Flop Life: A response

I recently stumbled onto a humorous article 'Flop Life: What if we all acted like World Cup Stars'.  The article was more of lead into the video above which helps to point out the absurdities Americans see in the soccer 'flops' during the World Cup tournament.

I used a story of the World Cup as a prompting for a post a few days ago and again I must admit my novice understanding of soccer/futball as a whole.   I will also say that no matter how funny (and correct in pointing out the absurdity of flopping if taken out of context is) this video is, it misses the point in why flopping became necessary.

Television has allowed for the massive scope of the game itself to be lessened.  The field seems smaller and as a spectator we have the ability, in an instant, to see what happened and what might have caused it.  Here's a test for you, how many officials are there on the field? How many of them are able to stop play, call fouls, and determine a call in an instant?  The answers: 4 and 1.

One person!

Let's Americanize that for a second, if you are standing at the 50 yardline of a football field during a game and a pass is thrown to end zone, how are you able to tell clearly and absolutely from your advantage point if someone pushed off or unfairly gained position to make the catch?  It's nearly impossible to make every call correct from that distance.

Insert why I believe flopping became a necessary evil for soccer.  If players didn't flop the official would rarely see the infraction.  It is only in the modern era that we are able to see the reply and know whether or not it was exaggerated.

Why does this matter?

Well, if you notice on the video everything is in close courters and in slow motion - which of course increases the humor.  But again remember, looking at the same thing from 50 yards away and in real time - you might not notice it.

Now, take this into another realm - the news.  How many conflicts, issues, wars, injustices, genocides, and evils do we overlook or are unaware of it because it does not get coverage. Instead we see the flopping of some polarizing political agenda as the lead story. Put it in another realm, take someone who lives a more affluent, suburban area into a larger city, where they then see the homeless or a drug deal go down.  Often the thought is, 'at least that's not where I live'.  But that is also a lie, we allow ourselves to be distracted by flops that keep us from engaging the actual realities of our world.

A world that is as broad as the entire earth and as small as the homes we live in.  What have we overlooked?  What truly needs our attention?

So in short, I'm not opposed to flopping - but like the player that goes down for no reason, too often it's diverting our attention from seeing the real wrongs in our world.

Let us all strive to see things more clearly.