(NEW HAVEN, CT) – The recently formed Sociology soccer team, Discipline & Punish, opened its season Sunday with a 0-6 defeat to Forestry team Shoots and Leaves. Post-game morale remained high in the D&P camp, however, with multiple team members assuring D&P Illustrated that the game had gone precisely according to the pre-game plan drawn up by captain Tim Malacarne.
“Tim isn't very good at coaching soccer,” said an anonymous source only willing to be identified as 'Taylan' for fear of retribution, “so he decided that we needed research committees to determine how to win the championship...sadly he isn't very good at organizing research committees either, so he just told us to break up by centers and go find how to win.”
According to team member Luis de la Calle, it was the Center for Cultural Sociology that made the initial breakthrough. “Stefan, Andy, Joe and David went to Blockbuster to see i
f they could rent copies of all the matches from the last World Cup and maybe the 1974 Dutch national team. Blockbuster didn't have them though, so they ended up renting The Mighty Ducks, The Mighty Ducks 2, The Bad News Bears, The Big Green, Dodgeball, Angels in the Outfield, Kicking and Screaming, Little Giants, Cool Runnings, Air Bud and Bad Boys 2, which I think they thought was about the 1980's Detroit Pistons.”
After initial efforts to find a hyper-talented, soccer playing Golden Retriever failed, the team was at an impasse. Suddenly Stefan jumped up and exclaimed that not being CCR clearly what was needed was a hermeneutic interpretation of the semiotic codes likely to bring victory. After a long night and a reported fourteen bags of Doritos and other assorted chips, the team had an answer. Spokesperson Joe Klett explains to D&PI: “It quickly became obvious to use that all of these sporting events were organized along similar pairings of the sacred and the profane. If you want to win you have to be on the right side of that. Therefore to start out you have: sacred:profane :: disorganized:organized :: initial loser:initial winner :: ragtag bunch with little more than hopes and dreams:unstoppable empire bent on yet another title :: no uniforms:nice uniforms :: sportsmanlike:unsportsmanlike :: ultimate winner:ultimate loser. Things seem pretty clear to me.”
Malacarne was immediately impressed with the work and its large number of authoritative colons. He called CIQLE team coordinator Liz Roberto and asked her to drop the statistical formation analysis of the effectiveness of a 4-3-3 vs. a 4-4-2 against teams with weak wingbacks that they had been working on in order to focus on what the CCS group had come up with. Soon enough, the CIQLE team had confirmed their teammates findings. “It was true,” says Anette Fasang. “We ran the numbers and it turns out that in their data set there was a near 0% chance of a team both winning its first game and the title. Also, winning the first game by a large margin seemed to cause teams to become 78% more likely to fall for late game trick plays when attempting to hold off plucky underdogs.”
“The only course of action was clear,” says Fasang's husband and D&P midfielder Jan Wilken, “we had to lose the battle to win the war.” And lose they did.
In an impressive showing of bad soccer, D&P managed to neither trouble the opposing goalkeeper nor keep their opponents away from their own. The biggest problem they faced, it turned out, was putting on a convincing performance in order that Shoots & Leaves wouldn't sense their plan.
“This one time,” recalls goalie David Pontoppidan, “Stephan didn't even run back with their striker, and I was thinking to myself 'Come on man, they're going to see right through that.' But they didn't and shot it right past me, happy as can be as they fell into our trap.”
Unable to hide her obvious class, Julia Cordero was forced to fake a foot injury in order to keep her off the pitch and prevent her from turning the tide of the game against D&P's strategic interests.
Three blemishes on the D&P's impressive team effort were forward Marie Bragg, midfielder Chelsea Rhodes and defender Jensen Sass. While their teammates held to the gameplan admirably whatever the circumstances, Bragg, Rhodes and Sass felt it necessary to go in search of personal glory with tactics like “winning the ball back,” “breaking up counterattacks,” and “advancing toward the opponents' end of the field.”
Team members were understandably upset by the actions of these primadonnas, but Dana Asbury says she speaks for the group in that she believes things will improve. “I'm not worried, she says. “I'm sure everything will work itself out as soon as we [the ethnography workshop] finish up our search for a crusty, over-the-hill coach on a quest for personal redemption.”
