WORLD CUP USA ‘94: SEMIFINALS : Spotlight : IT’S MORE LIKE GUFFAWS

For the most part, global fear about what the American pagans might do to the World Cup once they got their mitts on it has been unwarranted. So far, no World Cup matches have been played in indoor hockey rinks. The ball has not been painted neon orange. Despite a cry for more offense, the “designated striker” proposal went by the wayside.

Sadly, we are not batting 1.000.

This you can tell as you drive east from LAX on Century Boulevard--or, as it has been known since the beginning of the World Cup, Snickers Alley.

Snickers’ logos on the bottom of every World Cup banner on both sides of the street from the airport to the San Diego Freeway--there must be a hundred of them.

Snickers’ logo, as big as a basketball court, plastered on the side of a bank, wiping out two floors of windows.

Snickers’ billboards on both sides of the Century-La Cienega intersection, featuring a soccer ball bursting through a fistful of peanuts.

And if you missed those, as you turn right to board the southbound San Diego, there’s a Snickers billboard overlooking the off-ramp.

It is corporate America run amok, and what must foreign soccer fans think as they fly in for the games at the Rose Bowl? That we all look like Rush Limbaugh?

To the good people of Brazil, Sweden, Italy and Bulgaria, a disclaimer: There’s a hunger inside us, all right--a hunger to run these eyesores through the shredder.

In a related development, there is no truth to the rumor that Brazil defender Leonardo elbowed the United States’ Tab Ramos in the head because he was sick and tired of watching Ramos in the Snickers TV ad.