Football “still definitely newsworthy” – BBC

It was a resounding victory for journalism today, after football, rugby, cricket, tennis – as well as many other sports codes including but not limited to curling, archery, bowling, darts, pool, rowing and professional tiddlywinks – were reaffirmed as “still definitely newsworthy and important journalism” by a BBC-funded study.

“For years now our screens have been filled with hundreds and thousands of hours of slow-motion replays, critical analysis and up-to-the-minute updates on everything sports-related, like match scores, financial transfers, or even who is fucking whose wife in the national team,” said a spokesperson for the BBC. “Today, we are pleased to announce that these events are still as important as ever, and deserve their hours-long slots just after international affairs and current events.”

The study has irrefutably proven that football – along with all sport – is still on par with disease, war, political scandals and the myriad other important current events that define our generation and necessitate ceaseless coverage and debate.

“Although football was first started as a social experiment in the 1960s to see how much a human being can be paid for doing as little and as inconsequential, meaningless-in-the-grand-scope-of-the-universe work as possible, it quickly blossomed into something as important as Ebola killing white people, or famine killing brown people, or war,” said the study. “Hence the dozens of channels dedicated to every goddamn fart Lionel Messi makes.”

The study has since been welcomed and applauded by leading institutes of journalism and media studies.

“People misunderstand sport,” said professor Rum Rogeny of the Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies. “It’s not an opium of the people designed to distract them with irrelevant and endless arguments about who has the better team or the most trophies and titles or who beat who in the umpteenth iteration of a packet-of-air-kicking-contest between two groups of millionaires. Soccer is relevant. It's the only time God ever does anything on Earth. It’s politics but with a ball. It’s war, but with better hair and fake injuries."

In spite of mounting criticism from dissenting critical voices who steadfastly claim (in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, of course) that sport is a form of ‘soft politics’ that allows you to pretend to take part in pseudo-political arguments without any of the reprisals or repercussions of holding a real political view – much like a child walking around in his father’s oversized shoes in imaginary games of ‘play-play’ – many thousands of normal people around the world have welcomed the study.

“Football is super important,” said a man counting an imaginary list with his fingers. “It has kicking. It has passing. It has tackles – some of these tackles are illegal. Some are in a grey area. These are important debates. Debates which the news tries to distract us from with news like which country is invading which country, or new about stupid so-called ‘mass protests’ in Mexico City.”

The study also definitely ruled out the possibility of think topics, debates, art exhibitions or any kind of cultural thing as ‘news’.

“Even things like massive scientific accomplishments – like a ten-year project to land a tiny satellite on a comet one hundred million miles away – are fucking definitely not news. The thing is, how many people really understand science enough to make an opinion on it? There just isn’t any controversy around these events. How are we supposed to get ceaseless heated debates, long, angry blogposts and opinion columns, pages and pages of incensed comments defiantly touting their entrenched viewpoint, and metres of print responding not just to the story, but also responding to responses - and therefore endless pageviews and unfathomable advertising revenue – out of that boring crap? That’s why we make it more about the little things. Like sexist shirts. Now THAT is news.”

Muse and Abuse would like to invite any reader who didn't understand this to form a very angry opinion about it and write their own blog on why we're a bunch of morons.

Football fans don’t blame referee

It was first for the history books today, after thousands of Manchester United and Arsenal fans agreed that last night’s game was “totally fair” and that the referee did a “marvellous, simply excellent job” of ensuring a clean, even match.

“The game was absolutely fair and unbiased,” said one fan, Shirley Reff, who emailed us without once using her CAPSLOCK key or any exclamation marks. “I would just like to congratulate the referee on doing a great job of the overwhelming task of making sure that a soccer match is objectively controlled, fair and utterly impartial.”

Reff explained in more depth.

“Let’s take for example his offsides call at about the 32-minute mark,” she said. “Excellent! What acuity! It was quite clearly offsides, no two ways about it. And that tackle between Santi Cazorla and Ander Herrera? It was fair and clean: his foot clearly hit the ball first. The referee was right to exercise his play-on discretion.”

Pictured: Most referees

Fans now say that even when there were questionable moments replayed in slow-motion where the referee missed a call or didn’t issue a penalty, one had to be understanding.

