Here in the US football is played with an oblong ball that is only, on special occasion, kicked. However, right now the rest of the world is crazy for football (soccer) played with a round ball that is primarily kicked. The ultimate event is well underway, the FIFA 2006 World Cup.

Since the US team is in, and some of our colleagues are “worldly” caring about the event a bunch, we decided to have a little challenge using the BBC’s World Cup DAQ game. This is a market economy where one competes by buying and selling shares in teams, angling for special bonuses (dividends if you will,) and hoping for an outcome of the highest percentage gain in a week. Thus we’ve assembled a league. What’s at stake? Pride.

The thing I wasn’t prepared for is how sticky this is. We’ve got people who’ve never participated in such an event and are typically non-sporting buying up shares of Poland because of win bonuses and wondering if that’s the right selection of if Costa Rica will recover from the thrashing Ecuador provided this week.

If you ever doubt the network is the computer and that fact fuels the participation age, try one of these online events. It’ll cure you of that doubt in a heartbeat. Meantime, go Poland! (and US team, I hope you can beat Italy!)

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