“Tim isn't very good at coaching soccer,” said an anonymous source only willing to be identified as 'Taylan' for fear of retribution, “so he decided that we needed research committees to determine how to win the championship...sadly he isn't very good at organizing research committees either, so he just told us to break up by centers and go find how to win.”
According to team member Luis de la Calle, it was the Center for Cultural Sociology that made the initial breakthrough. “Stefan, Andy, Joe and David went to Blockbuster to see i
f they could rent copies of all the matches from the last World Cup and maybe the 1974 Dutch national team. Blockbuster didn't have them though, so they ended up renting The Mighty Ducks, The Mighty Ducks 2, The Bad News Bears, The Big Green, Dodgeball, Angels in the Outfield, Kicking and Screaming, Little Giants, Cool Runnings, Air Bud and Bad Boys 2, which I think they thought was about the 1980's Detroit Pistons.”After initial efforts to find a hyper-talented, soccer playing Golden Retriever failed, the team was at an impasse. Suddenly Stefan jumped up and exclaimed that not being CCR clearly what was needed was a hermeneutic interpretation of the semiotic codes likely to bring victory. After a long night and a reported fourteen bags of Doritos and other assorted chips, the team had an answer. Spokesperson Joe Klett explains to D&PI: “It quickly became obvious to use that all of these sporting events were organized along similar pairings of the sacred and the profane. If you want to win you have to be on the right side of that. Therefore to start out you have: sacred:profane :: disorganized:organized :: initial loser:initial winner :: ragtag bunch with little more than hopes and dreams:unstoppable empire bent on yet another title :: no uniforms:nice uniforms :: sportsmanlike:unsportsmanlike :: ultimate winner:ultimate loser. Things seem pretty clear to me.”
Malacarne was immediately impressed with the work and its large number of authoritative colons. He called CIQLE team coordinator Liz Roberto and asked her to drop the statistical formation analysis of the effectiveness of a 4-3-3 vs. a 4-4-2 against teams with weak wingbacks that they had been working on in order to focus on what the CCS group had come up with. Soon enough, the CIQLE team had confirmed their teammates findings. “It was true,” says Anette Fasang. “We ran the numbers and it turns out that in their data set there was a near 0% chance of a team both winning its first game and the title. Also, winning the first game by a large margin seemed to cause teams to become 78% more likely to fall for late game trick plays when attempting to hold off plucky underdogs.”
“The only course of action was clear,” says Fasang's husband and D&P midfielder Jan Wilken, “we had to lose the battle to win the war.” And lose they did.
In an impressive showing of bad soccer, D&P managed to neither trouble the opposing goalkeeper nor keep their opponents away from their own. The biggest problem they faced, it turned out, was putting on a convincing performance in order that Shoots & Leaves wouldn't sense their plan.
“This one time,” recalls goalie David Pontoppidan, “Stephan didn't even run back with their striker, and I was thinking to myself 'Come on man, they're going to see right through that.' But they didn't and shot it right past me, happy as can be as they fell into our trap.”
Unable to hide her obvious class, Julia Cordero was forced to fake a foot injury in order to keep her off the pitch and prevent her from turning the tide of the game against D&P's strategic interests.
Three blemishes on the D&P's impressive team effort were forward Marie Bragg, midfielder Chelsea Rhodes and defender Jensen Sass. While their teammates held to the gameplan admirably whatever the circumstances, Bragg, Rhodes and Sass felt it necessary to go in search of personal glory with tactics like “winning the ball back,” “breaking up counterattacks,” and “advancing toward the opponents' end of the field.”
Team members were understandably upset by the actions of these primadonnas, but Dana Asbury says she speaks for the group in that she believes things will improve. “I'm not worried, she says. “I'm sure everything will work itself out as soon as we [the ethnography workshop] finish up our search for a crusty, over-the-hill coach on a quest for personal redemption.”
1 comment:
That might be the funniest thing I've ever read in my entire life.
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