The Tao of Penalty Kicks--PKs Just Are . . . So Deal With It

Thanks to the Twitterverse, public bellyaching about the injustice of using penalty kicks to decide a tournament began only minutes after the United States Women's National Team lost the Women's World Cup to Japan.  By the end of today, I expect all the usual tropes to be trotted out, such as "It's like using a home run derby to decide a baseball game!" or "Having a free-throw contest determine the NCAA Finals!"  Actually, it's not like these things at all.  The most appropriate analogy to major American sports is the use of penalty shots as a tie-breaker for hockey games, which, of course, the NHL now does throughout the regular season.  Granted, during the NHL playoffs, this tie-breaker is scrapped because a series format is used, unlike the one-off, knock-out tournament approach used in World Cups.  Now, we can debate the merits of overtime or a three-match series approach versus penalty kicks ad infinitum, but, the truth is, that would be a colossal waste of time.  Penalty kicks are not going anywhere.  As any footy fan vaguely familiar with the opaque and corrupt machinations of soccer's governing body, FIFA, could tell you, reform is not something that concerns the bureaucratic Illuminati of international soccer.  So, we can bemoan the justness of penalty kicks, but that would be about as productive as grousing about the shape of the letter "F."  Penalty kicks just are.  They are not fair.  But, ultimately, they are what you make them--an unforgettably dramatic way to win (see Brandi Chastain in 1999) or a cruel, gut-wrenching way to lose.