The ratings for the Chav Ball Final are in for the US market.

The full global tally is still a ways off, but the World Cup finished strong with U.S. viewers.

Capping off a record-breaking run for the FIFA tournament’s 2014 stay in Brazil, Sunday’s final between Germany and Argentina averaged 17.3 million viewers on ABC. Compared to the network’s total for the 2010 final in South Africa, the match was up 1.8 million viewers.

ABC, carrying ESPN’s coverage, was not the only network to air the game. Univision’s Spanish-language coverage also boasted a considerable showing with 9.2 million viewers. That’s up a shade from the 2010 final.

Looking at just the ABC-ESPN combo, the game stands as the third-most-watched soccer game in U.S. TV history. The U.S. match with Portugal set a new record several weeks ago with 18.2 million viewers, edging past No. 2: the the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup final  at 17.98 million viewers.

For a final, this marks the most watched men’s World Cup championship game with U.S. viewers. And all told, ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC improved their combined World Cup showing by 39 percent over 2010, bringing in an average 4.6 million viewers during the 64 matches.

Online, the WatchESPN app generated 1.8 million live unique viewers.

One of the important aspects of Chav Ball in America is talking about how popular it is with fans. The games are so horribly dull, the TV coverage spends a lot of time showing images of “passionate” fans looking passionate. Passionate is always assumed to be a good thing, especially for women. Of course, Pol Pot was passionate about killing people so there’s that.

Anyway, how does that hold compared to other quadrennial events?

About the same.

NBC and Nielsen were expected to release more detailed ratings information on Tuesday, but preliminary estimates show the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics averaging a strong 21.4 million viewers in primetime.

While down 12% from the 24.4 million who watched on average during the more time zone-friendly Vancouver Games of 2010, it’s up 6% from the 20.2 million average for the last European Winter Games in Torino in 2006.

The Closing Ceremony from Sochi on Sunday averaged about 15.1 million viewers, well below the 21.4 million who watched the final night from Vancouver (following that afternoon’s Team USA-Canada men’s gold medal game). It was up slightly from the 2006 Torino closer (14.8 million).

From a competitive standpoint, the Olympics have never been more dominant. For the first complete week of the Games (Feb. 10-16), NBC logged its most lopsided primetime victory in network history.

And the Olympics have helped NBC in other dayparts, including news. “Today” beat “Good Morning America” both complete weeks during the Games, while the Brian Williams-hosted “NBC Nightly News” had its most-watched week in eight years.

NBC paid $4.4 billion in 2011 for every Olympics through the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games. The Peacock and its networks aired a record 1,539 hours over its 18 days from Sochi, Russia, including 230 on NBC Sports Network, 185 on the broadcaster and 45 on MSNBC.

Facebook released data on Monday for the Games, during which roughly 45 million people chatted about the Winter Olympics on the social media website — for a total of about 120 million combined posts, comments and “likes.”

It looks like soccer remains as popular as figure skating and interpretive dance, despite the endless hype.

I’m laughing very hard watching the toadies in the sporting press line up to fellate LeeBong this summer. The letter his people crafted worked as intended and the full force of the liberal press is out promoting LeeBong Inc. I give the guy a lot of credit for hiring smart people and letting them run his affairs. One sports guy not falling for it is the thoroughly cynical Ron Borges.

If NBC is looking for contestants for the next season of “The Biggest Loser” they can start with Dwyane Wade.

Wade now understands what Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert felt like four years ago when he was jilted by LeBron James and temporarily lost his mind. Put your trust in someone who says, “I’m all about business,” and you’ll probably end up getting the business from him eventually.

Four years ago James stuck it to a city, but at least the team he played for deserved it to a degree because in seven years they didn’t give him much help. This time he only stuck it to one guy but that guy, Wade, damn sure didn’t deserve to be “Clevelanded.”

LeBron James was supposed to be more than Dwyane Wade’s teammate. He was supposed to be his friend. But, hey, cash is thicker than blood (at least when it’s in an $88 million pile), which is way thicker than water and considerably thicker than whatever bound James to Wade apparently.

Two weeks ago Wade joined James and Chris Bosh, and opted out of the remaining two years of his contract and the $41.8 million guaranteed to him by the Heat, ostensibly to make room for Miami to do what it could to keep the Big Three together. Only problem was The Big One wasn’t staying.

