As if that weren’t enough, there is speculation now that the TOA league will brand itself as the New North American Soccer League. Apparently, Miami FC somehow got its hands on the old NASL name and filed a trademark claim on it. Nothing like a little nostalgia to promote a brand new league.

There was some speculation that the Rowdies would be stuck in USL-1 for the 2010 season, but they had always sided with the TOA. Perhaps they had to strike a deal with USL to free them from whatever contractual obligations they had and make their inclusion in this new league official.

The addition of Crystal Palace Baltimore is a surprise here. That club was a prime candidate to move up to USL-1 after the TOA clubs bolted. That the Palace joined the TOA as well will give this new league some added flexibility. If for some reason one of the TOA clubs is unable to field a side for 2010, the TOA still has eight clubs that can play a full 28-game season. That might make it a lot harder for the US Soccer Federation to turn down this league’s application for Division II status.

It also makes it harder for USL to keep its bigger clubs in the fold over the long term. If the first season of this “New NASL” goes according to plan, clubs like Puerto Rico, Charleston and FC New York will have to have a serious look at their 2011 plans. I’m already envisioning Paul Kemsley, current owner of the New York Cosmos brand, selling that name to FC New York as the new club switches leagues. Who knew soccer’s past in America would end up being its future, too?

Seriously, it’s more fun if you’re listening to this while watching that video.

(Spotted on The Sporting Blog.)

Then, this happens…

That’s Daniel Nardiello, a Blackpool striker on loan at Bury, watching his certain goal roll to a halt a few inches from glory. What’s even worse about this is that they were playing at Gigg Lane, Bury’s home ground. So much for home field advantage.

You know where that would have been a goal? On any pitch in Major League Soccer. Yes. Perhaps Mr. Nardiello should ply his trade in America. We could use the strikers.

(Spotted on 101 Great Goals.)

After watching Jake Delhomme shit the bed against the Eagles in Week 1 this year, I fully expected the Carolina Panthers to have a very long and very ugly season. So I tuned out and focused on my Steelers, who then proceeded to shit the bed twice against the Bengals — which was no fun to watch, but didn’t make me think Pittsburgh’s playoff hopes were anywhere close to being dashed like the Panthers’ playoff dreams. Hey, the Steelers won a Super Bowl as a six-seed. Just get ‘em in the door, right?

Regarding the Panthers, however, there was one thing that I didn’t count on — the NFC’s extraordinary ability to suck.

Yes, even at 4-5, the Carolina Panthers are only one game behind all the Wild Card contenders in the NFC, and they fought their way into that position by running the ball, playing good defense, and generally ignoring Steve Smith’s incessant bitching that he’s not getting the ball enough.

What, exactly, does Smith expect? When your biggest liability is your overpaid quarterback and your top two running backs are gaining 4.98 yards a carry, you run the damn ball. Is Smith volunteering to line up in the backfield? The man has proven incapable of enjoying success when his numbers are down — although really, that just makes him a typical wide receiver, doesn’t it?

Either way, the Panthers have inexplicably found their way into the playoff race, and they can pull one step closer to being a contender — at least, as much as any mediocre team can be a contender in a conference that the Saints and Vikings are utterly dominating — with a win tonight over the Miami Dolphins. (8:00 PM, NFL Network) I’m not sure even the most ardent Panthers fans could have predicted that this scenario, especially with Thomas Davis and Jordan Gross out of the lineup with major injuries.

Meanwhile, the great irony of this game is that Dan Henning, who was fired by the Panthers for being the most boring play caller ever, is now being hailed as a creative genius for building the Wildcat formation in Miami. Where was that creativity when you were in Charlotte, Dan? Oh, right, you didn’t have Ronnie Brown… wait, you won’t have Ronnie Brown tonight, either. I guess you’ll have to put something together with Ricky Williams and Pat White. How many fascinating and innovative ways can run the ball off-tackle tonight, Dan? Show us that sparkling offensive creativity now, Dan.

Of course, all this mockery of Dan Henning — which, to be honest, is fun — becomes worthless if Jake starts tossing pick sixes again like they’re going out of style. Let’s just hope this Panthers team builds off that win against Atlanta last Sunday and does all the right things tonight. I suspect the NFL Network is thinking the same thing. The last thing they want to be known for is showing spectacular quarterback implosions every week.

There was nothing legitimate about this goal. Thierry Henry clearly used his hand to direct the ball and set up William Gallas for the game-winning score. However, none of the officials saw it. The goal stood. France goes to South Africa. Ireland goes home.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Henry will be labeled as a cheat for all eternity. Referee Martin Hansson has been labeled an incompetent, even by the press in his homeland. Some will use this incident to call for video technology. Others will argue that the Europa League-style backline officials would have caught this chicanery, disallowed the goal and booked Henry for cheating.

It changes nothing, however, and it puts the lie to the notion that football is somehow supposed to be fair and just. There is nothing fair about the games we call football. How fair was it to England that Diego Maradona’s goal was allowed to stand in 1986? How fair was it to Missouri that Colorado won a national championship after scoring on 5th down? You can find plenty of incidents over the last century where someone took advantage of the ref and got an undeserved win out of it. Humans are fallible. These things will happen, and people will tell you that if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying. If you can’t overcome the treachery with your own play, you’ll just have to live with the result.

I know that’s the last thing anyone in Ireland wants to hear today. They’ll tweet bloody murder. They’ll agree with every word Robbie Keane said. They’ll point to the Frenchman in charge of UEFA and claim he somehow planned this. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The goal counts. France goes to South Africa. Ireland goes home.

Perhaps if karma counts for anything, France’s World Cup adventure will be as short as its EURO 2008 adventure. Hey, Raymond Domenech is still in charge. It wouldn’t be all that odd.

I suggested that DeShaun Foster was better off taking a knee after getting that first down, rather that running into the end zone, because then the Saints never would have gotten the ball, and the Panthers could have run out the clock with a 4-point lead. As you might expect, the FanHouse commenters thought mockery was the proper response to that idea, in part because the Panthers still won the game.

Three years later, Maurice Jones-Drew takes a knee at the 1-yard line for the Jacksonville Jaguars, setting up a game winning 21-yard field goal and preventing the New York Jets from getting the ball back. It was a riskier move, because the Jags were trailing by a point with 1:48 left, but Jones-Drew seems to be attracting universal praise for making a smart strategic play.

The point here is that you don’t give your opponent the opportunity to score if you don’t have to. This is why Bill Belichick really went for it on 4th down on his own 28-yard line against the Colts. Converting meant Peyton Manning would not get the ball, and the Pats could run out the clock. Punting meant Manning was all but guaranteed to get the ball and engineer a game-winning drive. Plus, Belichick put his faith in his best player — Tom Brady — to get the job done.

We shouldn’t criticize Belichick for choosing to go for it. We should, however, get on his case about the play he chose to call. Honestly, the coaches couldn’t have picked something better than that?

Here are some other interesting football stories you might have missed:

• UNC serves up its most fortunate illegal forward pass since 1895. [WRAL FANKind]
• Dan Marino inadvertently shares his true feelings about the Wildcat formation. [Awful Announcing]
• Chicago Bears fans are sore losers, even when they win. [FanHouse]
• Allen Iverson as a Philadelphia… Eagle? Right. [The Sporting Blog]
• Japan calls on South Africa to ban the vuvuzela. Yeah, good luck with that, fellas. [The Guardian]
• Katy Perry launches new line of West Ham United lingerie. Now we know what Michelle Obama is getting for Christmas. [The Guardian]
• Belated congratulations to the Raleigh Venom, champions of Division II USA Women’s Rugby. [WRAL FANKind]

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What better way to start the week than with an old guy flippin’ the bird?

