Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

1. TV ratings are in the toilet. They were down about 33 percent for the opening ceremonies and have continued to be tepid for most broadcasts. Some apologists note streaming opportunities cut into TV ratings, but even counting those platforms, far fewer people are watching these Woke Olympics in the U.S., and we congratulate them for their good taste.
2. The ratings flop is all the more notable because network and cable competitors have gone out of their way to clear the decks for NBC’s coverage by scheduling re-runs and other stale programming. Even NASCAR and Indy Car are not having races. Only the Major League Baseball broadcasts go on and those are scant competition in view of that sport’s similarly poor TV ratings, exemplified by the recent All-Star Game broadcast that plumbed long-term lows for viewership.
3. U.S. female gymnast, Simone Biles, promoted as the GOAT of her sport (Greatest Of All Time) became a metaphorical goat of a different kind by choosing to sit out decisive competition due to what she described as mental issues. Support poured in on social media, including from former U.S. Women’s gymnast Kerri Strug. For those who may have forgotten, Strug broke an ankle on a vault, but performed a second vault with the injury to enable to the U.S. team to win gold in 1996. This year’s U.S. women, competing at the end without Biles, took silver
4. Another touching tale from the Olympics is the quick demise of “Japanese” tennis player Naomi Osaka. She was the face of these Olympics in Japan, even being chosen to light the ceremonial flaming cauldron. Not bad for a kid who grew up in Long Island, NY, and Florida. While born in Japan, Osaka has been in the United States since age 3. The daughter of a Japanese mother and Haitian father, Osaka once had dual citizenship with Japan and the U.S, but renounced the latter in recent years. She opted to retain Japanese citizenship and compete for Japan. I wonder if she was yet another non-citizen who voted for Biden? Cynics suggested lucrative marketing opportunities in Japan weighed in the decision to represent that country. And we wonder if representing Haiti was ever considered?

The exposure of these Olympic Games for what they truly are, that being an exercise in propaganda, exploitation and telling of tall tales, likely will continue until the closing ceremonies. Expect said ceremonies fittingly to be conducted before a virtually empty stadium and to be viewed by a similarly sparse TV audience.

File this under the category of hometown pride. I am here to proclaim our drivers in the Greater Johnstown, Pennsylvania, area as the worst I’ve ever seen.

Take it from a guy who has driven in Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami and ridden in vehicles in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, among others.

I also have driving experience in some places you would not expect to make anyone’s list for horrible drivers, such as Bradenton, Fla. I was warned before going to Bradenton for my first coverage of Pirates spring training that drivers there were a horror show.

And they were; probably still are. Bradenton motorists mostly fall into one category for pathetic driving, that having to do with the elderly population and an apparent inability to read and comprehend road signage, not to mention being unable to grasp how to operate anything more complex and speedy than a golf cart.

Drivers in other venues are horrendous for differing reasons.

Drivers in Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia operate on the ragged edge, driving under the motto as relayed by one comic that the intent is to make you brake first. They will cut lanes, stop dead, pull out in front of rapidly moving traffic and generally act like people with a strong death wish.

You combat that by driving wildly enough to make them think you are crazy, too. They respect that.

Other cities have drivers operating in rash, unsafe manners of varied description, but they tend to be a homogeneous group, either driving with frenzy or with some sort of lethargic detachment from the situation.

And then there are the Johnstown drivers, who touch both ends of the spectrum, either being stupidly aggressive or foolishly cautious. It is the uncertainty of that, never knowing what type you might be up against, that makes this group the worst.

During the course of one brief drive today I had one elderly brain donor pull from a parking space, weave over the line that divides lanes on a one-way street several times in 100 feet or so, and then timidly proceed through the green light after somehow winding up in the proper lane.

I, meanwhile, had slowed appreciably behind him, all the better to preserve my vehicle.

Before I was able to reach my destination on that very same drive, I’d seen people hammer their brakes and stop nearly dead just because a few orange cones had been set up to define lanes of travel in an area in which people were working – really just milling around – along the side of the road.

It occurred to me that if the mere sight of an orange traffic cone acts as such a speed suppressor, the powers-that-be might want to start bolting them to stop signs to encourage proper response from people like my elderly woman neighbor who thinks stop really means yield.

She is not alone. Johnstown drivers treat stop signs as a suggestion, not a command. Most, having cruised right through the sign and saved that precious second or so they would have lost by stopping fully, then give it back in multiples by crawling well below the speed limit.

