Chances are if you watched the ESPYs last night you’re either way too desperate for sports, a 13-year old girl obsessed with Justin Bieber, a young male perv obsessed with Brooklyn Decker, or you lost your remote. While I qualify for that third option with flying colors, I chose not to watch ESPN’s annual celebration of the day after the MLB All-Star Game because it’s a silly, meaningless display of ass-kissing. I mean, how the hell can you claim that Jimmer Fredette was better than Kemba Walker or that the Dallas Mavericks were a better team than the San Francisco Giants or the Green Bay Packers? It’s speculative and lazy, and anyone who takes it seriously (SPOILER ALERT: The athletes don’t) needs to put down the second helping of Totino’s Pizza Rolls and step outside for some fresh air.

But damn ESPN and their wicked manipulation, because they know better than to just give us straight-forward sports. The World Wide Leader used Decker, Emmanuelle Chiqrui, Amber Heard, Rachel Nichols, and, for the ladies, Ryan Reynolds to make us think that this is actually a worthwhile event, and not just an ad revenue source for the year’s worst day of sports. It’s diabolical, sure. But we’re stuck with it, so we can either keep fighting or we can give in and agree to stare at Decker and the rest of the attractive women (and men, for the two girls that read this site).

After the jump, the best of the Red Carpet, ESPYs, and the post-show thing where people stand around and smile.

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Pure energy has a name: the North Korean women’s soccer team.

Most of the time when a sports team loses an important game, you’ll hear them talk about how they “went out there and played [their] game” and just lost focus or didn’t play hard enough on defense. Sometimes they’ll say the other team did a good job. Following his team’s 2-0 loss to the U.S. in the women’s World Cup on Tuesday, North Korean Kim Kwang-min redefined hilarious post-game excuses by claiming his team lost because they were struck by lightning. By lightning.

“When we stayed in Pyongyang during training there was an unexpected accident so our team was not capable of playing. Our players were hit by lightning during a training match. More than five were hospitalized. The match was on 8 June.”

The United States team were clearly taken aback by the claim. “It’s the first we have heard about it,” said the striker Abby Wambach. The USA coach, Pia Sundhage, was also unaware of any such problems affecting their opponents.

I think “the dog ate my soccer team” would’ve been an equally good excuse. I feel like if an entire team had been struck by some crazy Nemesis Rage lightning during training, they probably should’ve (and would’ve) sat out the game completely. If I got struck by lightning I would sit out of everything for the rest of my life. The best post-match quote of all wasn’t even about the lighting.

Kim: “They will play with high spirits and strong will, a strong will you cannot expect from human kind.”

… and then he shoved them into a big mud puddle.

[h/t Sports Grid]

We “Oooooed” for Connecticut Huskies quarterback Johnny McEntee and his awesome football trick shots, and we “Ahhhhhed” for Monmouth College’s Alex Tanney as he showed off his equally impressive football skills. And then we even “Oh snapped” as UNC Asheville goalkeeper Lassi Hurskainen showed the football boys what some soccer trick shots look like. But now Tobin Heath and Yael Averbuch (seen above doing a little unrelated juggling) of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team are making us “Oh no they didn’t” their new trick shots that they’ve unleashed to hang with the big boys.

After the jump, check out Averbuch’s and Heath’s game of PELADA* (HORSE for us dim-witted Americans), and be prepared because you will be all like, “Oh man, this is so awesome, she’s about to make this incredible kick, I’m so… bored…”

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