I'm a soccer fan.  And I'm a football (American style) fan too.  The two worlds rarely cross - the games are so dissimilar.  Soccer is about finesse and continuous flow; American football is about power, intensity, and the moment. 

The soccer fan in me cringes every time I see a soccer player fling himself (and lately, herself) to the turf, writhing in agony after the slightest whiff of contact in either:  1. an effort to sway the referee to award the opponents a foul, 2. genuine lack of pain tolerance, 3. lack of manliness, 4. all of the above.  I'd complain to pro-soccer/anti-American-football types that "you'd NEVER see an American football player do that, ... it simply wouldn't be accepted by fans, coaches, or teammates".

Wrong.

If you saw this evenings Arizona v. San Francisco game, particularly the third quarter, you may have seen a play where Larry Fitzgerald went over the middle to haul down a short pass for a couple of yards.  There's not much that's more manly that going over the middle to catch a short pass, knowing that a corner or a linebacker is waiting to lay a world of hurt on you.  Sure enough, Larry was tackled (nothing all that hard, just a solid tackle).  As the tackler got up, he stuck his hand out to push against Larry's shoulder pads (Fitzgerald was starting to sit up).  You'd have thought Larry was shot in the head the way he flung his arms up in the air and threw his body back down on the ground.  And, sure enough, the back judge, not schooled by years refereeing the pussies that too often reveal themselves in a soccer match, threw a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct on the Forty-Niner.

Not a big deal?  Probably not.  But it might be.  Here's hoping the Cardinal's coaching staff, the Cardinal's team, and the NFL make a point of noting Dame Fitzgerald's moment of disgrace and call it what it was:  behavior totally unacceptable on an American football field where sweat, toughness, and unbelievable mental control over pain are and must continue to be the norm.  Rather, it was behavior totally characteristic of the anti-American-football player:  the guy wearing cute little shorts, metrosexual haircuts, and the pain tolerance and general pussiness of so many professional soccer players.

Here's hoping he's called out for his pathetic behavior.  It's already an uphill battle for soccer - where many fans hate this behavior, but have been unable to affect change to remove this disgrace from the World's Game.  End it NOW, NFL, nip this mother #*$&er right in the bud.