Sport Reform

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, sport reform.

Karen brings a case against her husband, Tom.

Karen is unhappy with the idea of Tom teaching their eight-year-old about faking injuries on the soccer field.

Tom says this is simply an accepted part of the game.

Who's right, who's wrong?

Only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents the obscure cultural reference.

There are different circumstances when a litigant must be cautioned for unsporting behavior in the court of Judge John Hodgman, e.g., litigant verbally distracts the other litigant during the hearing, or if a litigant holds the other litigant for the tactical purpose of pulling the opponent away from the microphone or preventing the opponent from getting to the studio, or if the litigant uses a deliberate trick to pass justice to his own side with his head, chest, knee, etc., in order to circumvent the law.

Or if the litigant attempts to deceive the judge by feigning injury or pretending to have been fouled, aka

simulation.

If these laws are understood, Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the litigant's in.

Karen and Tom, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God, or whatever?

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he only plays soccer using popples?

I do.

Yes.

Very well, Judge Hodgman.

I don't even know what a popples is, Bailiff Jesse.

It's a plush sports ball that you turn inside out and it turns into a plush friend.

Oh, yeah, that's my kind of sports.

You're going to enjoy that very much.

Plush friends.

Speaking of plush friends, Jesse, it's nice to have you back after our little summertime hiatus.

I hope you had a good break.

A joy to be back.

Well, here we are, and oh, these guys are still standing up.

Karen and Tom, go ahead, sit down.

For an immediate summary of judgment in one of yours' favors, can either of you guess the piece of culture that I paraphrased as I entered the courtroom?

Karen, why don't you make the first guess?

I'm guessing the FIFA rulebook, the official FIFA rule book.

The official FIFA rulebook.

I'm still here, by the way, in Maine with Joel Mann,

engineer here at W-E-R-U-F-M in Orland, Maine.

Joel, do you know what FIFA means?

Never heard of it.

All right.

It's a football's term.

All right.

Tom, what's your guess?

She took my answer.

So you make the same guess?

Yes.

Right.

All guesses are right.

Therefore, this little game is over, and the new game is afoot, the game of justice.

Sorry, yeah, you guys guessed correctly.

There was both of you guessed that it was the

FIFA official rules of soccer, aka

football, aka the laws of the game.

And that is appropriate to this because why, Karen?

You are bringing your husband, Tom, into my courtroom for what misbehavior, according to you.

We have an eight-year-old son who plays soccer.

And I don't know anything about sports.

I didn't play sports at school.

Don't know anything about soccer.

Tom is a very good soccer player.

He's a good soccer coach.

Recently, I heard him have a conversation with our kid about how if you can't get the ref's attention when someone is wronging you on the soccer field, it's appropriate to fake an injury.

Uh-huh.

And I think that is, you should not teach your kid to fake anything in sports or otherwise.

All right.

Now, you have a nice accent.

What part of the world are you from and where do I find you?

We live in North Carolina.

We live

about 45 minutes out of Asheville.

Oh, Asheville's beautiful country.

Yes.

And are you a North Carolinian?

Most of my life I lived in Tennessee, but my family is not from the South.

Oh.

So this is...

There's anything wrong with that.

No, where are they from?

My mom is from California.

My dad's from Ohio.

And so they raised you in Tennessee and you took on that accent yourself.

I was not aware that I had such an accent.

Joel?

Yes, Judge.

Do you confirm an accent?

I definitely do.

Yeah, okay.

Let me tell you what.

Here in Maine, you sound like you have an accent.

Okay.

But it's nice talking to you.

It's nice to hear.

I'm not going to suggest that you affected an accent.

It sounds very natural and authentic.

Okay.

Tom, what accent are you faking?

I don't have to fake an accent, Judge.

No, I'm just kidding.

No, I'm from the South.

You are.

Puerto, yes.

I get the impression that he was trying to do two different accents just now and failed completely.

That's like when I tried to do an Eastern European and German accent.

I can't do either of them.

So I do a mishmash of them both.

And that's my Ayn Rand imprisonation.

But moving on.

So Tom, you are from the South?

Yes, I grew up in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Okay.

And did you grow up playing, did you call it soccer or football?

What do you call it?

Well, I call it soccer.

Yeah.

Yeah, I played soccer.

We won a 12 and under boys state tournament in Tennessee, and then I went and played in the national tournament in Florida.

And that was the best part of your life and it's all been downhill since?

That's been downhill since then.

I'm sorry.

What did you do since you didn't become a professional soccer player?

I ended up running cross-country in college.

Oh, fantastic.

And that's how you make your living now?

