It's been an exciting couple of weeks in sports, especially here in Chicagoland. Rioting was mild last Monday after the Chicago Wolves' exciting victory in the International Hockey League's Turner Cup Finals. The Wolves won in dramatic fashion, with forward Michael Jordan scoring a game-winning goal with 5.2 seconds left to beat the Detroit Red Wings and their goalie, Zamboni-riding disabled golfer Casey Martin.

That moves us into the summer doldrums, from the Romanian words "dol," meaning "season," and "drums," meaning "of nothing but baseball." We're still two full months away from the beginning of college football season, which means there's 540 hours of SportsCenter programming to fill and nothing with which to fill it. For that reason, ESPN came up with the X Games, which consist entirely of sports (and think again if you believe this is either the first or the last time I'll re-use a joke) invented during the filming of a Mountain Dew commercial. The X Games feature such actual contestants as Super Mass Street Luge winner Rat Sult, whose name can be rearranged to spell "rat lust," although MWC attorneys advise me that this has absolutely nothing to do with the ingredients in Mountain Dew.

ESPN went overboard, though, creating too much sports news to be covered by nine hours of SportsCenter a day, so they had to come out with the pictorially-oriented "ESPN The Magazine," with the motto "Requires less reading than radio!" It's receiving rave reviews from such stars as Clemson basketball player Iker Iturbe (whose name can be rearranged to spell "U R bike tire"). "Wow, it's even easier to read than "Muscle & Fitness," Iturbe exclaimed. "And it's tastefully done."

In other sports news, something called the "World" "Cup" is going on. In France, of all places. You know what we say about France. Apparently, the object is to run up and down a football field from which all the lines have been erased and get the ball into one of the nets at the end. You would never know this from watching, however, since the ball never actually goes into the net, probably because the players must, by rule, cut off their arms before they're allowed to play. The fact that the players are allowed only to use a "foot" to touch the "ball" gives us the sport's name, "Soccer." Which, notwithstanding the beliefs of legions of NASCAR fans, is NOT the answer to the question, "What do you do to your wife when she cheers for Dale Earnhardt?"

The United States has had little success in World Cup history, largely because until recently, America's youth have considered soccer, quote, "stupid," in the sense that it requires far too much of the physical activity of running and far too little of the physical activity of sitting in front of the Sony Playstation. American grownups, on the other hand, have considered soccer "stupid" in the senses of

A) There isn't a single team in the world we can beat.
B) Or even a decent "light" beer commercial during the game.

This year was different, however. The U.S. team was good enough to win it all, but as with the 1980 Summer Olympics, the government got in the way. Republicans, led by House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Charlton Heston (the new NRA president whom you might remember from such films as "The Nine Commandments"), arranged to give Iran a World Cup victory in exchange for Iran's sending all the leftover cut-off arms from their soccer players to the Contras in Central America. Or possibly the Sandinistas. I forget which group of civilian-killing, American-kidnapping guerrillas is the good guys and which is the bad guys.

Dan Quayle's response to this situation was, "Let me just be clear about this: The Republicans will nominate someone who can beat Bill Clinton in the year 2000." (Okay, his statement had nothing to do with Iran, but if you thought I'd let that Quayle quote go by without commenting on it, then you haven't been reading these very closely. All I have to say is, what a terrible thing it is to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.)

Plenty of other things have been going on at the World Cup. An Associated Press (AP) correspondent with the name Nesha Starcevic, which can be rearranged to spell several things, including "naive scratches" and "cars have incest," reported in from Lens, France. Starcevic filed a story that immediately won the Pulitzer Prize for Most Frequent Use of the Word "Hooligan."

After the Germany v. Yugoslavia match, unarmed German skinhead hooligans overwhelmed French gendarmes (outfitted in full riot gear) faster than you can say "Vichy Government," ultimately sending policeman Daniel Nivel to the hospital while in a coma. Nivel was in the coma, I mean, not the hooligans. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl issued a stern statement about the violence. "On behalf of my wife Eva and me, what did you expect from the lily-livered French? Hahahahaha!" Response was swift from England, as its representatives introduced a measure in the United Nations Security Council giving Germany's skinhead groups several "yellow cards" and the Czech Republic. France took out its anger at the rest of Europe by blowing up a Greenpeace boat during a nuclear test in the South Pacific.

There is undoubtedly only one way to watch World Cup matches, and that is on Univision. Univision is nice because you can tell what's going on in the game just by the announcer's tone of voice, and you always know when a goal has been scored, even if you're in another room, or another ZIP code, because Univision is the home of the broadcaster who announces goals in the following manner: "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!! (Breathe) GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!! (Breathe) GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!! (Pass out from oxygen deprivation.)"

This is handy, because then you know to go to the TV and watch the goal on the Budweiser (upside-down exclamation point)GOOOOOL! instant replay. Which, as you know if you've watched any World Cup coverage, is the only time goals are scored, as opposed to any of the times of live action when you've been looking at the TV. I watched the entire Belgium v. Mexico match (an exciting 2-2 tie) and didn't see a single goal happen. (The answer to the obvious question here is, yes, I am taking suggestions for hobbies representing a better use of my time.)

Univision has much better commercials, too, although maybe that's only because I can't understand the words. This prevents me from pointing out to the people in the room (by "people" here, I mean my imaginary friends) for the fourteenth time that not only did someone at the advertising agency come up with this inane concept, but someone at the client company said, "Yes, that's a good idea." So I have to translate the slogans based on my admittedly sketchy knowledge of Spanish. For example, an easy one is the McDonald's slogan that appears every 10 minutes or so: "(upside-down question mark)alguien dijo McDonald's?" which is Spanish for "Yo quiero McDonald's." A trickier one is when the AT&T ad comes on and says "Llama gratis" while giving a toll-free number, which, it turns out, means that as part of their new partnership with North Carolina State University, they're offering a free llama to anyone who calls.

Which, as House Majority Leader Dick Armey will tell you, is not a bad deal, in terms of llamas per dollar.