Qatar as 2022 World Cup host is cynically bad joke you won’t hear

Here’s the best way to do it:

Take the thumb and forefinger from either hand, apply them to your nostrils, then squeeze. There ya go! That’s called holding your nose.

The World Cup, as presented in the U.S. on Fox (the hype intensifies), will begin next Sunday. We can guarantee that two significant but malodorous realities will not be addressed — at least not in detail — by those assigned to bang the drums for your viewership:

1) The selection of Qatar as host country was and remains, as the soccer world knows, a cynically bad joke.

FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, is widely known to be corrupt, much like the International Olympic Committee. Delegates’ votes for hosting the Cup in Qatar (Qatar!?) were known to be up for wink-and-nod sale — money which an oil-rich, multi-generational family autocracy, currently headed by Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, would have no trouble or internal resistance to provide.

Beyond that, Qatar is a colossally illogical country in which to hold the Cup, both geographically and ideologically.

The daytime heat is so dangerously oppressive, it is lucky some games will start deep into the night, like 10 p.m. — 2 p.m. here, eight hours behind. TV ratings, rather than heat, can get a nod of thanks for this, I’m sure. Let’s call it a happy scheduling accident.

The country’s oppressive Islamic laws are wholly incompatible with enlightened 21st Century Western Civilization. Women are barely tolerated and homosexuals are subject to arrest and incarceration under Muslim law.

Yet FIFA’s delegates “elected” Qatar? Fascinating.

And even beyond that, Qatar needed to build six stadiums to host this Cup. No problem. It imported slave-wage laborers from Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, housing them in squalid encampments.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, reports that nearly 7,000 of those imported workers have died since Qatar was awarded the World Cup in 2010.

Having become TV partners with FIFA, how much airtime will Fox spend on such matters? I’d go with “not much, if any.”

2) Although Fox will — must — hype the U.S. team, how good is it?

Not very. It’s barely a team, more a collection of virtual strangers. Given that the U.S. men were once on the international rise as a matter of mass youth participation and better coaching, the team now has unfathomably regressed.

There are skilled players worthy of attention — Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, NYC’s 19-year-old Yunus Musah and N.J.’s Brenden Aaronson, 22 — but nothing and no one to create the linkage needed to score goals.

Pulisic, listed as a forward though he does his best work from central midfield, is the best known player on the U.S. side. His time with English powerhouse Chelsea, first as a substitute, then assigned to play from the wing, has left him unfulfilled.

By relegating him to both sides of the sideline — bench and wing — Chelsea has effectively eliminated one of his legs as well as his vision and touch as a distributor from the middle of the field — the goods that drew Chelsea to sign Pulisic. He’s a quarterback Chelsea used as an outside linebacker.

In short, the U.S., if it generates counterattack offense — the only kind it can hope and strive for — there’s scant hope that a finisher will emerge.

But that truth, too, is unlikely to be heard on Fox. Then again, I just work here.

RU having trouble feeding students?

One day, a New Jersey politician or attorney general, unattached to rah-rah pom-poms, is going to demand some good answers to hard questions about Rutgers’ Big Ten athletics program, now $73 million (and growing) in the hole.

Last week, taxpayer-reliant Rutgers began its annual campaign for donations to “help feed hungry students at Rutgers.” There are Rutgers students, the appeal detailed, who are too poor to buy food.

This is the same Rutgers that granted football players half a million dollars over 14 months — no matter where they were, including back home in Florida — to purchase DoorDash-delivered food, even from higher-end restaurants, during the COVID pandemic.

Perhaps the starving students can eat out of the Dumpster behind the football team’s lavish locker room, workout center, and rest, relaxation and recreation rooms.

Just because Tony Romo is insanely overpaid and has a raspy voice doesn’t mean he’s worthless. Au contraire, mon frere.

Last Sunday, we had our choice. If you tuned in to see crowd shots during Bills-Jets, CBS fulfilled your wish. In fact, before a third-and-5 for the Bills, CBS cut to four consecutive crowd shots, four more than were needed or wanted.

But if you preferred to watch fools banging the down-low stadium padding before big plays (Who doesn’t love that one?), Fox’s Seahawks-Cardinals was the place.

Classic name lost

I imagine we all had favorite sports world names when growing up, names we’d latch onto because, well, because we just did.

Dow Finsterwald, who won 11 PGA titles, died last week at 93. I loved his name, loved to say “Dow Finsterwald.”

When the poor substitute teacher in junior high passed around the attendance sheet, we wise guys wrote phony names — D. Duck, Betty Crocker, Sal Hepatica. I’d sign in as Dow Finsterwald.

I don’t know why I’m sharing this other than that I surmise you had a favorite sports name, too. “Bill Monbouquette — I hope I’m pronouncing it correctly — please come to the blackboard to conjugate this sentence.”

So NBA commissioner Adam Silver, in view of Kyrie Irving’s dissemination of crackpot history — Jews for centuries have enslaved blacks as part of an ongoing conspiracy and secret covenant, the Holocaust never happened — has declared Irving is not the least bit anti-Semitic.

Perish the thought!

Wonder if Silver is familiar with Neville Chamberlain. Or does he also believe the world is flat?

That didn’t take long. Flightline, the 4-year-old off his spectacular runaway win in the Breeders Classic on Saturday, was immediately retired to stud after a 6-0 career. Money strangling another sport. And that, to borrow from Lou Costello, is how “a muddah eats her faddah.”

Classy Henrik Lundqvist, now-retired Rangers goalie, has sold his name, reputation, dignity and presence to a sports-gambling operation predicated on young suckers losing their money. He couldn’t do better?

What do you call buying an expensive timeshare in a resort that’s only open as the weather worsens? A Roger Goodell PSL.

Yer out! Another Rob Manfred bungle! The dubious, ill-defined crypto-currency company FTX, whose logo appeared on MLB umps’ uniforms the past two seasons as per an MLB deal, has collapsed. Now umps can wear “This space for rent or lease” patches.

The Giants reacquire Odell Beckham Jr.? That would be like paying to have your kidney stones put back.