No, I actually work for the state, the Department of Public Safety.

Oh, cool.

And

Karen, what's going on in your life on a day-to-day?

I work for an agency and I facilitate assessments for people with intellectual developmental disabilities.

That's very honorable too.

So here we go.

Nice family, 45 minutes outside of Asheville, some lovely accents, a love of soccer, and this dispute over teaching your child to fake an injury.

Tom,

I have had to do some research into this to understand what we're talking about here,

but I'm not just going to explain it to everybody.

I'm going to let you do that since the case has been brought against you.

I have never heard of this before.

Tell them what it's all about.

Well,

faking injuries in soccer happen professional level

often, and it's frowned upon mostly.

I recognize that.

But in our case, we're in a rural kind of area.

A lot of the kids come from football practice to soccer practice.

And a lot of kids have a more aggressive type mentality.

Some of the kids vary in size.

And yes,

I did say that maybe you should consider faking the injury, but it was under the circumstance that if a kid had been almost bullying on the soccer field and the refs, there's only one ref.

And if the ref did not catch that attention, that he should maybe draw attention to it in order to keep from other things happening.

And what specifically did you advise your son to do in order to draw attention to himself?

Yeah, well, my wife, she called in, there's a conversation about it at this point.

And I said, no, not falling on the ground and acting like you broke your leg or anything like that.

But if a kid is continuing to push you and the refs not seeing it, then maybe you need to go to the ground and draw attention to it.

But that was the last of the order of the soccer policy we created.

We wanted to try to outplay.

the bullies first on the soccer field as I will say the bullies because they they tend to be bully very physical And so I wanted to outplay them.

And then I wanted to let the ref know, use his communication skills.

And then, if that didn't work,

try to draw attention to the penalty because I don't want him to give up on the soccer field.

I don't want him to stop playing.

I don't want him to get into a fight.

I don't want there to be an issue.

So, as a last resort, let's try to draw some attention to this.

Tom, how many referees are watching over one of your kids' games?

One.

So, it's a big field, right?

Yes.

No further questions.

Okay.

Okay, I appreciate that this is a cheat of last resort.

And

as you point out, Tom, this is done at the professional level, especially outside of the United States.

Yes.

It's called flopping or diving, and it is a technique that I learned about using the Internet.

So you can tell me if I understand it correctly.

It is a technique where you exaggerate or feign an injury, sometimes by flopping down to the ground and spasming in agony in a highly theatrical way in order to draw attention to a foul or to pretend that there has been a foul against you in order to gain your team the advantage of a free kick.

Is that correct?

Yes.

And as we have noted, since I paraphrased from the laws of the game, this is Dion frowned upon.

It is against the rules, correct?

Yes.

Right.

But you're saying that it is okay to break the rules in this case because your poor son is going to get mauled by these football ogres, these double football ogres

playing both football and soccer, and they're just running all over your son, all over the place.

Yes, correct.

But more want to enhance or overemphasize the penalties that they are already doing.

So you're not counseling your son to be a liar just to break the rules when necessary.

Correct.

Would you say that it is your intention that,

and I'll remind you that you're under fake oath, is your intention here to help your son protect himself

or

to gain his team an advantage?

Both.

Form of free kick.

Oh, both.

Well, I appreciate your honesty.

Yes.

You could have easily lied.

in this non-court and just said, oh, it's just to protect little.

Would you like to say his name on the air?

shall I make one up for him you can make one up all right we'll call him

we'll call him

Eli that's his name

he would love to hear his name we'll call no we're trying to toughen him up here Karen

too late

we'll call him little Fauntleroy

because he's being pushed around being pushed around in his knee pants out there on the on the soccer pitch.

Tom's trying to toughen him up.

But you know what?

Asheville is a lovely country, but youth soccer there seems like a Mad Max Fury Road situation.

Karen, is the danger to your son such that he needs this kind of protection, the protection of lies?

No.

All right.

What do you see going on out there?

I mean, is Eli Fauntleroy in any danger of getting pushed or picked on or bullied out there, physically or even emotionally?

I don't feel like he's ever been singled out.

And I also don't feel like it's a big issue at at this age group.

Maybe it is as they get older.

But I would still say you should teach your kids to cheat or fake, even when they're older.

Have you heard Tom explain to Eli Fauntleroy why this is happening?

What do you think about the explanation?

They didn't have an extended conversation about it, but I felt like it was

not very explanatory.

I feel like it could easily be interpreted like you did, as far as it's okay to break the rules when it suits you.

Tom, how do you respond to that?

Do you think that maybe you're giving Eli Fauntleroy a bad lesson here?

No.

All right.

