Bwog loves soccer, so we were happy to see popular Econ professor (and president of the US Soccer Federation) Sunil Gulati announcing the United States’s bid for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups on Monday. Gulati, who was also involved in the first World Cup in the United States in 1994, will be leading the US bid against bids from Japan, Mexico, Russia, and England. FIFA will make its decision on both cups in December 2010. 

And the Columbia connections don’t stop there — if “the beautiful game” returns to this nation’s shores, Gulati (who received his graduate degrees at Columbia) may have to credit a fellow Columbia alumnus. “Given everything that, frankly, President Obama has said, everything he stands for, everything he’s talked about in terms of reaching out to the world,” he told the press “trying to bring the global game to the United States and opening our borders up for a festival of 32 countries and hundreds of thousands of people from all corners of the world would be viewed in a very positive way.” Man, that Obama guy really is everywhere…