Soccer Mania

World Cup fever has gripped my office and my house.

When I moved to Orlando, there was a group that played soccer on Mondays and Thursdays after work. We were grateful to have four-on-four, and more often than not it was closer to three-on-three or two-on-two. On a few occasions, we had to cancel or just run drills because of lack of people.

However, something happened about three weeks ago. People started coming out to play...en masse. The IT department had a very strong showing, and people from next door (Campus Crusade for Christ) started playing. Some of the temporary summer help began work and with it, soccer. The more people played, the more word spread through the building about the soccer phenomenon. People that haven't played in years, people that have never played, MKs who grew up playing ONLY soccer, the list goes on.

The associated World Cup fever could either be a cause, or an effect, of this soccer mania. My roommate Jon sent out a bracket on Thursday for people to submit their picks for the World Cup (which started yesterday morning)...less than 24 hours later, he had over 20 brackets back! I think that we're the only office in Orlando, because of the international flavor of our building, that will lose more productivity over following the World Cup than following the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

One more indicator of the mania: my roommate and I sat and watched the entire Germany-Costa Rica game last night...in Spanish! (Neither of us speaks a lick of Spanish.)