That reminds me never to ask yes or no questions.

What is the lesson that you are trying to teach Eli?

Well,

we teach lots of lessons to Eli.

I have taught him to use his voice and to not fight or don't let his temper get the best of him.

And sports is a major mental game.

And all sports, they have people that overexaggerate fouls.

You take advantage of people's weaknesses.

In this case, I'm trying to take advantage of an aggressive, larger soccer player that might not stop or the ref might not call a foul or a penalty and trying to show him another way.

to show this without having a fight or walking off the field upset or stopping playing soccer because he's a very good soccer player.

He's been invited to play in the local Spanish league because he does very well.

I've spent a lot of time coaching him and at home.

And we have actually had a larger kid in a soccer game come through and just knocking kids over before.

And the next game, I told my son, just deny him the ball.

Don't let him get in the ball.

Don't let him get into play.

And my son did that, and the kid never touched the ball.

And unfortunately, that kid walked away crying.

Because he didn't touch the ball.

Correct.

Tom, are you familiar with the logical fallacy of the appeal to nerd?

No.

That's when you tell a nerd who's sitting in judgment over you that your kid needs to cheat because he's so little and the big kids are picking on him.

Is Eli a small kid?

No, he's average size.

What percentile?

Actually, I think last time I found out, it was like in the upper 40s.

Oh, yes.

So that's middle to a little bit small.

Yes.

Yeah.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll hear more about Karen, Tom, and their soccer dispute in just a minute.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to sport reform.

Karen doesn't want her husband Tom to teach their son about faking injuries on the soccer field.

What's she worried about happening?

Let's get back to the courtroom and find out.

Tom, so it sounds like Eli is pretty deft with the old soccer orb, if you could keep it away from

the brute who was knocking kids over.

Yes.

Yeah.

So it seems like he's got a defense available to him.

So in this situation, Tom, let's do a little role play.

I'm little Eli Fauntleroy, Mr.

40% himself.

And I'm like, daddy,

what does he call you?

Papa?

Father?

Just dad.

Honorable father.

Yes.

I want to play by the rules.

You're telling me to break the rules.

Why, honorable father, why?

Well, unfortunately, it is a part of the game that I go back to.

And

I speak with him in rule.

No, no, no.

Now I'm your son.

You talk to me now.

Honorable father.

I am a good boy, and I read the rule book, and you're telling me to break the rules.

How can that be part of the game?

It's an unspoken part of the game, son, that you're going to have to learn one way or the other.

And if you're going to play on the professional level, you're going to know how this works, and you need to learn early if you plan on playing further.

You are saying, Father, that in life there are unspoken rules, too?

Correct.

Now I feel like rules have no meaning at all.

Are these brutes going to murder me?

On the soccer field, they might.

It's funny because

I don't watch, as you can probably tell, I don't watch a lot of sports.

I don't watch a lot of soccer.

And I would have guessed that I could watch a lot of soccer and not feel like I was going to see a lot of hard sacking going on.

But it's pretty physical, huh?

Yeah, definitely.

All right.

Tom, are you your son's coach?

No.

Have you talked to your son's coach or has your son's coach talked to Fauntle Roy about this situation?

No.

So this is sort of a wildcat deal.

Yeah, homeschooling.

Honorable Father, it's me again, little Lord Eli Fauntleroy of the 40%.

How do I do it?

What do I do?

Teach me how to take a dive, Father.

Well, if a kid starts pushing you, you let the ref know and you tell the kid to stop pushing you.

But if he does it again and he pushes you, then maybe you need to go to the ground and say, Ref, he pushed me to the ground.

And so, Honorable Father, do I fall to my hands and knees?

Do I fall on my back?

Yeah, fall to your hands and knees and then maybe get up with a slight twitch and maybe limp back into normalcy.

I should use my body language to lie.

Definitely.

But, father, isn't lying wrong?

Not in this case.

Do other kids on the team do this?

Probably not intentionally.

Subliminally, yes.

We have a lot of kids that walk off crying or frustrated or faking injuries because they're upset.

Yeah, I have to keep reminding myself that these are eight-year-olds.

Yeah,

you know, I don't know if their father's at home telling them to lie or not, but sports

is like war, all is fair in war, right?

So

sports is different in every sport.

Like LeBron James flops when he's charged.

He fakes an injury.

He draws the other team out, and it's a part of the game in every sport.

Unspoken.

Yes.

So, I mean, if a guy is right-handed, you make sure you stay on his left-hand side in basketball or boxing.

You move to that side.

I took jiu-jitsu.

You don't go to the man's strength.

You find his weakness, and you try to exploit that.

