KEY POINTS:
For those who believe that Oscar night is the undisputed champion of bad acting, think again.
Soccer at least deserves a nomination in this category, even if - in the end - the sights and sounds of actors pretending they love a whole lot of people including themselves
still comes out on top.
Yes, Oscar night is a hard act to follow, or precede, when it comes to hamming it up.
Yet soccer gave it a tremendous nudge this week, and last week, and many weeks before that.
Specifically, let's check out the Carling Cup.
The Carling Cup has been re-named the Snarling Cup after Chelsea and Arsenal created a football game which took a dive.
WHAT IS IT WITH THE BEAUTIFUL GAME?
You've just got to ask the question because, love soccer as you might, and I do, it's not exactly bursting the back of the credibility net.
The Carling Cup, for those who may not know, used to be called the League Cup and it has been kept on the English football calendar to give premiership managers something else to moan about.
For those who missed the final from Cardiff in the wee hours of Monday morning, it went like this. Chelsea fielded a full-strength side with a value equivalent to five or six oil wells in Dubai. Arsenal took the school-bus route, fielding spotless teenagers worth maybe only one oil well in Dubai.
It was a terrific game until ... dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum (that's the Jaws music) one of the Arsenal blokes fell over and an evil spirit named Bob invented by Stephen King entered his body and he went berserk in front of a packed stadium and worldwide audience.
Things get hazy after this because if my tired eyes got it right, the cameras went AWOL and there weren't decent replays. To keep a long story short, there was a heck of a ruckus and three blokes were sent off.
It even involved the two managers, Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho, coming on to the pitch in dramatic bids to win acclaim in best supporting roles.
If Martin Scorsese was making a film about the Carling Cup final, he might call it The Departed. Then again, Raging Bull might be more appropriate.
One of the two Arsenal blokes who got sent off made such an emotional song and dance it looked like an audition for Romeo and Juliet.
The greatest danger to life and limb at British soccer grounds used to be, in descending order - A) The meat pies, B) Millwall supporters, C) Chopper Harris, D) A police horse which had lost the plot, E) A police horse in the process of losing something else, and F) Jimmy Hill's jaw.
Nowadays, though, there is the horrifying prospect that a player will actually fling one of his own arms off.
This Arsenal bloke, Emmanuel Adebayor, put on such a scene that you suspected he wanted to thank his agent, his mum, his form-three maths teacher and all the executives at Disney.
Chelsea players then went berko celebrating a cup they don't give a toss about while the schoolboys tried to look shattered.
The horrible truth is that Mourhino's Chelsea don't actually love the Carling Cup, they just hate Wenger's Arsenal. And vice versa.
ONCE AGAIN ... WHAT IS IT WITH THE BEAUTIFUL GAME RIGHT NOW?
And how far is all of this going to go?
It's not the push and shove which is such a worry. There's always been a bit of that. And in this modern world, you can't expect to separate rich young men from their jewellery and Ferraris for a couple of hours and not have them vent steam.
No, it's not the D-grade violence which is such a worry. It's all the Z-grade acting.
Football players should leave the dramatics to the professionals. Acting is a well-rehearsed art. Judi Dench didn't get where she is today by kicking footballs around carparks.
What soccer players need to understand, if they insist on going the thespian way, is while they are on a big stage, they are also on the small screen. Less is more on the goggle box, which picks everything up. Unless you are John Cleese, big gestures ruin the show. It's the ability to draw deep from your well, using the merest hints of joy and anger, which actually work best on a plasma-32. Otherwise you end up looking like John Cleese even though you don't mean to.
Here's a modern soccer scene. A guy so brilliant that he needs a jumbo bin for a wallet taps a Nasa-designed ball one whole metre across turf that's been manicured by the make-up department. Goal.
In the old days, this was the interesting bit, but not any more. The goalscorer ignores the fella who sent him the pass and sets off on a world tour, working the crowd.
Along the way, he does aeroplane impressions, with little stop offs where he acts as if the free in-flight drinks service has got the better of him.
A mandatory stopover includes a big scene where he kisses the shirt and badge he is wearing.
This has the dual advantage of further winning over supporters while enabling him to remember which club he is playing for now.
For some reason, our goalscorer will also pull the bottom of his shirt up over his head. For anyone who hasn't seen this ritual, it looks like someone who has decided to get undressed and then, having got to the halfway point without any trouble, suddenly forgets how the rest of it goes.
While this is going on, the rest of the team try desperately to get in the camera shots. There are unwritten rules here. For instance, they can do the aeroplane bit and jump all over the goalscorer but it is absolutely taboo for them to pull a shirt over their heads.
The rotten day will inevitably arrive when defenders pick up on the brmmmm-brmmmm plane game and, having made half decent tackles, also start sliding on their knees while trying to undress. Soccer will get impossibly messy at that stage and air traffic controllers may be needed, but let's deal with that when it arises.
ONCE AGAIN ... WHAT IS IT WITH THE BEAUTIFUL GAME?
There was a guy in the Snarling Cup final who smacked a shot so wide it almost hit a defender who had arrived to intercept him six hours late. The goal-misser then put on what can only be described as a Hollywood, claiming a deflection and corner.
The replays revealed you could have driven a division of police horses between the shot and the defender, yet our hero went on and on with a sort of Oliver-Reed-in-the-pub performance which deserved a new Oscar category of its own.
English football used to be so sensible. The overly dramatic, both on and off the field, was enhanced by the solid quality in-between but now the game is going the stupid plot-riddled Coronation St way.
Maybe it's turned fruity since hordes of foreign players became involved, introducing communication difficulties.
Maybe the only way to make yourself heard in these circumstances is to indulge in amateur rep.
There used to be only three languages in the English football leagues - English, Scottish and Sheffield-ish. But nowadays, it's possible to have an argument involving 17 languages. That must be so frustrating, especially when your Ferrari is still parked so far away.
SO FINALLY ... WHAT IS IT WITH THE BEAUTIFUL GAME?
The conclusion to last year's World Cup final involved a Frenchman brow-bashing a slandering Italian in the chest. How weird.
And now, the Snarling Cup. It's enough to make you pull a shirt over your head.