This also applies to the people who inexplicably pull out in front of you from a side street, then tool along 15 miles-an-hour below the speed limit, usually looking to hang a left turn against traffic within a half-mile of travel.

These members of the Anti-Destination League are constant irritants to the crazed crowd who, in a statement of sexual equality, seem to be split about 50-50 between men and women.

Just two days ago some sweet young thing, eager to exit a shopping area and disdainful that drivers in both lanes ahead of her were observing the speed limit on a road as rough as the Ho Chi Minh trail (after the B-52 bombers made a few passes) sped up and swapped lanes behind me with abandon.

I had a panoramic view from the drivers seat seat in my Mustang convertible, which had its top down. Unable to make desired progress, and never mind that the light at the intersection was red, she veered wildly to the right, through the parking lot of a closed convenience store, with the goal of exiting that, turning left across two lanes of traffic and getting ahead of us slowpokes.

Unfortunately for her, I saw what she was attempting, our light turned green, and I hurried to make my right turn, cutting her off. I’d like to say I let it go at that. But anyone who knows me understands it didn’t end there.

Having interrupted her end run, I asked her and her male companion exactly what the X#$% they thought they were doing? Getting no response I drove on and, after what seemed like a moment of deliberation on their part, they decided not to follow me.

Too bad. I’d have loved to have discussed their idiocy further.

My brother, a former wheel man who was the epitome of the drive-it-like-you-stole-it method, his list of crashed/thrashed vehicles providing testimony to that creed, finds himself amazed at what we see on short drives together to visit our mother in a long-term care facility.

Even the parking lot of that facility is no safe haven from the Johnstown extremes – the fast and the oblivious.

We in Johnstown don’t have a lot going for us economically or politically. We’re famous mostly for having suffered repeated natural disasters in the form of floods, or for our once-great steel-making and mining industries that have all but dried up.

But give us our due. Our drivers in general are absolute jokes. The worst. We’re number one!

The continuing onslaught of COVID-19 hype, contradictions and general fear mongering, brings to mind the classic idiom “It’s all Greek to me.”

Some of the latest hysteria is, literally, Greek, as in letters of the Greek alphabet. We’ve been warned about the Delta strain of COVID-19, which on one day is much more infectious and deadly, while on other days it is merely more infectious but less deadly. I’m thinking less infectious and less deadly is an option we never will hear mentioned.

The news of this Delta COVID strain didn’t seem to produce the desired result of terror and blind obedience to vaccine demands, so we were introduced to the Lambda variant of COVID. I’m no expert on the Greek alphabet, but I think they’ve skipped a few letters.

A quick check confirms that. Delta is the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet. Lambda is the 11^th (chosen perhaps for the LAMB component of the name hoping to guide the sheep subconsciously into submission?)

What happened to Epsilon. Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota and Kappa, letters 5 through 10?

Jabbering Joe Biden checks in periodically with more nonsensical utterances that fall under the category of Greek to me, and possibly to you.

Last week he stated flatly that anyone getting a vaccine would not get COVID-19 – any variation. This must come as quite the shock to the growing number of vaccinated who are becoming infected.

Joe’s handlers have walked that back to you can be infected even after having been jabbed, but the symptoms won’t be as severe.

Meanwhile, reports continue to be made on sources outside the Lamestream media of people who have died as the result of adverse reactions to the vaccines.

Protests are breaking out around the world – Australia, various European countries, even in our good, old U.S.A – against lockdowns, masks and mandatory vaccine submission.

As vaccine resistance grows, the threats from the jabbers increase. The unvaccinated will be segregated like lepers into colonies, unable to mix with the vaccinated crowd.

Vaccine passports/certificates will be necessary to allow the freedom of movement and access we used to take for granted in this country.

Even amidst that Nazi-like plan for “papers” we read that in England all who participated in vaccine studies, whether they actually got the vaccine or were injected with a fake to study the placebo effect, still will receive their papers.

To reiterate, merely showing willingness to be subservient to the decrees made by the burgeoning mass of tin-pot dictators will grant the individual favored vaccine status, even though they are not vaccinated.

Against this mounting backdrop of contradiction and outright chicanery, if you’re still buying the fear these people are selling, you need to take a few moments alone in quiet room for some serious soul-searching.

The Olympic Games have barely begun and already there is cause for celebration.

The U.S. women’s soccer team has managed to come out of the gate with a lopsided loss to Sweden, which will prevent at least temporarily certain flamboyant team members from making more political statements and cashing in on additional ad endorsements as the flavor of the year.