You mentioned that sports is like war and everything is fair.

It seems to me that's not entirely accurate simile.

Probably not.

I mean,

there are rules in war, perversely, but sports in particular is a metaphor for tribal warfare.

It is to help us get through our tribal instincts to battle with the person on the other side of the river, but to do so in an organized way where people

play by certain rules and can expect those rules to be the same across the board.

Would you not agree?

Yeah,

I do.

And American soccer has been that way traditionally.

Right.

But American soccer has never been on top of

the pyramid of soccer.

Yeah, I mean, I'll be

Satan's advocate here for a moment and say,

hail Satan.

He is great,

but also has this point of view, which is that

American soccer, where flopping and diving and faking and lying in this way is much less prevalent and much more punished,

is part of the reason that that lack of this lying technique is part of the reason why American soccer is not more successful throughout the world.

Is that true?

Yeah,

that's actually very true.

And you mentioned that kids are walking off the soccer pitch crying and hurt

legitimately, and you don't think that they're necessarily faking it.

I guess what I'm asking you is, what the hell is going on, sir, in this eight-year-old soccer game?

Have you been to an eight-year-old sporting event?

Not since I was eight.

Oh, gosh.

Between the parents and the fits thrown on the field and the...

the cheap shots, it's pretty interesting.

Karen, how do you feel about the sports program in general in Eli Fauntleroy's life?

I don't have any problem with it.

I think he really enjoys it.

He's good at it.

And do you think that he's in danger of physical harm?

No.

All right, good.

Do you think he's learning good values generally?

In soccer?

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is the one bad value.

Yeah.

So, Karen, Tom has made the point that this is not just run-of-the-mill cheating that he devised in his own cheating workshop back home.

This is the way the game is played at a certain level.

Shouldn't Eli Fauntleroy be trained in all of the both light and dark arts of soccer if he's going to pursue it with some success?

I don't think so.

I think if he was a really good player, he would be a really good player without having to do that.

I also don't think he's going to be a professional soccer player.

But Tom pointed out that the world's best players

in soccer, especially and in other sports as well, do this sort of thing.

I don't think that makes it okay.

You'd rather your son be a less skilled player than go over to the dark side and become a roundball Sith?

I don't think it would be less skilled, it just would be less fake.

What are the values you're concerned are being taught to Eli Fauntleroy by his daddy in this regard?

That if it suits your purpose, it's okay to cheat, fake, lie.

Or if that's just the way people do it, then that makes it okay.

Yeah, but if Tom drew a bright line around soccer, is it just soccer, Tom, or any sports?

Oh, definitely just soccer.

And why?

Because it's such an ingrained part of the game?

Yes.

I mean, we have to talk about it.

Because you were talking about LeBron

flopping, too.

Are we talking basketball?

Well, he doesn't play basketball.

He's in the 40 percentile.

Right.

You know what I mean?

I'll give you credit for.

I'll give you credit for, Tom.

You see the world as it is, not as you want it to be.

That's exactly right.

My son's 40 percentile.

He's not going to play basketball.

And he's definitely going to have to go to ground.

Have you drawn that bright line around soccer for Eli Faunt Leroy already?

I mean, you've had the talk with him, right?

Yes.

Right.

You've had the this is how you cheat son talk that every father and son has.

Yeah, this is exactly when you do it now.

And do you say to him, but don't, this obviously doesn't apply to

your math quiz.

Exactly.

No,

I tell you, we have, and I'm going to pat both of us on the back.

We have a great kid.

And in this day and age of internet and

all the technology, we have tried to keep him with some traditional honest values minus soccer but he you know he says yes sir yes ma'am and he's a he's a good boy it's not that's not prompted he does that on his own he's a very good kid very smart uh very good at sports but i also just don't want him to be blindsided one day by the reality or the truth of the world you know can i make an objection yeah i'll allow it two things he does not say yes ma'am no ma'am

except occasionally.

The other was.

One of you is lying.

She said occasionally.

I didn't say the frequency.

I mean, I feel like once is pretty much world champion for an eight-year-old in 2017.

Exactly.

I would say so, too.

Oh, bailiff, my bailiff, sir.

That's how I'm supposed to address him, apparently.

I'm glad you read the memo.

I only got a thousand copies of it shoved down my chimney by owls.

Well, I trained those owls well.

Yes, sir, my bailiffs are.

Where were we?

Right.

Your objection, please, Karen.

Please continue with your objection.

My main objection was that when you asked him if he's had the extended conversation about how this only applies to soccer, if that has happened, I have never been there to hear it.

How much of the conversation did you hear?

I heard up to the part where he told him to cheat and fake.

