Simply WOW!!!

I don't know about a "total" dive...but she definitely sold it.

The BYU players weren't really on their best behaviour either...they were just a little less obvious about it, maybe it was their lack of caffeine consumption.

Perfect one-touch passes and shots, great footwork, and knowing where your teammate will be two seconds later are refined skills that require tons of talent and practice. Hair-pulling, shirt-pulling, shorts-pulling, and two-handed shoves from behind are not. The former make the beautiful game beautiful. They are why we love watching the game. The latter make the beautiful game ugly and slimy. The latter could easily be reduced by about 98% if refs made a consistent practice of carding it when they see it clearly.

Making excuses for that crap can't seriously pass for intelligent discussion, so I'll assume it's tongue in cheek.

Elbows to the ribs and similar fouls while struggling for position over the ball are different. I think they are more or less inevitable in high-spirited, competitive play, and sure, they should be whistled every once in a while when they are potentially injurious and also gain a clear advantage, but I would expect teams I root for to do them, often.

Anger management issues. You could see her snap in each situation. Sure, the other team did elbow and grab but that's pretty standard. The action did not justify the reaction. I do disagree that this is what men's soccer looks like. Punching and kicking... looked like fighting/brawling to me.

Hey Geez, don't take it personally that we don't agree with you. That's what these forums are for... discussions.

These to teams did play a previous game, which BYU won 3-0. I wonder if there was some carry over from that game?

Haha well clearly we've seen the BYU story... But as always, the victors write the history books. You gotta wonder what secondary plots led to behavior like that, or is that just how New Mexico plays??

DaTruRochin wrote:

PurplePrideTrumpet wrote:Ummm...I didn't see a lot of missed fouls tonight. I really didn't. I thought he did well to let them play a little.

I think he reffed like he had someplace better to be... I think a less disciplined team could have turned the game a lot uglier, maybe it was the ESPN U camera angle, but I definitely saw some headscratching no-calls

I was going to go with, "Just like a United fan, going to SAF's default line about 'the referee made a number of wrong decisions and was not up to the task of this level of game.'"

I kid, I kid... Now that C-Ron is gone I find Chelsea much more distasteful than Man Utd.

Graham Hayes weighed in on the situation as well, and alludes to the fact that perhaps we all overreacted to the entire incident:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/columns/story?columnist=hays_graham&id=4637460

More discussion of this incident and of over-aggressiveness in women's soccer in general in a Jere Longman article in the New York Times Nov. 11, with commentary from Foudy, Arena, Dorrance, and others; link below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/sports/soccer/11violence.html?_r=1&ref=sports

Interestingly enough, just before the BYU/New Mexico game, I heard about a high school game fight back in the Vermont state championship tournament that erupted in very much the same situation as at the BYU/NM game -- lots of very rough play being allowed without sanction, etc. A local sports photographer/writer, who takes pictures during contests and sells them via a website, was at the game and as part of about 200 game photos included a good number of very clear and close-up pictures of the fight. The incident itself, but also the photographer's publication of the photos, generated a great deal of discussion, some of it very heated. A good part of the discussion was about whether the photographer should have put the photos on-line.

My friend who told me about it, who is a teacher, felt the event and aftermath created an excellent educational moment.

Nine high school girls have been suspended for their involvement in a massive brawl November 8 fight at a soccer game in Rhode Island.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxOa63sL-Ks