Any chance he could have given Wade a wink or a nod? Any way he could have left an anonymous tweet in Wade’s direct message box saying, “Ixney on the opt-out!”? Might he have considered saying, “Think twice, my brother, because you ain’t my brother, brother!”?

He might have, but instead he did to Wade what he did to the Cavaliers and the city of Cleveland. LeBron James played him.

LeeBong is not a dumb guy. He’s not a genius, but by the standards of the NBA is an elite intellect. Unlike most of these knuckleheads he is trying to build something that will outlast his playing days. To do that means you have to be selfish. In this case, it means walking away from his current team and playing the role of the prodigal son returning home. Like the people managing his life, he always has a suitcase packed and the care idling in the parking lot, ready for a quick escape.

Maybe he didn’t do it consciously. Maybe he really believes he didn’t know he left his heart in Akron, but the idea that it just hit him in the last week that, as he put it on SI.com: “My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn’t realize that four years ago. I do now,” is ludicrous.

Where Wade goes from here is an open question. Not surprisingly after a dalliance with the Houston Rockets that convinced them to deal away point guard Jeremy Lin and a draft pick to the Lakers to open up cap space for him, Chris Bosh reversed field and went back to Miami last night, agreeing to a five-year, $118 million contract. Houston offered him the max at four years and $88 million, but Miami could give him the extra year and an additional $30 million, and Bosh, having learned something from watching LeBron, snatched it.

At 32 and with aching knees, Wade is not in the same boat. At times this year he seemed to have become the third wheel of the Big Three. When healthy he can still play like D-Wade, but when his knees are aching he plays like Lil Wayne, if he plays at all.

To save them and improve the Heat’s chances of getting at least to “not two rings,” Miami rested him for 28 games. He averaged only 33 minutes all season and played only nine games in 31 days going into the Eastern Conference finals. Yet he still faded in the championship series. He wasn’t alone, by the way.

Since he opted out, the Heat owe him nothing, but could admit he opted out more to help them keep LeBron than to feather his own nest. Coupled with all he’s brought to the franchise, maybe they pay him fairly, but he won’t get paid like Bosh or James did, and unless Pat Riley has lost his mind, he won’t get paid like he was going to be paid two weeks ago either, whether he stays or leaves.

In the end, Dwyane Wade sacrificed himself for his team and his friend, but it was all for naught.

Welcome to the other side of the NBA, Dwyane.

The reason teams like to have veterans on teams is to help the young guys figure out the reality of life as a pro. One of the things they need to figure out is they only have so many years. At 20, a player may think he will play forever. At 30 most have figured out they have only a few years left. The guys who figure this out early tend to have better career, assuming they avoid the things black players tend not to avoid.

James watched Wade fall apart over four seasons. He knows life after basketball is right around the corner and he better be ready for it, even if that means using and abusing his friends in the game. This move back to Cleveland is all about LeeBong Incorporated producing cash long after LeeBong in out of the league. That and giving the white fans another reason to worship their black heroes.

Steve Sailer has a post up on a topic that interests me. How to improve baseball. He makes two excellent points, one I’ve made myself and one I never considered. The former is the role of steroids and its impact on the development of players. The latter is the playing surface. Lots of people have talked about the shrinking parks for aesthetics, but no one ever talks about the turf. The baseball field has become softer and slower over the last few decades.

First a word on PED’s. Steroids did not just make for more homeruns. It warped the game and we’re still suffering the effects. A pitcher is not just throwing a ball or even working a hitter. A pitcher works the lineup. Even at the highest level, there are batters in the lineup a pitcher knows he can master. A top of the rotation pitcher usually can dominate the bottom of the order. He may also own a guy or two in the top of the order.

Let’s say I’m looking at a lineup where I have to be careful with the #1, #3,#4 and #5 hitters. The rest are guys I know I can go after. Two things are true. One is I will usually be able to work around these guys because I know I will have quick outs before or after them. Like the first inning, there will be at least one other inning where I face the meat of the order, but otherwise I can use their weak hitters against their better hitters.