Yes, Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams was clearly enjoying his team’s win over Buffalo yesterday, so much so that he proudly stood up, pointed at the Bills, and gave them the finger — two fingers, from the looks of it. Oh, and he did that in a luxury box with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell looking on.

I suspect Bud’s fine won’t be quite as big as Chad Ochocinco’s fine for that one-dollar bribery stunt. I also suspect Bud will gladly pay up. After all, what’s the point of having money if you can’t have a little fun spending it?

UPDATE (6:00 PM): Wow, I was way off on the size of the fine. Ol’ Bud was fined $250,000 by the NFL today.

(Spotted on Shutdown Corner.)

For starters, we’re on the verge of having two competing 2nd-division leagues in this country next season. The Team Owners Association, a group of former USL clubs disgruntled with the structure of USL, made their big announcement on Tuesday that they were forming a breakaway league. The new league, which remains nameless for the time being, is slated to have seven clubs — Atlanta Silverbacks, Carolina Railhawks, Miami FC, Minnesota Thunder, Montreal Impact, Vancouver Whitecaps and St. Louis Soccer United.

Conspicuous by their absence: the Tampa Bay Rowdies. They had been siding with the TOA all through this saga, but they’re committed to USL for 2010 — probably because they had already signed contracts with and paid their expansion fee to USL and couldn’t afford to break the deal.

USL’s response to this new league? Well, it was awfully snippy. Down to 8 clubs in USL-1 and 8 in USL-2, USL seems a little eager to throw roadblocks at the TOA’s attempt to get the new league sanctioned by the U.S. Soccer Federation and Canadian Soccer Association. The league also puffed out its chest and talked about expansion in new markets, even though that talk has the stench of the National Indoor Football League about it.

Meanwhile, there’s already a monkey wrench in the TOA’s breakaway plans. Joey Saputo, the Montreal Impact owner who was named Chairman of the Board of Governors of this new unnamed league, insisted that the Impact was still in negotiations with USL over the 2010 season. Why would he even say this publicly? All this did was undermine the TOA’s position and made it more difficult for them to attract the 8th club they might need to get sanctioning — or to lure clubs to their side in 2011, which could be the real battle between USL and the TOA.

The only good thing about this breakaway league? It won’t be a winter league. All the talk about American soccer adopting the FIFA calendar is still a non-starter — especially with a league that’s never played before. We have our own soccer calendar. So does Russia, and they’re doing just fine playing in the summer.

But this is all in the lower divisions, right? We’ll still have our Major League Soccer in 2010, won’t we?

Maybe.

The MLS Collective Bargaining Agreement expires on January 31, and the Players Association, upset with the current minimum salaries and lack of guaranteed contracts, is threatening to strike. Both sides are at the negotiating table now, but MLS has already rejected the players’ first proposal and seems ready to dig in its heels and keep things just as they are, thank you very much.

I wonder if these negotiations will end up being a referendum on the structure of MLS itself. Players contracts are owned by the league and not the clubs, who still don’t control their own destiny within MLS’ arcane regulations, and these negotiations don’t look like they’re going to change that.

Even worse, though, is whether the public will even care if MLS doesn’t return next March. Outside of the clubs’ hardcore supporters, few seem aware that the MLS playoffs are happening right now, and that the league’s three most marketable names — Beckham, Blanco and Donovan — are in the thick of it. SportsCenter has made no mention of the MLS playoffs at all this morning.

In light of that, is it really a good idea for MLS to allow a strike to happen? It’s not like there’s no competition. Premier League ratings don’t suck for ESPN or Fox Soccer Channel right now, and the level of play remains much higher in Europe than it is here. Wouldn’t most soccer fans in this country just focus on the national team and the European leagues and forget about MLS if it’s not there?

The next four months or so could go a long way toward determining the future of American club soccer, and it would only take a few missteps for the whole thing to come crashing down, leaving this country back at square one, which would be a disaster. Let’s just hope the folks running the shows here do the right thing. We won’t be any better off if our clubs don’t play next year.

