At the start of the World Cup, the Weekly Standard went off on soccer as an unpopular game of wimps that only promotes nihilism. Both were stupid articles and both were debunked in Sunday’s final.First, the final got outstanding ratings:

Sunday’s final attracted 16.9 million viewers…Those 16.9 million viewers included 11.9 million on ABC and 5 million on Univision, and they represented a 152 percent leap from 2002, when the game in Japan was shown in the morning.

While these numbers are nothing compared to the Super Bowl, they are equivalent to every other big American sporting event:

This year’s viewership exceeded by about 4 million the average audience last month for the NBA Finals between Miami and Dallas. It came close to the 17.5 million for Florida’s victory over UCLA in the NCAA basketball title game and the 17.1 million average for the White Sox’s sweep of the Houston Astros in the World Series.

So much for Americans never catching onto soccer, especially when as many people watch it as the World Series.On top of that, gutsy performances by Zidane and Cannavaro proved the type of cohones the guys on the pitch have. And if you thought an individual couldn’t make a difference in a game, how about Buffon’s save on Zidane’s header in overtime? So much for soccer’s boring nihilism.