Damien Cox, today’s honorary Ugly American, tells Canadians to “get over it”

Three days into our Ugly Americans series, and we're already being struck by random backlash. Yes, I've seen the Tancredi GIF. No, it doesn't prove anything - that's why FIFA and the rest of the right-thinking world is ignoring it. Yes, you can stop e-mailing it to me now.

The series was intended to spotlight the ugliest of all things in the Olympics: people who think they're above it all, who think they know better than you and can act cocky and conceited and demeaning to what the Olympics mean to everyone. We saw it bubbling out of the American team, and we called them on it.

And so it is that on Day 3, the ugliest instance we've encountered comes from someone who's not at the games, is admittedly barely paying attention, and isn't even American.

On Wednesday, Damien Cox of the Toronto Star weighed in on the officiating issue that's been dominating the week in women's soccer. His advice?

"Get over it."

How big a deal could it have been, he asked, when Canada gave up four goals? What could the Canadian team have possibly said to cause such a kerfuffle? Shouldn't we all just be happy the team's playing for a medal?

In short, it all sounded like, well, the words of someone who didn't watch the game. Someone who didn't see Christine Sinclair's continued forays into the American zone, the hectic back-and-forth of the second half, the "ohmygod-they-might-actually-beat-the-Americans" tension that took over , and then, suddenly, the delay-of-game call, and subsequent penalty, that flipped the entire game on its head.

That's because Cox didn't see any of it. He didn't see any of the goals. He didn't see the calls, or the ensuing goal, or the overtime, or the post-game interviews. By his own admission, he turned the game off 35 minutes in.

It doesn't take long to realize, via the Star's Web site, that not only is Cox not in London, he hasn't even been at work. If he was watching the Olympics, he wasn't writing about them - or anything else. He didn't write anything from July 8 - the end of Wimbledon - until August 5th. A tennis junkie, Cox didn't even write about Andy Murray's stunning gold-medal victory. This week, he's been busy at the Rogers Cup. In short, there's no indication that the Olympics have any priority in his professional life right now.

So, we're left to ask, what value is there in the opinion of a columnist who's not covering an event, or even paying attention to it, talking about a game he didn't watch? It takes an incredible amount of cockiness, or conceited belief in your own self-importance, to hammer out 600 words of "what I think you should all believe" about something he didn't even see.

The real giveaway that Cox is utterly clueless on the topic is the last sentence:

If you've been following the coverage of those who watched the game - ours, or anybody else's - you know that the bronze medal match isn't even remotely close to the point. The calls for Christine Sinclair to be our flagbearer began on Monday night, and didn't hinge on whether she wins a medal; she took on the Americans, and dominated them, and became our hero. The controversy over the calls, and the American reaction to how the game ended, have nothing to do with the bronze medal.

You'd be hard-pressed to find, in any coverage of the story, or from any player on the Canadian team, the sentiment that "We were robbed of a chance to play for gold," because it was never about that. It was always about taking on the world's #1 team, keeping up, and being robbed of a chance to defeat their most bitter rivals on fair merit.

It's OK if Cox was on vacation and wasn't paying attention. It's OK if he chose not to spend his last day off watching women's soccer. If he's ever covered women's soccer, we have no record of it. There was no reason to expect he'd even care about the game.

But it takes a certain level of self-importance to write a column about a game you didn't watch, in a sport you don't cover, during an Olympics you're not writing about, telling fans and readers how to feel about it.

That Cox felt his voice was needed or relevant, amongst the sea of better-informed, more interested and more knowledgeable commentators, is a stunning show of hubris. A cynic might suggest that Cox saw the biggest sports story in the country passing him by and flailed desperately to get a piece of it.

For those who've been giving the Olympic team their attention and adoration, for who Monday's game meant so much, it doesn't get much uglier than that.