Let's get a little bit of rain going on this parade.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I didn't like the World Cup and blamed the intense, over-the-top nationalistic fervor in large part for my dislike. By implication I said that the game itself was not the bit problem.

I have now weathered a saturating dose of soccer for almost two weeks. I have watched more soccer than I thought possible. I watched Serbia upset Germany. I watched the Netherlands beat Denmark in a battle between what I thought were the same country.

I watched so much soccer I wanted a gun to either shoot my television or put a bullet in my head to end the misery.

The obnoxious fans are one of the problems, but the game itself -- including the referees -- is at least as important a problem. Watch soccer once and you'll figure out why it's such a lousy sporting experience.

Let's begin with the biggest myth about the so-called Beautiful Game.

Soccer fanatics are quick and eager to tell you about how unsullied this game is by timeouts, etc. They maintain these miracle players run steadily for 45 minutes per half, plus extra time, whatever that is. They make it sound like the players are running 90 minutes of wind sprints.

What a joke. Watch any soccer game and you'll see countless opportunities when the players are just standing around, not running, not even walking. Injuries, penalty cards, corner kicks, throw-ins and the Academy Award nominated flop followed by a look of unbelievable disbelief. Sure the players need to be fit, but to make them out as a cross between the Energizer Bunny and Kip Keino, the famed Kenyan runner, is a joke.

You could get just as much excitement by putting the fans in the stands and putting giant multi-sided screens in the center of the field to have some beginners play a game of Pong.

There is way too much talk about the referees, especially by the broadcasters. Players and coaches, of course, are subject to penalties for criticizing officials. No such sanctions exist for the guys who are calling the game. I can understand this, of course, because after awhile how many different ways are there to say "he ran up the field, he ran down the field, he ran up the field." Criticizing the refs is one way for broadcasters to keep from getting bored out of their minds.

But referee blasting is seemingly more important than evaluating the play of your favorite team. Fans get bios of the refs. Commentators solemnly condemn what they call "The Wall of Silence" that prevents referees from explaining their calls after the game. Wall of Silence? There's a Wall of Silence surrounding Iran's nuclear weapon development. This is soccer, for God's sake.

If the governing body of soccer were serious about this sport, they'd do something to reduce the impact that referees have on the game. If they paid as much attention to playing as they do to the referees then we might have a game on our hands. But FIFA seems to relish these referee controversies. They even put bios of the referees in the programs, for God's sake.

The actual game of soccer always seems to take a back seat to all of these off field machinations. The French team, for example, decided not to practice over the weekend because their strength coach either quit or was fired after an argument with a player. Between that and the continued angst over the bad call against the United States side you could hardly hear any television coverage about the actual games.

I also have to wonder why the United States is such an average team, or squad, or side, or whatever they call them. And the answer is simple. Our best athletes play football and basketball and baseball. The kids who play soccer are the kids who also join the AV club, the glee club and the academic decathlon.

Of course in soccer it seems that it doesn't make much difference if you are a team of all-stars or a side of scrubs you grabbed off the street at the last minute. This World Cup features dozens of the world's biggest stars and they don't seem a lot better than guys whose names are known only to their mother. No matter who ends up on the field the score is already going to be around 1-nil.

I know that in the middle of this orgy of devotion for the World Cup I may seem like a minority. But I doubt it. Most of the people I know have a passing interest in the games, but their day wouldn't fall apart if they didn't know the scores. Wherever you look the inches and minutes devoted to coverage of the games seem to be limitless.

But if you strip away all the histrionics you are left with a game that, contrary to popular opinion, has not brought about world peace, hasn't salved religious and ethnic hostility, is a gathering of (at best) average athletes, allows for extended naps until your wife wakes you for a try on goal which is almost always unsuccessful, is governed by a bunch of old men who think it's cool to have their whole little world arguing and threatening to kill somebody (and these are not always idle threats), is a veritable tsunami of boredom.

In short, you are left with soccer.