Flopping: It's Not Just for Futbolers

Every four years, in coincidence with the World Cup, the North American Soccer Beast sticks its head out of its upscale suburban cave. Immediately a legion of sports fans tries to kill it with shovels. Soccerphobia runs rampant among us, usually for no apparent reason.

Oh, they'll give you reasons. Soccer is full of ties, a 3-2 match is considered high-scoring, only three people on Earth understand the offsides rule and none of them are FIFA referees, and most particularly, the players flop on the ground and fake injuries like three-year-olds told it's time to clean up the playroom.

I'll grant that the first three of those reasons are somewhat valid. But the fourth? We'd better take a look at some of our favorite sports.

I'm as disgusted as the next person with the soccer player who, upon the slightest incidental contact with an opponent, drops to the ground like he'd just been shot in the butt with a tranquilizer dart. This is just a blatant attempt to draw a penalty kick, the deadliest play in soccer. It would be funny if it didn't work so often.

Really, though, what's the difference between the diving striker and the wide receiver who mimes throwing a penalty flag every time he drops a pass, even on plays where he was only slightly more covered than Lady Gaga was at the Yankees game? Those are morally equivalent to each other. They're both attempts to persuade others that something happened which clearly didn't.

With that in mind, let's take a hard look at some of the more blatant examples of flopping and diving in the sports we Americans have already embraced.

In a 1953 football game against the Iowa Hawkeyes, Notre Dame players faked injuries not once but twice, both in situations where the Irish were down a touchdown and out of time outs. The tactic worked since faking an injury was not illegal at that time, though it was after this game. The No. 1 Irish, who didn't play in bowls back then, salvaged a 14-14 tie and hoped to hold on to the top ranking.

The poll voters would have none of it. The Irish dropped to No. 2 and stayed there, largely as a result of the backlash against their duplicity. Even Grantland Rice, the father of American sportswriting, took them to task, calling the Irish's flopping "a complete violation of the spirit and ethics of the game."

It wasn't so much that the Irish faked injuries. Many teams did at that time. It was the indelicate and obvious manner in which they did it. As Iowa broadcaster Bob Brooks put it, "Frank Leahy, the Notre Dame coach has the Irish fainting all over the place. Players went down like they'd been shot." Leahy would never coach another game for the Irish and the next season faking injuries to gain a time out became illegal.

Which is not to say that college football players never took a dive again. The best example of this happened in the 1971 Florida-Miami game. It was the final game of the season, and late in the game Florida quarterback John Reaves was just a few yards shy of Jim Plunkett's all-time NCAA passing yardage record. The Hurricanes had the ball and were driving, but they weren't driving fast enough. How did the Gators get the ball back in Reaves' hands? You have to see it to believe it. The shameful display is at 0:39.


Ick.

It's not just college football players who take a dive to help a player break a record. There's what Brett Favre did in 2002 to help Michael Strahan set the NFL's single-season sack record, sliding into a sack while surrounded by nothing but open field. Sure, you could argue that any sane person would slide to avoid having something the size of Strahan fall on them. This is Brett Favre we're talking about. He's used to being run over. He gift-wrapped this sack for his friend, Between this incident and the way he makes the entire NFL dance a retirement polka every summer, it's little wonder Favre now has the credibility of a North Korean press release.

Even basketball players get in on the act. When I asked my FanHouse colleagues if they had any examples of flopping in American sports, the first suggestion I got was "Reggie Miller's entire career." How dare anyone imply that a career 88.8-percent free throw shooter may have occasionally, um, embellished a few bumps in the paint, right? Even if he did go to the floor with all the grace of someone who accidentally stepped on a skateboard.

Then, of course, there's the phenomenon of "start and park" cars in NASCAR. Some teams start cars just to run them for a lap or two, then "retire" with a host of vague maladies. How are you to prove the car really wasn't handling right, or didn't have a transmission problem, or wasn't out of blinker fluid? Just give us our check for 43rd place, make sure our team gets a couple championship points, and we'll see you next week.

What's more amazing is that NASCAR doesn't care about this. They point out, correctly, that races aren't ruined by the start-and-parkers, so what's the big deal?

Indeed, the flop is so thoroughly ingrained in American sports that it shows up in contests where the outcomes are predetermined. No, not the NBA playoffs. I'm talking about pro wrestling, where you'll never see a finer flop than this one from a 1997 match between Shawn Michaels and Triple H for the WWF European title.


All that's missing from that match was Michaels whipping out a newspaper and doing the Jumble while waiting for Triple H to finish his imitation of a late-90s banner ad (Trip the Heel and Win a Free Digital Spycam!).

So hate soccer if you must. Goodness knows you'll have lots of company. But please, stop complaining about the flopping and diving. You're already watching sports where it happens all the time.