My Olympics gameplan is to attempt to make it through the entire deluge of broadcasts without watching a single second. I will keep tabs on the progress via the internet, if only to recognize and celebrate such butt-kickings as our soccer women suffered and any similar setbacks to our social justice warriors cum athletes. (Please note, cum is Latin usage, not sexual slang).

The Games have begun amidst general controversy over whether they even should be staged considering the COVID Delta variation hysteria.

Polls have shown a large percentage of residents in host Japan, and beyond question the wisdom of initiating this burst of worldwide travel in the interest of athletic competition.

On a side note, gripes have been heard from athletes about the cardboard beds in their sleeping quarters, which some have suggested are there in order to cut down on their notoriously randy behavior. But one Olympian put to rest such speculation that the beds could not hold up to pairs horizontal exercise by jumping up and down (alone) on his bed and posting the video on social media for our consumption.

The U.S. Women’s soccer team still could rally to win this affair, and provide its opportunist members a chance once again to mount the metaphorical soapbox to lament the nation’s and world’s ills as viewed through their biased and parochial prism.

Oh, for the days when the Olympics were athletic competition first and last.

While attending a car cruise the past Sunday, one of the vehicles had a decal that read “I miss the America I grew up in.”

Along that line, I miss the Olympics that I remember from my youth, when individual politics were to be checked at the door and we were able to celebrate without reservation the successes of the athletes. We enjoyed the high-level competition and felt good when one of ours brought home the gold, silver or bronze medals.

Many Olympic athletes remain true to that non-political ideal. Too many do not. And, due to the leftist leanings of lamestream media, the malcontents will get wide play, while the athletes concentrating on the competition and keeping their political and social opinions to themselves, will get short shrift.

Even before the Games began, many athletes came out — excuse the expression — to note that should they win (or in some cases, even make the U.S. team) they would seize quickly the chance to state their personal political and social views.

To all these, I offer the inverse of the mantra of the late owner of the Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders, Al Davis: Just lose, baby!

Karma, the principle from eastern religions that, in essence, people are rewarded or suffer consequences in the future for current actions, is widely cited outside those religions.

The lay people tend to wish for karma in the hope that eventually those committing offensive acts will pay a price down the line.

That brings us to the Democratic Texas state legislators who very publicly fled the state in order to delay Republican-initiated voting legislation.

These proud children posted liberally on social media showing their privilege, flying on a private jet mask-less, where you lesser people likely would be required to wear a face diaper should you somehow come up with the cash to charter a private jet, ridiculously large carbon footprint and all.

Aside from the hypocrisy from these Texas infants and their display of entitlement, a perceived example of karma has been added now that five have tested positive for COVID.

All reportedly had been fully vaccinated, by the way, which is yet more testimony to the utter sham that is the ongoing campaign to make sure all are vaccinated. You are forgiven for asking aloud why?

Now we are being told that although the vaccinated people tested positive, they are unlikely to suffer major consequences.

And that would put them in company with the unvaccinated population in general. Figures consistently put the death rate for those not vaccinated, barring four or more co-morbidity factors, at about four-tenths of one percent.

I repeat what I have stated previously from personal experience, my 84-year-old mother, who resides in a long-term care facility and has several co-morbidity factors, tested positive for COVID a few months back and knew she had the disease only because of that positive test. She was, and is, doing fine.

Similarly, my 62-year-old brother later felt a bit off, ordered a COVID test, and came up positive. A call to a doctor brought the advice merely to quarantine and monitor any symptoms. Those symptoms were minor and he seems to have recovered without incident.

Meanwhile vaccine horror stories are being told, like that of 45-year-old Robin Spring Saunders, who got a job at Johns Hopkins, received the mandatory COVID vaccination, and died of complications from that jab six days thereafter.

Karma might want to look into whomever required such vaccinations as a condition of employment there.

I’m coming out. I’m joining the alphabet soup crowd.

Why should the sexual orientation gang monopolize the fun with their all-encompassing letter jumbles such as LGBTQQIP2SAA? If you want to know what all that means, feel free to look it up.

My self-identified designation falls within QWERTYUIOP. Similarity of my alphabetic shorthand to the top line of the standard computer keyboard is purely coincidental.

We people who identify as QWERTYUIOP are fed up with governmental and societal insanity. We still believe in the virtues that once made this country great and are battling back against those who would turn us into a censored surveillance society where truth is relative.

Allow me to decode the shorthand for you.

Q – Quixotic. We’re idealistic enough to think this mess can be fixed.