I didn't leave.

It's not like I left.

I just thought that was the end of it.

What set the scene?

Where were you guys?

I was was in the kitchen, and they were in the living room.

It wasn't a really extended conversation, but then I voiced my opinion and was told that I was incorrect.

Did you hear the part from the kitchen?

Could you hear Tom saying, you have to understand, son, sports is war?

And he said, yes, sir.

What was Eli's reaction to this instruction?

Well, he listens pretty well.

But

this was not too,

this has never come into play.

He's never had this issue on the soccer field.

This was just a talk.

You know, we were talking about the kid that he denied the ball and how that works so well.

And then we went into the conversation is what if it didn't work?

What if the kid kept pushing?

And what if the worst case scenario, you know, what will we do?

And we're like, we don't want to fight.

We don't want to walk off the field.

We don't want to walk off crying and quit the game of soccer.

We want to keep playing.

So so we have to use all of our tools.

So you were giving him speculative cheating advice.

Yes.

Yes.

Speculative cheating.

But I have done this in other areas of his life that have worked well.

So he responds well.

So you want to make sure that he knows that cheating is an option to him.

Correct.

In soccer, Jesse.

Got it.

And

there's no way that someone who is told that cheating is okay in one area isn't going to maybe apply that to other areas of their life.

That's just not how humans work.

Once they have the idea, it's like, nope, it's regimented to this one activity.

Got it.

If lying works here,

why would I try lying anywhere else to get what I needed or wanted in life?

Well, certainly with, and I'm sure both of you are familiar with this, the sort of rich and complex

set of understandings of social rules and expectations that every third grader has.

Exactly.

There is no greater creature of nuance than an eight-year-old.

But Tom, I must press you, you did not answer my question.

When I said, how did Eli respond when you gave him this information?

You went ahead and gave me the information again.

What did your son say,

if anything, besides, yes, sir?

I really don't remember exactly how he responded because I was getting the beatdown from my wife.

Oh.

Did this fight happen in front of Fontlroy?

It wasn't a fight.

Oh.

I mean, really, it wasn't.

No, it really wasn't.

Like, he said his thing, and then I shared my opinion, and that was it.

Then I rode into the show.

So, when you say it wasn't a fight, was that because you simply expressed your contrasting opinion to Eli and to your husband, or that you beat your husband down so severely with your rhetoric that he wasn't even feigning injury.

He was spasming on the floor.

It was not a fight.

It was not a fight.

But why am I still asking this question?

What did Eli say?

I don't think he said anything.

He just told me.

He probably just was kind of like, okay.

Yeah.

He's just saying, daddy's teaching me to lie.

Daddy told me to lie on soccer.

Who is my daddy?

I thought he was one person, but now I know he believes in lying.

Is he lying to me now

about soccer?

Maybe my daddy is telling me something he made up himself.

And now I'm going to do this thing, and the referee is going to go, you can't lie in soccer, and my daddy will laugh and laugh.

It's hard.

What would you have me rule, Karen, if I were to rule in your favor?

I would ask that you rule that he not do that, that he not teach him how to cheat or fake.

But if

you can't unring a bell.

Okay, okay.

So i think there needs to be further explanation detailed explanation and follow-up conversations about how apparently this is just going to apply to soccer

there's precedent for him not being able to not generalize what do you mean

we have some issues with him sort of not knowing when to tell on someone and when not to And so we've had a hard time with that because we don't want him to let someone else be bullied or mistreated, but it's really hard it's i guess it's been our problem because it's hard for us to know how to teach him to know the difference would you say he out here dry snitching to the poe

i'm not prepared to say that

in other words he needs to learn not to talk about the family business

basically got it

okay so a clear delineation this is only for soccer correct yes Well,

this is what Karen wants.

Well, I guess it's, yeah.

I mean, if that's the

best we could do.

No, you ask.

It's your.

Oh, no, because you told me that it was too late.

I can't go back because the damage had already been done.

Look,

would it be even more confusing to your son if a strange bearded man traveled to Asheville from Maine?

Jesse, that's a state in New England.

Got it.

And talked to your eight-year-old

and did a full lecture to him about where his daddy is right and wrong, and then I drive away.

I think that could be extremely damaging and confusing, even more confusing than it already is.

But I guess I may have to do that.

John, have you thought about sitting in a chair with its back against your front?

I think that would really help.

Oh, I mean, turn a chair around and sit, have my hands over the back of the chair.

Yeah, I mean,

I find that really useful when I'm talking with children or teens or just anyone who needs straight talk.

Yeah.

You know what?

I always turn my judge's chair around when I do the verdict.

