Is it me? Am I wrong? Am I un-American for not coming down with a serious case of good ol' US of A red-white-and-blue World Cup soccer fever? Am I unpatriotic because I can't work up a good dose of hate for Ghana?

If the answer to those questions is yes ...

Good.

I'm proud of it.

To me, being an American means that everybody is entitled to his or her opinion. When it comes to soccer -- World Cup or otherwise -- my opinion is that I don't like it, can't stand it, am not sure I would watch more than a few minutes of it even if my life depended on it. I know one thing: I'll be damned if I'm going to start liking it now just because Landon Donovan scored in stoppage time Wednesday to beat Algeria and send the Americans on to the Round of 16 at the World Cup for what they tell me will be a not-so-friendly Saturday with Ghana.

Whoopee!

I know I am in the ever-decreasing minority on this subject. The US of A soccer team has made a lot of friends this month by winning its World Cup group for the first time since 1930. Everybody loves a winner, even people who don't understand the sport. They're just excited to be able to drag out the flag and wave it a few days ahead of the Fourth of July.

Apparently, even people in the highest places have caught the fever. When President Barack Obama placed the obligatory congratulations call to US of A coach Bob Bradley after what everyone says was a stunning win against Algeria, he mentioned that he had an Oval Office meeting with Gen. David Petraeus interrupted by loud cheering from the West Wing when Donovan scored. This is a good thing? That an important sit-down with the new man in charge of our war efforts in Afghanistan is disturbed by a soccer game? Shouldn't they, maybe, you know, have had the door closed?

At least the president didn't say anything about pulling out one of those blasted vuvuzelas to celebrate with the general. That really would have been disturbing.

My problem with soccer isn't just all of the nil-nil or 1-nil or, on those rare days filled with offensive explosions, 2-nil games. It's not even the way the French squad flat out quit at this World Cup. That was rather humorous, actually. I'm sure Mother France is so proud of Les Bleus.

It's the way the players take more dives than Greg Louganis ever did. At mere contact, they go down as if they were shot, which, sadly, in some of the losing countries, just might happen when they get back home. When I flip the television to ESPN out of habit and forget that it's showing soccer wall-to-wall, I invariably see a soccer player faking a serious injury. I can't help but think of a couple of hockey players from this spring's Stanley Cup playoffs, Washington's Eric Belanger and Chicago's Duncan Keith. Belanger took a stick to the face and ended up pulling out teeth on the bench during a game. Keith lost seven teeth after getting hit with a puck in the mouth and played on. No dives for those fellows. Real men, not soccer players.

The other thing about soccer that's so annoying is the officiating. It turns out the referees don't have to explain their calls. They just make 'em and move on as their bosses try to convince the world that they know what he heck they are doing. Referee Koman Coulibaly of Mali took away what would have been the winning goal from the US of A team's Maurice Edu in the match against Slovenia and, a full week later, still no one knows why.

Only in soccer.

Now, Ghana is next. If you ask me, beating The Black Stars won't have quite the same meaning as the 1980 US of A Olympic hockey team beating the hated Russians at the height of the Cold War. Some surely will try to assign it, though.

Ghana?

How do you hate a country that gave us Kofi Annan, Nobel Peace Prize winner and the first black African secretary-general of the United Nations?

I'm telling you, you can't.

We're supposed to beat Ghana, right? Our lads, picked from a population of 310 million, against their lads, culled from 23 million? Then again, we couldn't beat Slovenia, 2 million proud and strong, although you probably will throw that mysterious call by Coulibaly in my face.

I could close here by dragging out the tired line that I wouldn't watch the US of A-Ghana match if it were in my backyard. But that's silly. I don't think they'd ever play it in Cranberry.

But if, for some unbelievable reason, they want a nice pitch for a potential US of A match against Uruguay or South Korea in the Round of 8, I can promise one that will be freshly mowed.

That will be me out there cutting the grass under the hot sun at precisely 2:30 p.m. Saturday.

Hey, it beats watching soccer.