Note: The current story-arc begins at Strip 621

July 10, 2006

Finale arc! Wee! I can do whatever the hell I want!

There you have it. For any of you who ever wondered why Lord Milligan was a glowing red eyed long horned fatureless black seven foot tall monstrosity, now you know.

So the World Cup final was yesterday, and Italy beat France in penalty kicks. I find soccer matches that end in penalty kicks very disappointing. Cause that's not soccer. It's luck. You may as well toss a coin.

There are a number of better ways to resolve ties that don't sacrifice the core gameplay of soccer.

The present rules have 90 minutes of regulation, and if tied, two 15-minute overtimes. After that, it goes to penalty kicks.

Idea #1: After the overtime, have 10 minute overtime periods with golden goal (sudden death. Get a goal you win). And every one of those overtime periods comes with 2 additional substitutions. And the subs carry over into subsiquent overtime periods. So if the game keeps going you keep getting subs. And then just keep playing till someone wins. If the game keeps going and going, eventually the people you subbed out first will be ready to play more because 80 minutes or something will have gone by. And you can sub them back in.

Idea #2: After the overtime, play without goalies. 11 men on the field per team, but nobody has goalie powers. There'd probably be a lot of scoring, so it's not fair to make it golden goal. So have 10 minute OT periods with no golden goal. Then just keep going till they're not tied at the end of one of those periods.

I'm not particularly clever on soccer, nor did I put a lot of thought in to either of those ideas, but they both seem better than the current system. I'm sure one of the 3 billion or so soccer fans out there can come up with *something* better than penalty kicks.

TRIVIA TIDBIT:

The reason Satan was mad at Andy when he wanted to go back in time to hit on Frances Cleveland was because of the principle of the thing. He didn't know Frances Cleveland was really Satan, so it's the same as cheating.

-ATW