First off, designer Ken Carbone spent Fast Company’s time telling people that NFL helmets offended his sensibilities as a designer. So he decided to make new ones — a concept that has “Oh, hell…” written all over it. First, he made a new helmet for the Washington Redskins:

For the Washington Redskins I tried a design direction that might be considered more politically correct in most circles by removing the Native American portrait, emphasizing the feather motif from the headdress and using it more dynamically on the helmet.

Except, of course, that the end result looks less like an Native American feather headdress and more like your typical Halloween peacock outfit.

Hey, there’s an idea. Let’s just stop calling them the Redskins all together and make them the Washington Fightin’ Peacocks. Then all the cheerleaders can dress just like that, but in maroon and gold. (We should have Vinny Cerrato go recommend this to Daniel Snyder immediately, just to prove how bulletproof Vinny’s job seems to be.)

Then there’s Carbone’s design for the New England Patriots

America! Fuck yeah!

While Carbone derides helmets for being ugly, though, some researchers have decided that helmets are actually hurting players more than helping them. Their ingenious solution? Take the helmets off. And who’s suggesting this? Australians. Of course!

One of the strongest arguments for banning helmets comes from the Australian Football League. While it’s a similarly rough game, the AFL never added any of the body armor Americans wear. When comparing AFL research studies and official NFL injury reports, AFL players appear to get hurt more often on the whole with things like shoulder injuries and tweaked knees. But when it comes to head injuries, the helmeted NFL players are about 25% more likely to sustain one.

Unless Barry Hall is playing, of course.

Andrew McIntosh, a researcher at Australia’s University of New South Wales who analyzed videotape, says there may be a greater prevalence of head injuries in the American game because the players hit each other with forces up to 100% greater. “If they didn’t have helmets on, they wouldn’t do that,” he says. “They know they’d injure themselves.”

What would be the end result of American football without helmets? Do I need to bring up 1908 again? Most NFL players aren’t going to suddenly stop leading with their heads right away — not until a few people die from on-field cranial fractures. When that happens, nobody will give the game time to slow down and look more like old-fashioned rugby. No. They’ll go right back to wearing helmets, and they’ll do so because the risk of slow, long-term brain damage seems better than the risk of instantly having their gray matter see the light of day.

More importantly, though, removing the helmet from American football takes away from what the game really is — modern gladiatorial combat without the swords. It’s a violent game for violent tastes, and it’s what the American people have chosen for the last century or so. They’re not going to quit just because a few jocks get their brains scrambled over time.

Maybe football helmets are ugly, then, for more than just design reasons, but it’ll be a long, long time before anyone decides to get rid of them. In the meantime… hey, Steelers v. Bengals. WHO YA GOT!?

And the Anindilyakwa don’t take too kindly to that call, ref.

Police feared for their safety when they turned up to a disturbance at a sporting field on Groote Eylandt to discover it had escalated to a full-scale brawl.

The brawl, involving several hundred people, some of them armed with axes and spears, broke out about 5pm (CST) on Sunday at the Angurugu sports oval during an AFL match.

It is understood the feud started on the football field when one of the teams was awarded a free kick.

Ummmm… did he just say “axes and spears?”

“A number of those people were armed with axes and spears and a large number were involved in hostile and aggressive behaviour, which was later directed at police,” (Police Superintendent Brent Warren) told AAP…

“As you can imagine, even when a number of police cars turn up, when you’ve got a crowd that’s potentially 500-strong, it’s difficult to take proactive action at the time.”

Oh, come on! You’re Australian! Be a man! Get a dick!*

Okay, maybe seeing an angry mob wielding sharp weaponry would encourage even the most hearty Australian to run away from confrontation. But let’s back up a bit. What got that angry mob started? A questionable call from the ref. They hated the call so much that they absolutely had to take matters into their own hands — kind of like the Dawg Pound, if you replaced the beer bottles with, y’know, axes and spears.

Let’s just hope and pray the Anindilyakwa haven’t given SEC fans any ideas.

(Spotted on The Sporting Blog.)

