I don't often write about sports because I'm not a particularlybig sports fan. I run, but not nearly enough to share my thoughtson it. And I'm pretty active in mixed martial arts, but my thoughtson that tend more toward the inner aspects of my training ratherthan the physical.

But I do like soccer. Quite a lot, actually. I watch the EnglishPremier League with great enthusiasm, and root for Arsenal, a teamI chose because any sports club with a cannon for a logo can'tpossibly be all bad. And I love the World Cup. To me, it isthe pinnacle of global sport. Forget the Olympics. First off, youcan't watch the entire Olympics, whereas you can watch the entireWorld Cup. And even if you don't like soccer, at least it's a sportyou have heard of. With respect to medal-winners in curling, racewalking and synchronized swimming, these are sports that just don'tdo a whole lot for me.

[Related: Lloyd'sof London Predicts World Cup Winner]

But the World Cup sure does, and for six glorious weeks everyfour years, I get to enjoy being part of the in crowd as everyother American soccer fan comes out of hiding and is joined by abandwagon that grows in size every time our national team makes itinto the tournament. This year, our team did pretty well, allthings considered, and as the country went bonkers over the likesof Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard I thought that there were somelessons we could all learn from the 2014 World Cup, which proved tobe a tournament with surprises, outrages, heroism and triumph.

And strangely, it also had a lot to teach the insurance world.Read on.

Watch your head. Headinjuries in general, and concussions in particular, are a topic ofmuch discussion in the NFL, with afairly massive liability lawsuit attached to the problem. Thisproblem is also present in soccer, where players sometimes collidewith each other with enough force to knock somebody out.

In FIFA (the governing body that oversees the World Cup), therules are that each team gets just three substitutions for anentire game. When you consider that most players run about five orsix miles during the course of a game, and often at a sprint, youcan see why you might need to take out an exhausted player or two.Managing substitutions is a very important part of the game, andwhen a player is hurt and must come off the field, away goes asubstitution. This has led to more than a few cases of players whohave been clearly concussed but they insist on playing, and thecoaches let them, putting the players at serious risk of furtherinjury. This happened a few times during the World Cup, but nonemore prevalent than during the final match, when German playerChristoph Kramer was knocked out by a shoulder to the jaw.

Kramer got back up and kept playing, glassy-eyed anddiscombobulated. A few minutes later, he left the field entirely,and was subbed out. Later, Kramer revealed that after his headinjury, he didn't even know what game he was playing in. This hasrenewed calls for FIFA to revisit its substitution rule, and toallow for an independent medical expert to evaluate players whohave been hurt on the field to determine if they need to come off.Moreover, medical substitutions would not count against a team'sdiscretionary sub total. This is a great idea, and hopefully we'llsee it in play before the next World Cup.

As for the insurance angle here, plenty of sports leagues areinsured on the liability side, down to individual local clubs andschool teams. The medical policies of these leagues all bearnoting, especially how they handle head injuries. A lot of theinjuries we see in soccer are leg, knee and ankle injuries. Buthead injuries must not be overlooked, and could create substantialliabilities if they are.

The revolution will betelevised. The 2014 World Cup was hosted by Brazil, acountry that has become synonymous with soccer. Brazil is alsosynonymous with the World Cup itself. The World Cup only got goingin the 1930s, and was suspended during World War II, so afterwards,the tournament almost didn't get going again, since there were fewplaces in war-torn Europe to hold it. Brazil volunteered to hostthe tournament, and in so doing, really became the birthplace ofthe World Cup that we know today. It is also the winningest WorldCup nation, having won the trophy five times.

When Brazil won the bid to host the 2014 games, it was a massivewin for the nation which is one of the world's emerging powers. ButBrazil still has some fundamental problems it must contend with,such as a deeply uneven economy, with massive poverty and crime insome areas. The day the World Cup was announced to be in Brazil,drug lords in a Rio de Janeiro favela shot down a policehelicopter. So clearly, Brazil had some work to do to make surethat when the games kicked off, the hundreds of thousands of worldtravelers who would come to Brazil would be safe and could beaccommodated.

Easier said than done. Some of the stadiums were never fullyfinished by the time of the games and, while Brazil poured some $12billion into the project, there wereprotests and riots by people who insisted that the governmentought to have invested that money on helping the nation's manyimpoverished citizens.

The civil unrest became an issue of concern for event organizersand companies supporting the event, such as food distributors.Aramark spoke at the RIMS 2014 Conference in Denver about thechallenges it faced supplying food to the games, and its insurancepartner, Allianz, did likewise, noting that in Brazil, youabsolutely have to have local partners to get things doneproperly.

