Fairness is a novel concept, isn’t it?

Tuesday afternoon I was once again late for work because I was captivated watching a soccer game. This time the Italian champions were hosting the European champions in a very interesting contest. It turns out the Italian team decisively won 3-0.

Soccer, nor sport as a whole, is for everyone. But, it serves as a spectacular example that the best teams, the best players, the best coaches, or the most deserving squads don’t always have results that favor them.

The continuous lust after advertising and television dollars has heaped immense pressure on the participants to perform like a peacock on parade.

Hours after losing the European champions fired their coach. The same man who lifted the team to its highest heights in the 107-year history of the team was fired for winning just two out of his last eight games.

It was yet another reminder the world is not fair. It’s probably not the best to be so dismissive of the optimism in people, but the truth sometimes hurts.

My sister would argue “Will, the truth you tell is refreshing, until people realize it’s a golden shower.” But, she has always been funnier than me.

By now most of us with a social media pulse have seen the “30 Days of Thankfulness” campaign waged on Facebook and other mediums. It’s a spectacular reminder to appreciate the small blessings, because bigger ones are frequently not in our control.

Roberto Di Matteo, the former coach of the European champions, may have an impressive resume, but he also no longer has a job.

It’s doubtful Di Matteo will spend the rest of the year wallowing in the unfairness of it all — especially considering he’ll be paid for another 18 months by a billionaire who is indebted to him.

Are you someone who “Cannot Understand Normal Thinking?”

We find out who our truest friends are when we are caught with our pants down in a compromising position. That may not be an adage, at least not yet, but it sure sounded nice.

By all accounts Tampa socialite Jill Kelley has kept her pants on since her role emerged in the resignation of David Petraeus earlier this month.

Petraues is the West Point graduate, former leader of American forces in Afghanistan, and CIA director who resigned because he was caught opening up to his biographer. Based on his previously glowing media coverage one would think he is our generation’s version of Washington, Grant, Eisenhower, Westmoreland, and Schwarzkopf rolled up into one brassy uniform — but I digress.

Kelley was originally a minor player in this story. But the more information that pops up, like Petraeus in missionary, the more people are speaking on the record to the media about the authenticity of the 37-year-old wife of a Tampa cancer surgeon.

While the story arouses one’s curiosity about many things, it should lead us to consider how frivolously we confer status on someone or something.

Money cannot buy one class. Just as a high-profile position does not afford integrity, possessing a few degrees does not make one intelligent and cooking Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t make one a chef, money purchases many things, but not everything.

Kelley probably learned that the hard way this month as countless people have essentially called her a poser in the Tampa Bay Times and other publications because she wanted to enter South Tampa’s high society.

In high school I used yearn “to be popular.” Looking back, it was such a silly thing to strive for. Then, and now, I didn’t have the most money, world-class looks, the fanciest car, or a personality that is particularly flashy.

I would like to think I am funny. However, that may be stretching the truth, and may turn me into one of the “C.U.N.T.’s” that believe all that is superficial is all that matters.

In truth, I am a sports writer in a sleepy South Texas town that prefers to be told selective truths as opposed to the slightly snarky honest prose that has become a trademark of my writing. There is more to me than the byline people see in the newspaper most mornings.

There is more to most of us than what we post on social media, cram into a 160-character text message, or slip into a phone conversation.  The Times story illustrates the Kelley’s didn’t have too many true friends in snooty South Tampa.

While it’s easy to saturate ourselves in the silly, at the end of the day little of it matters. People preen and pretend to care for others all the time. They are the people who cannot stand normal thinking, because everything is about them.

Those who are really in it for the long haul are usually the people who not only — figuratively— know when you pants were down, but tell you where to buy a new pair because your current pair are stained.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb