When the 2014 World Cup in Brazil kicks off on Thursday afternoon (3 pm ET, ESPN), make sure you enjoy the simple things about the game — like gravity, regular air supply and everyday human beings in the stands.
Because if FIFA president Sepp Blatter has his way, the quadrennial tournament won't be held in the soccer-mad country of Brazil — or even planet Earth — for too much longer.
"We should wonder if one day our game will be played on other planets," said Blatter on Tuesday when speaking during the FIFA congress meeting. "Why not? And then instead of a World Cup we would have an interplanetary competition."
OK, Sepp, OK. We know you're trying to win re-election for a fifth term, but look, this is a bad idea. It just is.
Haven't you ever seen Space Jam?
And before he spends too much of his precious time thinking about a World Cup played on Mars, or the moon, or Pluto (think of the legacy), would somebody just let Sepp know that an "interplanetary competition," as he so incorrectly described it, would probably be really expensive, and likely force FIFA — the non-profit organization that it is — to dip into its $1 billion "reserve fund."
Surely there's a list of dozens, or even hundreds, of issues FIFA would be better suited devoting its time to fixing right now. How about bribery scandals, in-stadium racism or the negligible deaths of construction workers in Qatar, just to name a few?
By definition, an "interplanetary competition" would be something contested by beings from multiple planets. Simply taking a group of humans — all of which reside on the same planet, Earth — and putting them on another planet doesn't make it "interplanetary." It just makes it a pointless idea.