The other thing that is true is the pitcher will have innings where he can attack the strike zone and get quick outs. Those weak hitters will have to swing and swing at pitches of his choosing, Pile up a few quick innings and all of a sudden your starter can get into the late innings. Quick innings also mean the pitcher is fresh when the top of the lineup comes around the second and third time. Pitchers are vulnerable in their first ten and last ten pitches. It’s why they warm-up so much.

Steroids altered this dynamic. It turned the bottom of the order guys into threats. The guys with warning track power suddenly became home run hitters. Guys who we’re low average guys because they could not handle certain parts of the strike zone were suddenly able to get around on everything. Stacking more power in the lineup also afforded more protection to the better hitters. All of a sudden the #5 hitter has a big bat behind him.

The pitcher is now faced with a meat of the order scenario in every inning. He has fewer breaks in the lineup so he has to finesse every hitter in the lineup. The hitters are not dumb so they start working the pitch count too. It should be noted that this skill developed in the steroid era. All of a sudden guys not juiced up found value in working every at bat to a dozen pitches. Johnny Gomes is in the bigs primarily because he is a dozen pitch at-bat.

Once pitch counts soared, the use of the bullpen soared. In the 70’s and 80’s you had middle relief and closers. A closer was often a two inning guy. Today we have specialists for the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, along with a closer. Steroids warped the very structure of the game and we are still feeling the effects. It does appear to be healing as testing beats back the drug dealers. The culture of the sport appears to be changing as there is a real shame attached to using.

Now, the idea in Steve’s post that is most striking is the playing surface. Those old concrete and turf stadiums were like playing on a parking lot. Fly balls would bounce off the turf into the stands on a regular basis. Slap-hitting speedsters would practice putting the ball in the gaps. What is today a single could be a triple in the old parks. The reason is the ball would shoot through the gap to the warning track. Of course, those infield chops could also scoot through into the outfield, while today they are just groundouts.

Speed used to be a much bigger part of the game when the surface was fast. The trade-off for the pitchers was that the parks were enormous compared to what we see today. Yankee Stadium had a 460 foot center-field wall. Today it is 410 feet. Tiger Stadium had a 467 foot center field. These were grass parks. The turf parks had similar dimensions and they had those rock hard surfaces. You could not play outfield in Kansas City or Cincinnati unless you could cover a lot of ground.

Was the game better back then? That’s debatable. Steve tends to think his childhood was the peak of western civilization so he naturally calls the 70’s the best baseball in history. The lack of fans in the seats suggest otherwise. Fans like the new parks and they like seeing humans play on grass. It’s why the new football fields use revolutionary turf that is so much like grass, fans barely notice it. Anyone who has walked a modern NFL field will tell you the new turf is better than grass.

I do think he is onto something. The turf has taken speed out of the game or at least reduced its value too much. Making the outfields a little faster would go a long way toward bringing speed back into the game. The concern is the health of the players. Those rock hard surfaces were murder on the knees. As a teen I played some ball on those surfaces and it was brutal. You hurt all over the next day. Professionals who played back then would talk about how it shortened careers.

That said, modern grounds keeping techniques can make the surface fast, without making it hard. As Steve points out, they do it with golf courses and in cricket. You could also use FieldTurf, which is super fast for runners, but very generous on the knees and ankles. Changing the composition of the outfields to make them faster and maybe pushing the walls back in places would open up the game to speed again.

The big area for improvement is in the pace of the game. In the modern world four hours is too much to ask of fans. Three hours is the upper limit. It is why football is focused on that number for their game times. No sport is better at maximizing the television audience than the NFL. They know three hours is the most you can ask from the fan. Baseball is right around three hours now, but that’s at a 19^th century pace.

I think baseball needs to set 2.5 hours as the target. Basketball is at two hours and twenty minutes these days. Hockey is coming in at 2.5 hours for an NHL game. These are action sports so there is plenty to keep the fan interested. Baseball is intentionally slow paced and that is a big part of its appeal. It is why baseball radio broadcasts are so profitable for teams. Baseball makes for great background to a cookout. Still, the games need to be shorter to appeal to the modern fan.

Pitchers want to work quickly, but hitters are trained to slow them down. The pitchers then play around with their pace to mess with the hitter. Instead, I’d like to see the umps call the hitter into the box and he remains there until the ump says otherwise. If he steps out, the pitcher is free to pitch. The hitter can wander around scratching his balls, if he likes, but the pitcher is then free to groove as many pitches over the plate.

