World Cup Confidential: Tiebreakers

With one of the tightest group standings in the entire 2014 World Cup, some of the more casual US soccer fans are fuzzy on what, exactly, the FIFA rules are if either the Ghana/Portugal and USA teams should end up with the same number of points after today’s matches.

 

For a refresher, here are the current standings for World Cup Group G (USA’s group):

Current Group G standings as of 6/25/14

What does that mean? Well simply, if the US wins or draws against Germany, we advance to the Round of 16 and all is well.

 

However, if the US loses against Germany AND the Ghana/Portugal match does not end in a draw, then a series of tiebreakers will come into play, per FIFA regulations.

 

Here are the FIFA Tiebreaker Protocols, pulled verbatim from the FIFA regulations guide, in the order they will be implemented if necessary:

1) Total points earned through the course of group play. If that results in a tie, then:
2) Goal differential. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
3) Total number of goals scored by each team. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
4) Goal difference in games for each team. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
5) Goals scored in games between the two tied teams. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
6) Total goals scored without prancing around the pitch like some kind of douchebag. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
7) Number of “balls” euphemisms made during the course of the tournament. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
8) Overall attractiveness of team (including manager) on the traditional ten-point scale. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
9) Total number of abs on a team. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
10) Largest dollar amount paid to referees and/or FIFA executive board. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
11) Overall number of Luis Suarez bites received during group play. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
12) Number of times God thanked during players’ postgame speeches. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
13) A round of “One two three NOT IT.” If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
14) An on-the-spot “who wore it better” between any two players from the involved teams who exchanged jerseys after a match. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
15) Nose goes. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
16) Number of Landon Donovans on team. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
17) Number of World Wars won. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
18) Best of three in Rock/Paper/Scissors. Okay well best of five. Wait I wasn’t ready, best of seven… If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
19) Total number of players on each team that are actually Amanda Bynes just dressed up like a man, secretly hoping to win the affections of one of her teammates. If that ALSO results in a tie, then:
20) …Ah f*** it, just flip a coin.

 

So there you have it…here’s hoping it doesn’t come to any of that. Come on you Yanks!

 

Play on,
Dustin

Artist rendering of what the US victory will look like tomorrow.

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox. Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

Advertisement

The Advent of @ocdustino: A History

the face of @ocdustino…look how pretty he is when he’s not talking.

People  almost never  always ask me about my preferred social media handle — which is @ocdustino for those of you who neglected to read the title of this post — where it came from, what it means, why I have it tattooed on my left ass cheek, etc. And with it being my twitterversary week (yes, that’s a thing; no, I’m not dating anyone. I fail to see the connection) it seemed like a good time to explore the legend of @ocdustino. Buckle in, cadets, you’re in for the sort of history lesson they don’t give you in school. Except maybe homeschool if I homeschool my future kids and I’m really hungover/scrambling for some filler topics that day.

The year was 1867, I was a freshman in college, and the lightbulb had just recently been invented, which meant that we could use our computers indoors, any time of the day or night! This quickly led to the invention of something called AOL Instant Messenger (or AIM for short, because you know if your acronym needs an acronym, you’re doing it right). AIM was primarily invented as a means for people to post their favorite Brand New/Something Corporate lyrics or disparaging passive-aggressive comments about their boy/girlfriend, but quickly evolved into a sort of instant messaging service that was kind of like a two-person internet chatroom, but somehow not as creepy as an actual internet chatroom. Meeting and then getting captured/raped/killed by strangers from the internet wasn’t a thing at the time (craigslist hadn’t been invented yet), but because superheroes/secret identities were still really popular (our Batman was Michael Keaton — ha! Can you believe that? Michael Keaton!) everyone used pseudonyms (known as “screen names”) to effectively hide their true identities from strangers, while also expressing their interests to those same strangers. Screen names like “CheerKick44”, “Platypussy02”, “ExtraExtraSloppy”, “GoldfishDanzer”, “Star19Catcher”, “DivaQueen02” were the norm (fun fact: I only made two of those up). Pretty rad nicknames right? Your screen name said a lot about who you were, and you wanted it to be cool, concise, and clever. With some numbers at the end like the year you graduated or your jersey number from high school athletics because someone probably already had the version of the screen name you wanted that didn’t have numbers.

Liar, Liar, Lance on Fire

I only used this many kinds of drugs…

Two stories centered around deception broke this week: Lance Armstrong’s not-as-tearful-as-you-would-expect admission to using performance enhancing drugs, and Manti Te’o’s (that can’t be the right way to apostrophize his last name but I’m out of other ideas) imaginary dead cancer victim girlfriend.

If you haven’t heard the details, I highly recommend using the search website I invented, http://www.google.com, to get a summa

Here’s my take.