6/23/2010 – USA 1, Algeria 0 – 1-0-2, 5 points, top of Group A (via omg yanks) When you're a sportsblogger and your fiancé is getting her PhD in a humanities field, you spend a lot of time explaining yourself. (She doesn't because a few years ago the explanation became "it seemed like a good idea at the time," which fair enough.) After the beer flew and the rage subsided against Slovenia, I was asked to explain what the hell it was with me and the USMNT, and I thought about it systematically for the first time. My first attempt to explain was jingoistic. I like the United States and would like to root for some sort of national ideal. The Olympics are far from sufficing because they don't seem fair or competitive. Hey, we grew this Michael Phelps guy in a lab, let's see how badly he can crush humans without flippers. Etc. The national team is good, but not so good that rooting for them feels like ugly Americanism. That was kind of right, but missing