WORLD CUP FEVER! All Eyes On The Draw

For sports fans around the world, life will stop at High Noon ET — because the 2010 World Cup Draw is upon us.

If you’re one of those people who call it soccer, you might not be that interested — but for football fans, the World Cup is the event for the sport of, well, the world.

The World Cup draw is happening in Cape Town, South Africa, in a star-studded ceremony hosted by David Beckham and homegrown star Charlize Theron and featuring, Nicole Kidman (pushing for Australia’s bid for the next World Cup), Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu and a parade of football’s finest. The draw will determine who plays whom when the event kicks off. Here’s how it will work, according to Roger Bennett, co-author of the forthcoming ESPN World Cup Companion:

A 90-minute show in which 32 pingpong balls are plucked from a quartet of “pots” to reorganize teams that have qualified for the World Cup into eight groups of four might sound like classic C-Span fare, but for the 200 million viewers expected to tune in, the World Cup draw is appointment television.

A blizzard of celebrities, athletes and politicians are scheduled to appear, creating an intoxicating global spectacle that is a singular mix of sports, entertainment and geopolitics. Yet the essence of the occasion is the first tantalizing taste it provides of the World Cup itself. If the tournament were a blockbuster movie, the draw would be the trailer, revealing an early, teasing glimpse of the plotlines, conflicts and symbols that will play out in 188 days time.

Ping pong balls? Really? Well, I suppose FIFA can’t screw that up. Which is good, because FIFA can’t really afford to be screwing anything else up right now. “FIFA” stands for “Fédération Internationale de Football Association” and it’s the international governing organization of body the game — and not always a very effective one. Per Bennett:

The draw takes place at a time when both the world of soccer and FIFA, its governing body, have been stained by scandal and foul play. Spiraling allegations of cross-border match fixing centered in Germany and Thierry Henry’s blatant use of a hand to drag his sluggish French side into the tournament have combined to tarnish the integrity of the game, turning every soccer fan into an expert ethicist in the process. The draw provides FIFA with a global pulpit to restore confidence in the sport. The great question is, how will they choose to use it?

Elizabeth Lambert ain’t got nothing on some of these players, lemme tell you. It’s not surprising that the organization governing the world’s biggest sport, involving huge amounts of money and billions of eyes watching every move, would get in trouble now and again (fans are often not impressed with the reffing; also, they rarely use the term “FIFA-licious”). But FIFA’s ineptitude is fairly legion, so that will be just one of the side dramas that plays out in the coming months.

Bennett has some other things to watch for, like how South Africa performs as the first African nation to host the event, and whether the “random” draw will seem all that random (“the draw has a rich history of creating mouthwatering opening-round matchups…to the point that cynics swear the process is rigged, while the more respectful believe the gods have both a sense of humor and the natural matchmaking instincts of Don King”). He also urges watcher to keep an eye on how the plucky U.S. underdogs fare (#14 with a bullet?). Actually there’s a whole lot of drama to keep an eye on here. And you thought Sarah Palin had a lot going on.

If you live and die by the plays of Pelé, Maradona and Cantona and wish you could bend it like Almeida, Nakamura, Zidane and, yes, Beckham, you already know what you’re doing at noon. If, on the other hand, you don’t know the difference between Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho, you might want to tune in — because this is gonna be big. As FIFA is fond of saying…The World Is Waiting.

…but in the meantime, World, here are some great moments from the pitch to tide you over.

>>>NEXT: GREAT MOMENTS IN SOCCER FOOTBALL: ZIDANE, RONALDO, PELE AND MORE!

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.