Great.

I'm sorry we haven't put that sound effect in for the past four years.

Good wrapping with you, Judge.

Yeah.

Tom, what would you have me rule if I were to rule in your favor?

I would have you rule that

my wife, Eli's mother, needs to trust that I have his best interest in mind when these talks I have with him and that I'm talking about things that really do happen.

I do explain to him, you know, this is in soccer, this is this occasion, but I don't teach him to lie

in general.

But in soccer, this is sports and this is a sport issue.

It really does happen and he's going to deal with it eventually.

So I would just like for her to recognize that and just kind of leave me alone.

We can all hear you.

Even if you whisper, we all know that you're saying, please

order my wife to leave me alone.

Is this an issue, her not leaving you alone, is this an issue in other areas of your marriage that you need to tell me about?

Well, my wife has

a great

feeling of fairness in her life that...

this probably applies to.

She always has to be fair and always feels bad for the underdog in any situation.

I remember her saying when this happened that that was not fair to do that to the other players, that that was cheating.

And she always feels bad for anybody that is being treated unjust, I guess you would say.

So we had a dog that was 45 pounds.

We had one that was 75 pounds.

She gave them both the same amount of food because she felt bad for the little dog getting less food at one time.

So it's hard for her to deal with things that might not be fair.

She was literally rooting for the underdog.

Yeah,

she was feeding for the underdog.

And did the little dog get obese and die early as a result?

Yeah, it gained 15 pounds, and then we had to put it on a diet.

Tom, if your son goes to ground because of

a real or perceived foul in order to draw attention to himself

and then gets an extra kick for the team as a result, that's not a problem for you.

Definitely not.

Because

the bully initiated the foul.

Right.

But you're not instructing Eli to

make up a foul.

No.

Once he gets mad with power, those go-to-ground spasms, and he realizes what he gets out of that.

Teaching him to have a tantrum.

He gets what he wants, extra points.

All right, I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'm going to go into my personal

full-size soccer pavilion that I have never used, it turns out.

And I will consider my decision there and I'll be back in a moment with my version.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Tom, do you think this is your place

to teach your child these sporting lessons?

Would that be better left to a coach or someone else involved in his team?

Yeah, I mean, I think as his father, I have to teach him about the real world.

I mean,

his soccer coach can teach him about soccer, but these are things that kind of don't come up until later.

You look back on and you realize they never told me that part.

So you're saying that his coach is bound by the rules of morality while you live a life without rules as a father.

Right.

Well, I live in a world where people don't follow the rules because of my job.

So

You can say that in a great situation, nobody would break the rules and we can all follow the rules, and everybody's gonna play fair.

But I'm faced with that every day I go to work, that people are not being fair.

So, you're basically taking out your anger about people texting and driving on your child.

Sure,

Karen, how are you feeling about your chances in the case?

I hesitate to say this, but I kind of don't see how I could lose.

That is, I've been asking that question for five years.

That is by far the boldest declaration I've ever heard in that entire time.

Wow, that's amazing.

Do you trust the judge to be as fair as you were with those two dogs?

Oh, yeah.

Tom, how do you feel about your chances?

Do you feel certain to lose?

I just don't know.

Well, we'll have to see what Judge John Hodgman has to say when we come back in just a second.

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Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom.

You may be seated.

I have so many places to go, and I don't even know where to begin.

First of all, I should stipulate: if you've ever listened to this podcast for any period of time or know my work at all,

sports is not my bag.

And as I've heard the bloodbath of your child's soccer team described, I have no regrets.

No regrets.

I mean, with that kind of competition, intimidation, and take-no-prisoners,

backbiting, and

you might as well have your child in a symphony orchestra.

That's how bad it is.

And when I learned about this, and I learned about it this morning researching this case, this practice within soccer of taking flops and dives and being purposefully misleading, and how ingrained it is, particularly in soccer-playing parts of the world that are not the US of A.

I was like, once again, I was like, Yeah, you know what?

I thought soccer was the nice one,

but no,

it's deceptive and it's mean, just like every other sport.

And so, I did not know what I was going to come into when discussing this with a dad who who literally was teaching his kid to break the rules.

Dads have to be careful.

And Tom,

I'm not saying this because I feel like you have been uncareful necessarily.

That's what I'm trying to determine.

But I'm saying it because I know I have been uncareful around these very issues.

And my dad has been uncareful with me around the issues of rules.

First of all, I order you both to purchase my book, Vacation Land, which comes out in October,

in which some of these stories are alluded to.

But my dad gave me, when I was in my 20s, my dad

taught me to break the rules.

Now, as you know, I'm an only child.

