Sepp Blatter and FIFA

Near as I can tell, FIFA stands for Futbol Is Freaking Awesome. Such is the way the sport of soccer is perceived by much of the world.

Yet in America, it might as well stand for Fine In Foreign Arenas. Despite the push that keeps going on, Americans have yet to adopt soccer as a mainstream sport. Yes, it's a big deal from first grade right up through high school, socccer moms everywhere, but after that it pretty much disappears in the US. You haven't seen college soccer tournaments on many TV stations. That's likely because Americans have sporting interests elsewhere and only so many bucks to spend on them. With Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL, and the ever-present gorilla in the room called the NFL, Americans have never warmed up to soccer at its highest levels in a big way.

Once every 4 years something called the World Cup happens. Americans get interested -- a little. Their men's team is never any good but the ladies make a good showing. And then it's over. Nobody cares about what's going on in foreign soccer leagues despite the 4-letter network force feeding us scores involving teams we never heard of.

But to each their own.

It is interesting Sepp Blatter just stepped down after being elected FIFA President for a fifth term. As is well known, many high-ranking international futbol officials have been recently indicted by the US on various corruption charges. So why would Blatter, 79 years old, go to all the trouble of getting re-elected only to step down? The latest reports say Mr. B hasn't been implicated in any wrong-doing.

The knee-jerk answer is -- maybe the authorities have some dirt on dear Seth after all and have quietly given him an ultimatum. Either step down, ala Richard Nixon of Watergate notoriety, or we'll jam you up in ways you can't even imagine. Could be.

It's also interesting to see such mega-sponsors of FIFA such as Coca-Cola, Visa, McDonald's, and Adidas hedging their bets. They keep trying, trying, TRYING, to make soccer a mainstream sport in the US, but it's not working, and likely never will. Then again, all these corporate behemoths have vast interests abroad selling their wares in various international futbol crazy markets. With the turmoil and criminal charges currently involving the powers that be at FIFA, they likely don't know what to do. The world over, everybody likes cola, a handy-dandy credit card, being super-sized and sneakers are a must. They must be careful about acting too hastily, lest they get it wrong and alienate their foreign clientele they make billions off. And don't tell me the likes of Pepsi, MasterCard, Burger King, and Nike wouldn't quickly jump on the FIFA bandwagon if they smelled big bucks to be made.

The bottom line? Two things.

However this turns out, most Americans still won't care about soccer at it's highest levels.

And much more importantly, yours truly, for one, is happy to see Sepp Blatter step down, whether or not he's guilty of anything.

Just hearing or reading the name itself -- Sepp Blatter -- always had a way of making me have to go urinate for some reason. Had to do it twice while I was writing this.

Good luck Sepp, and I hope your successor doesn't turn out to be some person named Dior Rhea. That could be problematic as well.