W – Wrathful. We are angry and getting angrier with each additional assault on liberty and individualism.

E – Energized. We see our numbers growing and we are fighting back on several fronts.

R – Right. As in correct; as in being on the right side of history.

T – Tolerant. We are willing to talk. But if you want to disagree, come with facts, not opinions or vague talking points straight out of Mao’s Little Red Book

Y – Yeomanry. Mostly we are members of the landed middle class. We have a stake in this country, one we didn’t get handed to us by the government.

U – Unbowed. Nothing the keyboard warriors or their masters can do will make us conform to their skewed reality.

I – Inscrutable. Just because we aren’t setting up autonomous zones and rioting, do not make the mistake of thinking we are soft bystanders.

O – Obstinate. Some would say being stubborn and unwilling to go with the flow of the times is a negative. But, in the long run, standing up to socialism and intrusive government is the right thing to do.

P – Partisan. Again, no apologies. We stand by our ideals and those who would protect them.

I feel better having come out on this.

Too bad I’m retired. It would be interesting to see if putting on a job application that I identify as QWERTYUIOP would move me to the front of the hiring line. Probably not.

We readers of the dystopian yet prescient Ayn Rand novel “Atlas Shrugged” feel like much of what we see happening these days is all too similar to the book’s plot.

Bureaucrats worldwide are rewarding slackers and punishing achievers to buy off those slackers for political reasons.

Populations are in turmoil over a variety of social issues. Economic collapse is rampant and the governments are more interested in getting out their propaganda than addressing problems.

Time for more news and views.

NEWS: South Africa is at the point of economic and social collapse as domestic terrorists murder and pillage to protest the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma. Meanwhile, a RECENTLY DEFUNDED national police force watches and those in power at the government level call in the army for assistance in quelling the disturbances and avoiding the full-blown Civil War that the headlines are predicting.

VIEWS: This one deserves more than one view. a) We could be looking at the future of the United States if the trend to look the other way regarding the violent protests of Antifa and Black Lives Matter operatives continues. b) Those wimpy Democrats who are traumatized and lamenting the end of democracy because some unarmed protesters walked into the U.S. Capitol in January and killed NO ONE need to get a sense of perspective.

NEWS: A Boston court ruling that altered admission procedures for three elite public schools in order to minimize academic qualifications and emphasize such things as zip codes of the students was reversed by the same judge who initially had made the decision. His change of heart was based on racist text messages by school committee members that were hidden from the judge ahead of his first decision.

VIEWS: One texted about being sick of “westie whites.” Another agreed, “Me, too. I really feel like saying that.” (Editors note: You did say that, moron, you just didn’t realize how public it would become). And a third mocked Asian names of some who commented on the matter. Remember this every time you hear the Critical Race Theory curriculum canard.

NEWS: Continuing audits and forensic investigations into voting are turning up glaring problems in Georgia and Arizona that are being revealed on a nightly basis, but largely ignored by the same left-wing news media that campaigned so hard to put Joe Biden in the White House.

VIEWS: It was obvious early, if one cared to look, that the most recent national election was rife with problems ranging from perhaps legitimate errors to outright misconduct. How do such things get addressed when public officials and the courts think that if they stonewall and look the other way long enough it will go away? See the South Africa example as a potential outcome. In an amusing side note, the other day the wife caught an early morning news show on the local television station whose anchor person tried repeatedly and never succeeded in correctly pronouncing forensic. Freudian slip?

NEWS: Media organizations, including Reuters, are warning that the Cuban freedom protesters could help spread COVID-19.

VIEWS: Not surprisingly, many of these very same organizations, including Reuters, saw no such problem previously when protesters around the world were acting under the banner of Antifa or Black Lives Matter.

NEWS: Still on Black Lives Matter, everyone’s favorite Marxist founded movement masquerading as a push against racism, BLM went on the record blaming the protests in Cuba on U.S. sanctions and praising the Marxist Cuban government.

VIEWS: For anyone still taking seriously Black Lives Matter as a force for good, please rush to the latest psychiatric facility and commit yourself, for the good of all of us.

At the age of 65, pushing 66, it has become evident to me that life is a series of epiphanies — if you are willing to accept them.

Example: After spending most of my career covering sports, I have come to realize it is, as a former news editor once observed, a lot of people obsessing over something that means nothing in the big picture.

Along that line, I’m writing this as the television is paused and muted on the broadcast of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Once I’d have been glued to the coverage. But only a few minutes of pregame blather tonight convinced me I’m not sure I want to watch.