The other thing that would speed up the game is calling the high strike again. When the strike zone was letter high, hard throwers had an edge. Frank Tanana and Nolan Ryan knew they could work that part of the strike zone. That meant more strikes and more swings. Faster at-bats meant faster innings and faster games. Jim Palmer built a hall of fame career on throwing strikes. His best pitch was a 90-mph fastball up in the strike zone. Today, that’s a ball.

Speed up the game and bring speed back into the game and you probably adjust baseball to the times without altering the game in a big way. Fewer home runs would be replaced with more extra base hits and more stolen bases. Fans want action and there’s not much more tension than when a speedster is on first or rounding third trying to score. Packing it into 2.5 hours makes it work for TV.

After my ride I stopped for a burger at the local pub. They had one of the World Cup games on the big screen. For some reason the place was empty so I could hear the play-by-play of the game. Greece was playing Costa Rica. I was pulling for Greece for no reason other than they looked like old men compared to the Costa Ricans. They just looked like guys you would see smoking outside a club or arguing with one another at an outdoor café. The announcer made some reference to the star player celebrating their last win with a quiet cigarette. I think his name was Socrates.

It occurred to me that one of the reasons Americans tend to make fun of soccer is the behavior of the announcers. Every four years ESPN imports an English guy (I think he is English) to call the games. They pair him with an American, who functions as a color commentator. I did not catch the names of the two announcers and I really don’t care enough to look it up. It sounds like the same guy every four years, but maybe they have a rotation of British announcers. it is not all that important.

In America, we expect the play-by-play guy to be level headed and dry. In an exciting moment, he can show emotion, but otherwise he is supposed to be neutral and avoid making a spectacle of himself. The color guy is always a former jock who explains the action after the call. Making sport of bad announcer and goofy sidekicks is as popular as the sports themselves. Chris Berman is considered the worst play-by-play guy in America because of his antics, while Dan Dierdorff was the gold standard for the dumb jock turned television personality.

In soccer, this arrangement is exactly backward. The play-by-play guy is an overly emotional clown. The British guy they drag over to do US broadcasts of soccer is like a parody of the ban announcer. The over the top language and ridiculous comments about heroism and courage are topped off with overly dramatic comments during the few exciting points in the game. The color guy sounds like he is on drugs he is so mellow. He does not say anything you need to know. Instead, he works as a straight man to the weird announcer screaming about the heroism of a pass.

The only other place I’ve listened to soccer announcers is in South America and the announcers are famous for being emotional wrecks. But, they report the weather as if the fate of the world rests on their next utterance. That’s just how Latins roll. Brits are supposed to be stoic so there’s a reason for the deranged announcers that I’m not understanding. I’m sure Brits are perfectly fine with it, but the chav-ball fans in America do themselves no good insisting on using the this announcer model.

Thinking about it, maybe the melodramatics from the booth are necessary. Eating my burger, there were long periods when nothing was happening in the game. Unlike American sports, soccer suffers a crucial defect. That’s the lack of statistics. In baseball, the dead time is filled with talk of the numbers. Football is a stat driven sport these days so that fills a big part of the broadcast. Maybe that’s why the soccer announcers have to carry on as they do. They have nothing to talk about for long periods.

That’s the other thing that does not work for Americans. Pre-game and post-game sports broadcasts are heavy on stats and heavy on strategy. In football, breaking down film is pretty much all the studio shows do these days. That and interviews with players and coaches. The half time show for the soccer game was three guys talking about how hard the players were trying. No replays. No strategy discussion. Just pointless statements about passion and effort.

The Greeks lost on coin flips.

The news brings word that LeeBong James has opted out his contract with the Miami Heat, a professional flea circus in Florida. This means LeeBong will spend the height of the summer getting wined and dined by rich Jewish guys promising him the world, while the sporting media gushes over his wonderfulness. ESPN will then have a special broadcast to announce where LeeBong will play next year.

James indicated that he welcomed the opportunity to become a free agent and have the same level of flexibility he was afforded in 2010, when he signed with Miami after spending his first seven years in Cleveland.

