It's ok Jason...no one understands the Offside rule. Heck they just recently clarified it and despite two separate Power Points and 16 years of Referee experience I'm still confused.

Terrific on so many levels

I'm just impressed at the commitment NBC is finally making to showing football in the states. 69 games total, 10 on NBC itself, the rest on NBCSN and CNBC http://www.sbnation.com/2013/7/29/4568642/2013-14-nbc-epl-tv-schedule Definitely the widest exposure ever on network television.

Gareth Bale still at Spurs! Ha.

What's so confusing about offside?
The laws of the game state:
"A player is in an offside position if [..] he is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent"
and
"A player in an offside position is only penalised if, at the moment the ball
touches or is played by one of his team, he is, in the opinion of the referee,
involved in active play by:
• interfering with play or
• interfering with an opponent or
• gaining an advantage by being in that position"

And that's basically it.

Inviting arguments by deliberately allowing the decision to be subjective - sure. But confusing?

You're right because that's the ONLY thing we referees use is the laws of the game right? No, there's constant discussion among the top referees in the nation, I know I've been in the room with them. I've been trained by FIFAs and former FIFAs, it's the most confusing law period. Don't try to pretend it's not, you have interpretations you have instructions and you have Position Papers, and you have actual real situations where you have to apply all of those things.

So yes you can try to talk about it being simple and you can try to teach it simply, but it's not. There is way more to it, I've been in the debates, I've helped former FIFAs write the interpretations to FIFA for better explanation. It should be simpler, but in practice it's not.

This is so very wrong and so very right

The Return of Coach Lasso has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579 on that post.