Maybe I’ll fast-forward through it later. Maybe not.

This is a far cry from my youth, or even young adulthood. I recall a colleague and I even went to a downtown bar on our lunch break during the 1977 All-Star Game to catch a few innings. Johnstown residents might recall that was the evening of our last major flood in this so-called Flood City.

We eventually decided not to continue to wait for it to stop raining before we headed back to the office.

It was a good call since it didn’t stop raining until the downtown was covered by about seven feet of water.

My latest epiphany, even as social media and other digital operations increasingly are intent on controlling us in part by determining what information gets to the public and how it is slanted, is that we’re living Revenge Of The Nerds.

The Revenge Of The Nerds franchise was a series of movies in the 1980s and 1990s in which put-upon nerds find ways to exact revenge on their tormentors.

Would any of you have trouble picturing Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Twitter’s Jack Dorsey starring in a remake of that series?

I imagine all four of those as school children being beaten up and having their lunch money stolen with regularity during recess. But, in the evenings as they tinkered in their family basements or garages on all their high-tech toys, they also likely were making plans on how they would get even with all the regular kids.

We’ve hit 2021 and their revenge is before you.

Gates came up with software that operates the majority of computers. Using that power base, he’s dipped his hand into such things as pushing vaccines and generally aiding in the surveillance of people.

Zuckerberg and Dorsey are big on censorship, political activism and, tracking people, the last in the interest of efficient commerce.

Bezos is just another seemingly vengeful nerd gathering information and attempting to mold opinion, only he’s come out in the open more than the others by acquiring The Washington Post and remaking a once-great newspaper into a house organ for leftist causes.

At the root of the Revenge Of The Nerds movies, we as the audience were expected to cheer for the underdogs striking back at their oppressors. Their ultimate success was supposed to make us feel good and optimistic about our futures.

But our modern day Four Nerd Horsemen are not underdogs. They are the oppressors and you are the victim as long as you willingly cede information in order to participate on their various platforms.

As many observers have noted regarding Facebook specifically, you (and your information) are the product they are selling.

Don’t let them do it. Stand up to the nerds.

If you are reading this, congratulations. You are one of a handful who make their way to this site and partake of the writings offered.

It occurs to me, based on recent personal interactions and other feedback from recent days and weeks, that few have bothered to read the initial post from September 2020 explaining what this is all about.

For that, and some other reasons, allow me to repeat myself.

The blog was birthed as an egocentric exercise. I write because I want to be on the record regarding our declining society, politics and sports. I used to write for newspapers, even doing some freelance work after my retirement. But that grew tiresome for many reasons.

And so, following the lead of my brother the serial blogger, a guy who apparently has found his life’s work chronicling college women’s softball, I leaned on him to set up my blog.

The ground rules were simple, beginning with no provision being made for you to comment here on what I write. If you want to do so publicly, spend the money and set up your own blog. Rip me or praise me on social media.

But you are going to have to provide your own soap box.

Otherwise, read or don’t read; visit or don’t visit.

Allow me to repeat that: I don’t care about the numbers. I’m not trying to sell ads. I am not trying to charge fees to view. I refer you again to paragraph four in this piece.

The local rag has some regular “columnists” who write frequently but poorly and are paid nothing for their efforts. Chock it up to vanity.

I’m long past that. When I did freelance work, I expected to be paid. Seeing my name in print has lost its appeal. When I wrote for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and its affiliated publications, at the high point in combined circulation (and multiplying by the standard 2.5 average household size) I had a potential audience of at least quarter million readers.

This blog has viewership that could be counted on fingers – maybe adding toes, or fingers and toes of some close friends on a high-volume day — and I am OK with that.

I don’t promote the blog’s web address via ads, posts on social media or other venues. I have told close friends and associates about the blog. Yet I continue to have people come up to me or my wife and say they miss my writing in the newspaper.

For the umpteenth time, it’s easy to find the blog since it’s my name with a dot-com stuck on the end. Hi, Ron, if you finally have found me. Hi, Barb, if you bothered to look. Hi, the rest of you.

Welcome.

The blogging experience has led me to the conclusion that someone looking to cobble up their own witness protection program should just start a blog bearing their name.

Think of it as hiding in plain sight.

As for me specifically, the use of the potentially confusing suffix – samrossjr. — owes to the fact that both sides of the family were not exactly creative in the naming process.

I was named after my father, but never really considered naming my son Sam Ross III, for reasons including the fact we don’t have nearly enough family wealth for such pretense. My brother was named after our paternal grandfather and never really got over it.

Meanwhile, my mother’s side of the family had four guys named Joe Gorden, sprinkled across three generations. But two of those Joes, both cousins of mine, were in the same generation, adding to the confusion.

Bringing home this post/rant, please remember a few things:

There is no facility for you to comment here and there isn’t going to be.

If you really, truly miss my writing (and statements to that effect aren’t merely a variation of the “let’s do lunch” throwaway line) here is a free smorgasbord, if you can find it. Of course, posting the invitation here is the digital equivalent of putting Braille instructions on drive-through ATMs.

Finally, if someone really was missing me and was only mildly computer savvy, they might call up Google, put Sam Ross Jr. between opening and closing quotation marks, and one of search items returned would be a reference to this blog.

Admittedly it was the fifth such item in the search I just performed as an experiment, following a couple of links to freelance columns I’d written, a proclamation that Sam Ross Jr. is on Facebook (not me), and a reference to my past newspaper columns as compiled on muckrack.com.

That is all, for now.

Behold the knee, a key joint in your leg that allows walking, running, jumping and all manner of symbolic kneeling.

The religious faithful show their respect and adoration by kneeling, or more correctly, genuflecting.

Subjects of royalty show their deference and servility by kneeling.

Men traditionally take a knee when proposing marriage to a woman. Perhaps men proposing to men and women proposing to women do the same.

To kneecap someone is to shoot them in the knee in order to inflict great pain and cause long-term mobility problems. Hammers or, in the case of ice skater Nancy Kerrigan, a collapsible baton, can be used instead of a gun.

A knee to the groin is, both in the literal and figurative senses, a popular way to lay low a male of the species.

Fast-forward to 2021 and the knee, specifically taking one symbolically, has become the universal standard of protest before athletic events.

These athletes turned social justice warriors seem to be clearing their collective consciences and virtue signaling at the same time by performing this empty gesture before the captive audiences in sporting venues and those whose opt to watch on television.

I guess donating 75 percent of their massive salaries to charity never occurred to them as a more meaningful way to address the world’s ills, be they real or imagined.

Regardless, my tactic is to tune in athletic events and then delay the feed, allowing me later to rush past these exercises in hollow gesturing and get on with the competition free of political posturing.

But I made an exception to watch the beginning of today’s European Soccer Cup final between kneeling England and follow-the-leader Italy.

This particular England team was attempting to win the country’s first championship in international soccer play since about the time of King George III.

But that hadn’t stopped them from adapting a rather smug and arrogant slogan “Bring it home,” a rallying cry mocked by a Danish player who wasn’t sure it, as in a major championship trophy, ever had been in England.

He can be forgiven for not knowing that England did win the World Cup in 1966, which in sporting terms is eons ago.

In the best tradition of schadenfreude, a German term for enjoying seeing the misfortune of others, I was hoping the kneeling Englanders would end up figuratively kneeling on each other’s necks, as in choking, a favorite sporting term for those athletes who do not perform in the clutch.

Some teams in the Euro Cup have been kneeling pregame and others have not. Italy, as befits a nation that’s been losing military conflicts since the fall of Rome, has been taking a stab at neutrality in this tournament by doing what the opposition does. They kneel, we kneel. They don’t kneel, we don’t kneel.

But, as Italian player captain Giorgio Chiellini was quick to explain, his team kneels “Not for the (Black Lives Matter) campaign itself, which we don’t share.” Instead, the Italians are showing respect for the opposing players choosing to kneel.

Because I was DVRing the soccer game and my satellite service was suffering weather-related outages as I tried to watch the NASCAR race, I switched over to the England-Italy game, which was in extra time, to see if it was available.

I discovered that England had scored in the first two minutes, then chose to play “safe” defensive football (soccer) and ended up conceding the game-tying goal with about 23 minutes left in regulation.

Eventually, the game went to overtime and then to penalty kicks, which was about the time the satellite signal crapped out again. It came back very late, allowing me to see the end of the penalty kicks and a fatal failure on the last England attempt.

This sent the English fans and the attending members of the royal family into fits of despair. Meanwhile, one person in the tiny assemblage of Italy fans allowed into England on a 12-hour pass for the game, captured the spirit of the thing with a sign reading, “Oops, it’s coming back to Rome.”

But it’s not all negative. Now that the tournament is over, it leaves the English players a lot of free time to work on their genuflection technique, and maybe on honing their penalty kicks while they’re at it.

On the latter, they were about as effective with their penalty kicks as they would have been taking those attempts from one knee.