Soccer: World Cup

01:05 AM CDT on Saturday, July 15, 2006

As I was fighting sleep on the couch Sunday afternoon, I never dreamed that five days later I would still be thinking about the World Cup final.

Or writing about it!

That's what happens when it's the dog days of summer and all of a sudden you've got the Butt Heard Round the World.

You don't have to be a sports fan and you certainly don't have to be even remotely interested in soccer to have seen numerous replays of Zinedine Zidane's vicious head-butt of an Italian player during France's championship game loss.

The amazing thing is that the noxious waves of political correctness have blown through the scene, and now Zidane is to be viewed as the sympathetic figure. Marco Materazzi, the Italian player who uttered whatever it is that turned one of the sport's great all-time players into a WWE headliner, is now to be considered the villain.

Materazzi said something. Maybe it was racist. Maybe it was derogatory toward Zidane's mother or his family. Maybe it reflected the fact that Zidane is Muslim.

I don't know.

You know what else?

I don't care.

There are no words that can be said in the heat of an athletic contest that should rightfully compel a player – especially a great player central to his team's World Cup hopes and playing in the final game for his country – to go Neanderthal.

I'm sure e-mails are on the way, friendly reminders that I am white and that I have never had the N-word hurled at me in hatred.

That's true.

And when that happens in the workplace or on the street, people are within their rights to react, at least somewhat violently.

But it's those who try to transfer trash talk spoken in an athletic contest to the public streets or the courtroom that confuse the issue and eternally confound me.

Yes, racism is wrong in all its forms and should not be tolerated in civilian life. But an athlete who says something hateful during a game is not the same as a politician running on a platform of hate. Let's try to remember that.

And consider that Zidane is playing in the game of his life. He's playing his Super Bowl times four because the World Cup comes around just once every four years.

He's that close to helping his team win the championship. And he chooses instead to leave it to his teammates to try to beat Italy 10 against 11, or beat the Italians in a shootout in which the French goalkeeper is overmatched?

That's an outrageous decision to make.

Zidane has apologized to the children and to the fans but said, "To regret it would mean he was right to say those things."

No, it wouldn't.

To have told the Italian defender he would see him in the tunnel after the game would have been the proper reaction. To make sure he got one final chance to use his head to score a goal, not to attack an Italian player, would have been a fitting response.

Some are lauding Zidane for putting his family ahead of the importance of a sporting contest.

That, too, is laughable.

If his family had been in jeopardy, sure. Even those NBA players who wandered into the stands last season when family members became involved in disputes acted within reason.

But to suggest that a careless and hateful remark directed at them required an immediate response is ludicrous.

What Zidane did was instinctive, violent and unnecessary. It put the four years of sacrifice by his teammates and the dreams of his country secondary to his need to physically challenge a disturbing epithet hurled at him.

That is not a heroic act, but Zidane's stature as one of the revered figures in the game allows many to suggest exactly that.

Some have even suggested Italy be stripped of the World Cup. FIFA is investigating, although I couldn't tell you what FIFA stands for nor do I care what that governing body decides.

But if we're going to use lip readers to make sure that ugly remarks are not uttered in the heat of athletic contests, we should pull out tapes of the six Chicago Bulls championships and the three Boston Celtics won during the 1980s.

Michael Jordan and Larry Bird were two of the greatest players in NBA history, and they were also two of the game's premier trash talkers. Let's have the lip readers make sure they never said anything that included race or could have been construed as harmful to their opponents' sensitivities.

Then, and only then can, we can say that the NBA stands right alongside FIFA in its ability to reward the just and punish the perpetrators.

E-mail wtcowlishaw@dallasnews.com