulation, and two overtimes, and finally penalty kicks, to decide it. From start to finish, including halftime and breaks between each extra session, it lasted 2 1/2 hours. We should be so lucky to have a baseball game take just that long from first pitch to final out.
A quick check of this season's results shows the Cardinals have played 88 games this year, and 40 of them lasted more than three hours. Heading into Saturday night's game, the Royals had played 85 times and 43 of them lasted three hours or more.
And don't even get me started on the fact the Royals played a regulation game lasting 3 hours and 57 minutes this season. Or that the Cardinals needed 3:55 to get through one nine-inning affair. Move it along, fellas.
• What was the point of Thursday's college baseball Home Run Derby?
The event, held four days - four days! - after the College World Series wrapped up, was clearly a made-for-TV event. That didn't mean it had to be as stupid as most reality TV programs. I'm not much of a fan of home run derbies, but I definitely despised this one.
One reason was the lack of carryover of home runs from round to round. That meant despite hitting 52 dingers in three rounds, Texas Tech's Eric Gutierrez didn't win. That's because they wiped out the totals heading to the final round, so his 18 in that round lost out to Texas' Tres Barrera and his total of 25. That would be the same Barrera who had just 16 in the first two rounds to Gutierrez's 34.
But the biggest reason I hated it was because they used the old "live" bats that have been outlawed in college baseball for four years. So these juiced numbers meant even less than they already did.
What's next, letting the major leaguers in this year's Home Run Derby bring in the fences?