Brazil remains a country with serious crime, poverty andsecurity concerns, and its insurance regime really favors localcompanies, which makes it difficult to bring outside expertise intothe country to help address its many risks. But it's getting there,proving that as an emerging market, even though it has its ownheadaches (some of the massive), as an insurance marketplace, it isa terrific opportunity for those firms with the acumen and savvyfor doing business on Brazilian terms.

Bet on Lloyd's. Billions ofdollars changed hands in wagers over the course of the World Cup,and oddsmakers had the entire thing pegged before the firstkickoff.

One of the most accurate predictors of the tournament's outcomewas not ESPN, or one of the online betting parlors, but Lloyd's. Itshouldn't come as much of a surprise, really, that the grandfatherof the modern insurance industry – a company that was built onmariners and merchants betting in a coffeehouse whose ships wouldsurvive an ocean voyage and whose wouldn't – would be able tofigure the odds of who would prevail in soccer's greatestspectacle. The way Lloyd's did it was to rank the teams based ontheir insurability. Now, this has some correlation to performance.Teams such as Germany and Brazil were predicted to go far in thetournament because their teams were stocked with internationalsoccer superstars, who each had a very high insurable value. (Theseplayers are great assets for their teams, and you better believethey are insured against the kind of injury that might take themout for a season, or end their career altogether.)

Simply put, the better the players, the higher the insurable value, the higher the Lloyd's ranking.For the most part, Lloyd's rankings jived with FIFA world rankings,but not always. And there were some surprises, such as whenpowerhouses like England, Spain and Italy all failed to make itpast the first round, and when giant-killers such as Costa Ricamade it all the way to the semifinals. In some cases, the disparitywas severe – any one of England's players had a higher insurablevalue than the entirety of the Costa Rican team, for example.

But for the most part, Lloyd's got it right, using little morethan raw insurance data. They accurately predicted that the U.S.would make it to the Round of 16 (which for us, was quite anachievement), and that Germany would win the whole thing. In fact,they got the final four – Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands andArgetina – right, as well as accurately pegging how far a bunch ofother teams would go.

And that's the lesson here. The data will set you free. Fewindustries are as numbers-driven as insurance, and it is alwaystrying to find new ways to use that data to predict the futurelikelihood and severity of losses. If Lloyd's showed us anything,it's that under the right circumstances, that data can be prettyaccurate, indeed. Keep that in mind the next time you see anAtlantic storm season projection.

Keep on hating, haters. InAmerica, soccer doesn't just have a small fan base, compared tobaseball, basketball, football or hockey, but it's also got itsdetractors too. Taking the brass ring for hating on soccer thisWorld Cup was none other than Ann Coulter, who published a columnoutlining her many reasons for hating soccer including that factthat it's “foreign,” it's the kind of thing only liberals wouldlike, and its growing popularity is a sign of America's moral decay.

Despite this kind of backlash, the real sign of soccer's growingpopularity, and the popularity of the World Cup, is in the money.This year, World Cup fans watched 1.2 billion minutes ofadvertisements tied to the event. The ad viewership tied ot theWorld Cup is quadruple the ad viewership for the SuperBowl, and more timespent watching World Cup ads than watching every World Cup game inhistory. Advertisers spent as much on their World Cup social mediacampaigns alone as they do for a SuperBowl TV spot.

The haters can hate all they want, but it won't change the factthat the really big money is there to be made on the World Cup. Thereasons are pretty simple: it is a truly global audience, and agreat ad on a platform that defies boundaries, such as YouTube orsocial media, can get far more bang for the buck than, say, asingle TV spot on a single gaming event played in a single country.(Sure, the SuperBowl is watched abroad, but nowhere near like theWorld Cup is.)

The insurance lesson to be learned here is that it really paysto reach outside of your typical audience. American marketersaren't always used to reaching a global audience, and when theydid, the returns were massive. You might say the same for producersreaching out to the underserved middle market for personal lines,or certain segments of smaller commercial business, but in thosecases, the challenge starts with the carrier not providingsufficient incentive for the producer to go and chase thatbusiness. But that's perhaps a discussion for another time. Themarketing lesson to be learned here is that massive audiences havemassive payouts. There is a reason why so many leading insurersright now are spending an order of magnitude more on ad campaignsthat target the retail consumer directly; that's where the money isand that's where carriers are making their play. This bodes ill forproducers if they can't be part of the transaction, so now morethan ever, it's important for producers to get to know theirclients so well that they would not even think of buying direct.After all, most insurance is a bit more complicated than thepolicyholder has time for. The worth of the agent or broker isstill there, but it's a case that should always be made, both tothe audience you know, and the audience you don't.