“We can’t expect him to see everything,’ they said, quietly drinking their beers in a calm and orderly fashion while seated and not taking off their shirts or hurling abuse at the Plasma screen. “It’s a huge stadium, lots of noise, lots going on. He’s just human. We’re bigger than being childish ranting lunatics.”

Experts in the act of guys kicking around a bag of air have agreed with this reaction, saying it “only makes sense”.

“Really, if you think about the utter meaninglessness of the world and the impossibility of our existence, and the overwhelming and terrifying fact that we live in just one tiny shard of space-time, an insignificant blink in history’s eye in which we’re all definitely going to die alone and unloved one day, with all our life’s works and struggles reduced to a forgotten and trivial collection of futile acts in the face of our own inevitable mortality, then getting worked up about one missed call in one inconsequential football match just feels dumb,” said Refereeologist Blou de Vissle. “Unless we’re talking about last weekend when that fucking blind dick ref missed that totally obvious handball by Suarez right outside the goal line. I mean, how could you miss it? The useless myopic fuck.”

Bunch of men kick bag of wind into net between poles

pic: The Guardian

Thousands of people screamed in mixed frustration and celebration last weekend - much like they did in the hundreds of weekends before - after a bunch of millionaires used their feet to roll a plastic packet of air into a white nylon net suspended between two metal poles.

The group of millionaires, who all wore the same colour just with different numbers on their backs, cheered in victory for the crowd, after just narrowly stopping another bunch of same-colour-shirt wearing millionaires from doing the same thing to them on a big patch of grass in London surrounded by thousands of screaming non-millionaires.

"I know that we have had lots of exciting examples in the past of a bunch of grown men getting overpaid for what is really just toeing around an imported Chinese piece of plastic pumped up with what we breathe on a daily basis," said a 42-year-old man dressed all in red who also isn't a millionaire, "but this particular 90 minutes was exceptional. There was kicking. There was passing. There was booting. There were balls going into nets and fully grown men kissing their hands and pointing to the sky as if God was favouring them in that particular 90 minutes instead of ending world hunger or war or disease. It was brilliant - certainly nothing like the last 40 or so 90-minute ball-kicking sessions I paid to go and watch every weekend last year."

The 90 minutes - which was more like 97 minutes after the man with the whistle not kicking the ball awarded extra time for the millionaires' impressive acting skills - was not, however, without controversy, with hundreds of thousands of people in smoky bars across the world screaming their opinions at TV screens.

Pictured: fan's impression of whistle-blower

On more than one occasion, the whistle-bearer's quality of eyesight was brought into question, along with his sexuality, mental condition, and whether or not he was being unfair to a particular bunch of millionaires.

Following the success, the bunch of men will go on to play another bunch of men next week, with the hope of winning a big metal cup.

"We're going to win it again, I just know it," said another fan (who has no real connection with the bunch of millionaires and yet becomes indignantly defensive if you question their skills or qualities as a bunch of ball-kickers), before adding in a few homophobic digs at the other teams' millionaires, and making a snide remark about their track records of winning big metal cups. "Those other clubs haven't won a title in years. We're obviously better, because reasons."

Meanwhile, the head multi-millionaire in charge of the other millionaires said that he was excited about the results, and that they could not have done it without their loyal fanbase.

"I drive a very nice, very expensive car that uses a lot of fuel," said the also Men's-Cologne-and-underwear-and-sports-shoes model, who took time out of being in scandals in the tabloids to speak to gathered reporters. "Without their endless support, I wouldn't be where I was today. I'd be in a lower league, probably, making as much as a doctor or teacher makes. Christ, imagine that?"

Analysts have since confirmed that the air-bag-kickery was the most exciting thing to happen in human history since last weekend, when a bunch of yellow-shirted millionaires kicked their sack of air into a net belonging to red-and-blue-shirted millionaires.

"It certainly is a very important piece of human history," said a man who used to kick air packets and is now paid to give his opinion about kicking air packets on TV, "which is why we filmed the air-packed-kicking and will play that particular fifteen seconds of air-bag-booting in slow motion every four minutes, for the whole day. And not just on dedicated packet-kicking TV channels, no. We'll also pretend it's news and tack it on for 30 minutes after the news anchor has sufficiently depressed you with all those far-less-newsworthy stories about a couple of kidnapped girls in some African country."

Readers wanting to know more about this story can just turn to any news channel or walk into any bar.