I do not want to break the rules.

I want to know what all the rules are so I can follow them perfectly, so that I can be approved of and loved by every human on earth.

I don't want to break any rules.

But this is in Western Massachusetts.

My dad taught me

that we had to take the garbage to the dump, which already was terrible.

And that, too, if I was asked where I lived, that I was to lie to the dumpman

about where I lived because we weren't legally allowed to dump our garbage there because we were in a different town.

And this gave me neurosis for 14 years.

I would avoid going to the dump.

I was scared because I was afraid at any moment I might finally get called out.

They never asked.

But at any moment, they could, and I would get thrown in dump jail for lying to the dumpman.

And then

it took me a long time to realize that my dad had made that neurosis happen in my head for no reason because those dumpmen were never going to ask.

They don't care.

They work at the dump.

But I feel for you because dads do this all the time and they do it with the best of intentions.

And years later, when my own son was facing a situation,

it was the closest to sports we ever got.

He was taking sailing lessons.

It was not my idea.

In fact, he wasn't even doing sailing, he was doing rowing because too little to go sailing.

And he was getting picked on by some of the kids

in this rowing group because he had never been on the water before.

And they all knew each other since they were three.

And they immediately picked him to be the odd man out.

And, you know, when that's happening,

as a father, you feel intensely full of

powerless rage because what can you do?

You know, what how can you empower your child to stand up to bullies and also make the incredibly nuanced and difficult decisions, contextual decisions, of when it's right to stand up and when it's right to ignore them and when it's right to tell someone and when it's better to just let it slide.

You know, it's hard to say, you know.

And I encouraged my son with a pep talk.

And I, before I said this to him, I said,

he was about eight or nine then.

I said, you know, do you mind if I say a swear word in front of you?

I know you've heard them before, but I may have to emphasize something.

And he said, it's fine.

And I said, you know,

if these kids say something to you, just point out that you're wearing this shirt that you got from the rock climbing place down in Brooklyn.

New York where you live because you were able to reach the top and no one else could.

And just say, you know, my name is name redacted, Hodgman,

and you don't know anything about me.

And I live in Brooklyn, New York, and I climb walls really well, even if I don't rove really well.

So

you can't give me any feces.

And I used a different word.

And I was doing so good.

Like his eyes were lighting up with confidence.

And then the moment I said feces, but I used a different word, his face completely fell.

Because even though he said, yeah, it's okay if you say a swear word in front of me, when your dad is actually saying a swear word in front of you and breaking that rule, suddenly there are no rules.

Suddenly he's like, oh, right, the universe is full of chaos and darkness, and my daddy just swore, and the kids are mean, and now they're probably going to kill me.

These things get into little kids' heads in ways that are complicated.

And just as my dad damaged me, so I have damaged my son.

And the verdict of whether or not or how badly you have damaged little Eli Fauntleroy is still yet to be made.

Even if I were to rule you haven't,

you will both damage him in different ways.

It's unavoidable.

Unavoidable.

Now,

like

your wife, Tom,

I also root for the underdog

because I'm a human being.

Because I don't take delight

in weaker people losing

because someone else has used every advantage available to them, both in the light arts and the dark arts of war sports.

But to my surprise, in this situation, Tom,

I feel the underdog is Tom.

And it's not just because, Karen, you were so confident

going into the verdict.

You thought, I am totally going to win this.

That did make you the overdog and made Tom a little bit of the underdog, especially when I was whispering, just let her, just order her to leave me alone.

But very much to my surprise, what I heard, Tom, as you were explaining this

was that A, you've given a lot of thought to this.

B,

you know what you're talking about.

C,

it comes from

a clear place of not merely trying to protect your kid, but to arm him with the options that are available to him in soccer and in life.

That it was part of an ongoing personal coaching habit that you had as the conversation grew out of the other conversation where you're going over how he kept the ball from the other kid.

This is considered.

My worry was that you're going to be exactly the kind of creep sportsy dad that I thought could only be,

who's trying to relive his own soccer glory days by telling his kid about this dark practice in professional soccer, or worse, one of these hipster dads who love

European football

more than any other sport on earth and go to bars and drink and watch the World Cup and adopt teams from all over the world where they've never set foot before.

And because because they're really into football, European and world football culture, they're going to school their kid on this esoteric unspoken rule and you know, just to feel smart about themselves.

None of this is that.

All of this seems as though it proceeds from an obvious place of love and consideration for your child and, as I say, a habit of seeing things as they are, not as you wish them to be.

It is the case.

I am saying this to all of the dads and moms across America, that soccer is a dirty sport where people lie as a matter of course outside of the United States.