Here comes the giant-killer.If Ann Coulter wanted to really get worked up over something at theWorld Cup, she should have paid attention to how Costa Rica, a tinysocialist nation with no standing army and no major internationalsuperstars on it, managed to emerge at the top of its group,blowing by supergiants like England, and making it all the way tothe semifinals, losing only after a penalty shootout with the Netherlands – no slouch of ateam.

The insurance lesson to be learned here is the power ofsmallness. People tend to think of insurance as an industry ofmassive monolithic companies, but that's not really true. A greatdeal of the real power of insurance comes from the smalleroperators, the regioanal brokers, the independent agents, and thesmall-town businesspeople. When we look at Costa Rica's success inthe World Cup, we see how a little guy can run rings around theGoliaths of the world, in part due to grit, in part due to the bigguy's failure to execute, but most of all, in part because thesmall guy has to innovate if he or she wants to survive. That'sjust part of the deal. And just as Costa Rica's loopy, unorthdox play completely flummoxed the likes of England, sotoo can the bold ideas of the smallest insurance practitioner showthe way forward for the entire industry. Remember: a crazy ideathat works isn't a crazy idea.

The big guy can lose. The2014 World Cup had no shortage of shocking moments. But when itcame to game outcomes, there was no more unbelievable result thanthe utter humiliation Brazil suffered when it lost 7-1 to Germanyin the semifinals.

In a game where it is not uncommon for both sides to play 90minutes or more without scoring more than a single goal, thatGermany scored 5 goals inside of 18 minutes beggared belief. Andagainst Brazil, of all nations. It is the kind of scoring rout thatwill be talked about by soccer fans for 100 years. Already it isthe kind of thing that when Brazil criticized Israel for itsmilitary actions in Gaza, Israel responded, in part, by reminding Brazil of its loss ot Germany. It was the kind ofthing that left the Brazilian fans in the stands utterly besidethemselves; one camera shot of a weeping Brazilian boy in thestands went viral, as it summed up the heartbreak of an entirenation.

There is a lot you could do to draw parallels to the destructionof Brazil's national team to the downfall of some of the insuranceworld's most invincible giants. Every time there is an insuranceinsolvency, there is always the shock of those who wondered howsomething like this could happen, especially if the company had adecent rating from one of the leading rating agencies. The meltdownof AIG a few years ago, while not an insurance failure at all,still showed how an insurance giant can be brought low by a single,devastating vulnerability. The strange receivership of ExecutiveLife of New York shows that under the right circumstances, aninsurer can end up in regulatory limbo. Whether it is a lack ofholistic vision, a lack of teamwork, an over-reliance on individualsuperstars, or just plain arrogance, when a giant falls, it fallsharder, because the way down is that much bigger. There is noinsurance company out there that is invincible. The best ones knowthis by heart. Virtually all insurance companies do, really. Butthere will always be those rare few that fail to manage themselvesproperly. And when they do, they shall repeat for the insuranceworld what Brazil did this year before Germany.

A momentary lapse of reason.As shocking as Brazil's defeat to Germany was for fans of the sportof soccer, the most shocking moment of the World Cup had to be oneinvolving Uruguayan forward Luis Suarez, a player who is infamous for a variety of reprhensible behavioron-field including hurling racial epithets, punching otherplayers, and in two cases, biting other players.

Make that three biting incidents. In Uruguay's elimination gamewith Italy, Suarez, frustrated by Italy's defensive play, leanedover and bitthe shoulder of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini. FIFAlaid down a fairly severe 9-game suspension, accompanied with afour-month exile from the sport, as well as a hefty fine, knockingSuarez out of the World Cup.

The insurance lesson here is one of reputational riskmanagement, and it's something any insurer can appreciate. Whetherit's life insurers stinging from the larger reputational issues thepublic foists upon life settlements or annuity sales, or whetherit's P&C insurers caught with insufficient reserves, insurersare used to carrying the water for the misdeeds of a very smallminority of scoundrels and nincompoops. The industry's collectivereputation continues to suffer in the public eye for misdeeds bothreal and imagined, and it never seems quite fair for a businessthat delivers billions and billions of dollars in speedy and justpayouts to policyholders in need. It is so bad that many insurersjust accept their reputational troubles with a shrug, knowing thatthey will never quite get out from under them.

