It's All For Sale

Yesterday there was a big announcement that the 2022 World Cup is going to be played in Qatar. (Let me say this about the World Cup committee: they know how to put on a show. This was one of the first stories on ESPN yesterday and, considering the event isn't for another 12 years and there were important NBA and NFL games being played last night, that's impressive.) When Qatar won out over larger countries like Japan and the United States people immediately began claiming that the fix had to be in. After all, Qatar is a small country about the size of Connecticut with no stadium infrastructure, tight restrictions about alcohol consumption in public (hope the English soccer hooligans enjoy getting around those) and, according to reports, temperatures which generally hover between 100 and 1000 degrees. Even though they claim they will be able to build air-conditioned soccer stadiums by the times the games start, it does not sound like the kind of place that would normally be chosen to host a world-wide event, let alone an outdoor sporting contest, so immediately people started to complain that the country had bought the World Cup. To which I say: of course they did.

Anytime that a country is chosen to host an event of this magnitude I assume it is because they bought it. The people in charge of announcing the decision can say it was because they made the best presentation or had the best plan in place, but cynical people like me will pretty much always assume it was because that country paid off the people in charge of picking these sort of things, which is also why people fight to be on committees like that to begin with. I mean, you always hear that people in small towns are bribing teachers and coaches to get their kids onto teams. If it's happening for something so insignificant then of course it would happen to an event like the World Cup. It is because of this belief that I think people would stop getting so upset about not being awarded an event if they stopped looking at the selection process as a fair competition and began to think about it in terms of what it truly is: a silent auction. All you can really do is put in your bid, hope that you wagered enough and keep your fingers crossed that someone didn't swoop in at the last second like some eBay ringer.

Let me just also say that I am totally on board with Qatar. Look, I wasn't going to the World Cup anyway, so put it wherever you wish - put it on the moon for all I care. If the US had won it was very likely that Gillette Stadium would have hosted one of the qualifier rounds, meaning it would have taken place within ten miles of where I currently am sitting and I still wouldn't have gone. So, at least this way I don't have to deal with the traffic. Also, this just makes sense for the Qatar National soccer team. Currently, they rank 113 out of 207 teams, which means they had almost no chance of qualifying on their own. But, by being a host nation, they get an automatic qualifier. (See, told you it was just like some small-town mom buying her uncoordinated child a seat on the varsity bench.) They'll show up, be soundly thrashed in the opening rounds and the rest of the world will be able to go on about their World Cup viewing while complaining about the heat. The way I see it, as long as there are no vuvuzelas we are all winners.