And you go online and you watch clips, supercuts of these flops and these dives, and they are ridiculous.

They are totally bogus and fake and everyone knows it.

It is deceptive on purpose.

It is contemptible.

And it is part of the sport that you love.

And here is the only place where I feel that you have gone wrong, Tom.

Well, there was that one time when I said, are you just trying to protect your kid or give him an advantage over the other team?

Why not both?

One is entwined with the other in this case.

Because these faked falls or these exaggerated falls to get the refs' attention do, whether intended to or not,

attract that attention and draw fouls and cautions to the other team that give your team an advantage.

So that's just the way it is.

But where you did fall is not,

at least as far as I can tell, and I think I'm right, not impressing upon your son that while this is part of soccer, it's still cheating.

And if he were to be found out doing this in American soccer,

he would be punished for it.

And what's more, people around the world are making YouTube super cuts, making fun of soccer players for doing contemptible, dumb-looking, goofball theatrics.

It's gross.

This is where

you have failed as a father.

And I think in this case, you are correct to have alerted to your son this tool that is used by many many soccer players at the highest level

but what you really need is to have john hodgman come to your home outside of asheville and conduct an ethics and soccer powerpoint presentation i've got a hell of a deck on flopping right now i would really love to show eli but i can't do that and it would be weird and creepy

so you need to sit down with your what son what father doesn't love sitting down and watching some youtube videos with his son show him what these guys are doing and make it clear that while this is a tool available, you can't even bring yourself to talk to his coach about this because the coach would catch on and tell you not to do it.

Yes, there are dark arts available, even in soccer.

But you pay a price for using them.

Look at Voldemort.

He lost his nose.

With that caveat, I find in favor of Tom, this is the sound of a gabble.

Judge John Hodgman rules out as all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Karen.

Yes.

What is there left to believe in?

I kind of feel, I still feel okay.

I kind of still feel like, oh, what?

I mean, you know that in a very true and literal sense, you lost, right?

Yes, yes.

Are you just fake newsing, newsing, the judge?

No,

I feel good about it.

Maybe that's how I should say it.

Okay.

Everyone wins.

Tom, how do you feel?

I feel great.

I can't lie.

I just love it when people, you know, are sure they're going to win by bullying and bringing their partners on podcast and then get...

Then they take the L.

They take the loss.

It feels pretty good.

Did you consider flopping at all when you were being bullied by your wife?

I have before, yes.

Well, Tom, Karen, thank you so much for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Another thrilling Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

Before we dispense some swift justice, we want to thank Evan LaRoca and Joel Bergsbacon, Bergsbacon, for naming this week's episode Sport Reform.

If you'd like to name a future episode, make sure to like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook.

That's where we usually put the call for submissions.

You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ Ho, and check out the MaxFund subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com to discuss this week's episode, which, by the way, was recorded by Robert George at Sound Temple Studios in Asheville, North Carolina, and by Joel Mann at WERU in East Orland, Maine.

Our brilliant producer, Jennifer Marmer.

Now,

Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with a quick judgment.

Rebecca W.

wrote in about washing one's legs in the shower.

She says, some people say they just get cleaned by the trickle-down effect, but that seems wrong to me.

What do you say, Judge?

First of all, I'm glad we specified that that was Rebecca W, so she knows it was her letter that we picked about washing one's legs in the shower, not the ones from all the other Rebecca's.

Second of all, I the trickle-down effect in the shower, I could not get for it, took me about five reads of this one to understand that it was not about peeing in the shower.

I don't know why I couldn't get past that.

I'm like, oh, no, just washing legs, not peeing on them.

I will say this:

I rarely do any deep scrub work on my

world-beating calves that everyone knows I have.

I have the best calves in the podcast industry, that's for sure.

And they're all natural.

I mean, I got some big old Popeye hams down there,

and they get plenty clean

just with the regular old water washing on them.

As soon as you said Popeye hams, this whole thing got creepy for me.

The peeing in the shower part, being fixated on peeing in the shower, was fine, but Popeye hams really upset me.

Well,

get ready for this then, Jesse.

Because I will say that there is a part of my foot just below

my ankle bone where if I do wash down there, I realize, yeah,

there's a lot of dirt and dead skin accumulated there that is not getting washed away by any kind of trickle down.

So, yeah, I would say, you know, you got to do a full body scrub, let's say,

every two weeks or so.

But for the most part, just let it flow.

If you've got a case case for Judge John Hodgman, go to maximumfund.org/slash JJ H O

or just email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

And we especially want your cases from New York City and London and environs.

So if your case is located in one of those places, do let us know.

We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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