Wir spielen fürAmerika. The U.S. national team made headlines before theWorld Cup even started, when the team's manager, the legendaryGerman forward Jürgen Klinsmann, announced thatLandon Donovan would not make the roster. Donovan, as those whowatched the 2010 World Cup might remember, was the U.S. team's bigstar, scoring an especially crucial goal during the tournament tokeep the U.S. alive. Donovan was seen as a lock for the 2014 team,but the midfielder somehow did not make the cut, which immediatelydrew a lot of criticism for Klinsmann. To make things worse,Klinsmann also suggested that the U.S. team did not have a goodchance of winning the tournament, and that Germany was most likelygoing to take the trophy. He was right, but that didn't make toomany Americans all that happy, especially before the tournamenteven got started.

In the end, however, it was native New Jerseyan and goalie TimHoward who was perhaps the team's most standout player. Howard'sturn as goalie became the talk of the tournament for a while, andhis heroic performance in the U.S.'s final game, a loss againstBelgium, set a record for number of successfully defended shots ongoal. The GIF below, showing all of Howard's saves gives an idea ofhow hard the guy was working.

The insurance lesson here is one about recruiting and manpower.The U.S. national team faces a difficult task when filling itsranks. We're just not enough of a soccer country (yet), so we don'thave the level of home-grown talent for a national team like whatyou might find in much of Western Europe or SouthAmerica.

The same is true of the insurance world, especially of itsdistribution system. The average age of the insurance professionaltoday is around 56, and the average increases by a year every year,which tells you everything you need to know about the demographicsof the insurance industry. As Boomers are turning 65 at a rate ofsome 10,000 a day, the insurance industry is facing a growingmanpower shortage the likes of which it has never really seenbefore. Thankfully, lots of great producers stay in business after65, but the fact remains that this industry is losing manpower,experience and know-how much faster than it is replacing it. Theindustry needs to find its new blood, and it needs to find it fast.Does that mean reinstituting a captive agency system? Does thatmean getting the word out that this is a strong and stable industryto work in these days? Does that mean getting to understand betterwhat Gen Y wants out of a career and designing opportunities tomeet those needs? Yes, yes, and yes.

One superstar does not make ateam. The World Cup was replete with superstars who arethe cock of the walk back on the teams where they playprofessionally. Others, however, are legends in the making lookingto make a name for themselves on soccer's biggest stage. Colombianforward James Rodriguez falls into this second camp.

James, as he is often called, was the breakout star of the 2014World Cup. He scored at least once in every single game Colombiaplayed in the tournament, and his skillful, explosive style,coupled with his good looks, made him a huge fan favorite abroadand a national hero to Colombia. At only 23 years old, James ispositioned to become the next big thing in soccer, and his sixgoals made him the top-scoring player of the 2014 World Cup,earning himthe coveted Golden Boot award.

But in the end, Colombia fell to Brazil (right before Brazilfell to Germany), despite Rodriguez's efforts.

The insurance lesson here is that one man, no matter how good,does not make a team. This is especially important for indpendentagents to keep in mind. As good as you are, you can't do it all byyourself. Or, as good as he or she is, that superstar in youroffice can't do it all by themselves, either. There is a veryindependent, solo aspect to much of the insurance business. Butthis business is like a Swiss timepiece, and it doesn't work unlessall of the gears fit cleanly together. It rewards individualachievement, but it prizes team results, and to that end, you cansee that superstars are great. But they can only get the entireteam so far. If it were otherwise, Colombia would have won theWorld Cup trophy instead of Germany.

Speaking of Germany and the World Cup trophy…

Always get insurance. Thelast lesson from the World Cup is more of a facepalm moment thananything else. So jubilant was the German squad after winning theWorld Cup that in the raucous celebrations that followed, somebodyfrom the German squad – they won't say who – accidentally dinged the trophy and knocked a piece off of it. The nationalteam's spokespeople were quick to point out that it was all goingto be okay, as they had specialists who could repair the trophy.Still, it's a World Cup trophy. you'd think that no matter happyyou are to have won it, you wouldn't, you know…break it.

But it's all good. It turns out, FIFA must know how soccerplayers party when they're victorious because they don't give outthe actual trophy. They just give out a replica of it. The realWorld Cup trophy lives in a safe in Switzerland, wherehard-drinking footie stars can't do terrible things to it.

The insurance lesson here is obvious. Insure everything.EVERYTHING. Even the things you think won't break or go bad. Eventhe things you can replace on your own. Even the things that youtake really, really good care of. If the German squad provesanything (aside from the fact that they're really, really good atsoccer), it's that everything needs more protection than wetypically afford it. And somehow, somewhere, someway, whatever itis that you hold dear is probably going to get badly screwed up atsome point. And when that does, you'll want the resources in placeto make it all better, right?

Right. Play on.