“Being able to have flexibility as a professional, anyone, that’s what we all would like,” James said last week. “That’s in any sport, for a football player, a baseball player, a basketball player, to have flexibility and be able to control your future or your present. I have a position to be able to do that. … There’s a lot of times that you’re not in control of your future as a professional.”

In his four seasons in Miami, the Heat have gone to the NBA Finals four times, winning two championships. James could join Shaquille O’Neal as the only players in league history to lead the NBA Finals in total points scored and then play for a different team to start the following season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. O’Neal played for the 2003-04 Los Angeles Lakers, who lost to the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals, and was traded to the Heat in the offseason.

If James departs, he would be leaving a historic opportunity on the table. Only one team in NBA history has appeared in at least five consecutive NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics, who reached 10 straight from 1957 to 1966.

With James and Carmelo Anthony officially opting out of their contracts, multiple teams — including the Cleveland Cavaliers, Atlanta Hawks and Lakers — have begun the process of exploring roster moves that would create sufficient salary-cap space to sign 2014’s marquee free agents in tandem, sources close to the situation told ESPN.com.

The NBA is the worst run sports league on earth. In every other sport, good owners willing to pay competent managers can build solid, profitable franchises. In the NBA, you either hit the “lottery” and get a great young player or you get picked as the next stop on the traveling caravan of stars. Owning an NBA team is not about winning, but about money laundering and pointless entertainment.

That said, James is a good star for the millennials. Their’s is a transactional existence where the past has no grip on the present. Loyalty to the hometown in the case of Cleveland or loyalty to the men who put together the Miami deal means nothing to LeeBong James. All that matters is what he can get next because all that matters to LeeBong is his happiness. That’s a quality you see with the millennials. They are so self-absorbed they barely notice there are other human beings around them.

If James was just chasing the money, it would be understandable. These guys have a short time to make millions. Most of them are morons who blow their money on flunkies and baby-mommas, so getting as much as they can makes sense. It is harder to blow through $100 million than $80 million. But, that’s not what it’s about for the superstars like James. He’s just a megalomaniac seeking the next pat on the head.

Imagine a generation of these with absolutely no loyalty to anything, rushing about looking for the next pat on the head. Think of that when you hear how the millennials want “self-actualizing careers” rather than just making money. It’s what the Clinton kid meant when she honked out this nonsense the other day. Most people think she is lying and James is really just chasing money, just a different way. Maybe. They certainly seem to believe their bullshit though.

The World Cup started off in grand fashion. The very first match was rigged so the host team could notch a victory.

Croatia coach Niko Kovac said his players “better give it up now and go home” after Brazil were awarded what looked to be a soft, and crucial, penalty in their 3-1 win in the World Cup opening game.

With the match tied at 1-1 in the second half, Japanese official Yuichi Nishimura awarded Brazil a contentious spot-kick when striker Fred went down after a light touch from Croatia centre-back Dejan Lovren.

Kovac called the penalty “ridiculous” and said Nishimura was not at the level to be a referee on the sport’s biggest stage.

“If that was a penalty, we should be playing basketball,” Kovac said. “Those kinds of fouls are penalised there.

The liberal weenies in the American sporting press who keep telling us soccer is important never bother to mention that soccer is the most corrupt sport on earth. Here’s a piece on the rampant cheating and game fixing from PBS.

Soccer has been tainted in the past by evidence of match fixing. But European law enforcement officials outlined a complex scandal yesterday that was enormous in scope and could be deeply damaging to the game’s reputation.

The European Union’s police agency, Europol, said an 18-month investigation turned up 680 matches suspected of being fixed across the globe. The games were played between 2008 and 2011. The scandal may have even involved qualifying matches for the sport’s biggest tournaments, the World Cup and the European Championships.

The probe cited links to criminal networks, including a Singapore-based crime syndicate. Europol wouldn’t name any of the suspected matches or individuals, but said it involved more than 400 people in 15 countries.

That’s in Europe where respect for the law is still kind of important. Imagine what South America is like. But, that’s the nature of sports. Sports with a high level of difficulty attract a different sort of player and a different sort of fan. Soccer is just a bunch of little guys chasing a ball around. The only way to keep it interesting is gambling and heavy drinking. Maybe a little hooliganism too.