* – Australian blokes here in the Triangle shouted those last two sentences at the TV a year ago when Buddy Franklin took a dive during the AFL Grand Final. True story.

As I sat here getting ready to watch my Pittsburgh Steelers in another big Monday Night Football game, I watched Ron Jaworski give a bit of his usual solid game analysis. As you can see from this video, David Anderson of the Houston Texans has seen some of Jaws’ analysis as well — quite a bit of it, from the sound of things.

I didn’t so much laugh as say, “Damn, that’s pretty good.” Your mileage may vary.

(Spotted on Awful Announcing.)

Every football team needs an enforcer. Bolton keeps Kevin Davies around for a reason. University of New Mexico defender Elizabeth Lambert, however, seems quite willing to ignore that fine line between playing hard and playing dirty. Or maybe she just figured that if Troy Polamalu’s hair is fair game, her opponents’ ponytails are, too.

Seriously, all she got was a yellow card? Did the ref think he was in the Azteca or something?

(Thanks, @bomani_jones.)

UPDATE (3:21 PM): UNM women’s soccer coach Kit Vela has suspended Elizabeth Lambert for her actions in this game.

Yeah. All the Premier League matches on ESPN won’t make the haters go away. Neither will the next World Cup. The rest of us will just have to live with it.

(Thanks, @Unsilent. I think.)

Even if you do dismiss the idea, though, you cannot dismiss that quite a few of these Tuskers will get NFL jobs come December. And at the top of that list? Tuskers quarterback Brooks Bollinger.

Yes, Jets fans, that Brooks Bollinger. He of the mediocre passer rating (74.6) and completion percentage (58.6%) in six sideline-heavy NFL seasons, who made many of you pray for the quick and complete recovery of Chad Pennington’s shoulder. In case you hadn’t noticed, the UFL is making Brooks Bollinger look like Brooks Manning. In three games, Bollinger has completed 62 of 88 passes for 767 yards, 9 TDs and 1 INT. That’s good for a passer rating of… wait for it… 126.4.

Remind you of anyone?

Remember when ol’ Tommy Maddox ran roughshod over the fly-by-night XFL and walked away with a big fat MVP trophy — this after four years of unfulfilled promise (and a 67.8 passer rating) in the big show? Remember when Steelers fans were practically overjoyed to see Maddox replace Kordell Stewart and, for about half a season, actually look good doing it?

My friends, this tale is about to be re-told. If the Tuskers go undefeated and Bollinger walks away with an MVP trophy, someone will offer him a NFL job. There are certainly enough NFL teams in desperate need of competent quarterbacks. The Raiders could use one. So could the Titans, Browns, Bucs and… oh, yeah, the Panthers.

Seriously, Matt Moore better hope this UFL lasts more than one season, because that’s the only way he’s ever going to prove he can be a starting quarterback. If he can’t win a start over Jake Delhomme and his 0.3 touchdown-to-interception ratio — zero point three, people — then he needs to get the hell out of Charlotte. You can’t tell me Matt Moore, who went 2-1 as an NFL starter when John Fox finally gave him the ball two years ago, wouldn’t be thrilled to swap places with Brooks Bollinger at some point in the next 12 months — or the next 12 days, for that matter.

Bollinger won’t be the only UFL player who comes out of this with an NFL job, but he’ll definitely be the most visible, and if this stint gives him the confidence to do the job at the NFL level, that will be a nice boost for this startup league. He should enjoy it while it lasts, though, because this will likely be the last time his passer rating hits triple-digits.

And I think I speak for most Premier League fans when I say, “Bloody ‘ell, he’s still at Pompey?”

The Numa Numa guy? Really, Michigan State? Was Rick Astley not available? Could you not get a Keyboard Cat to play you off?

Then again, maybe Keyboard Cat was wearing an Iowa sweatshirt that day…

(Spotted on The Sporting Blog.)

Y’know, in most cases, I don’t like to see a player from my favorite team getting blown up like this, but let’s be real. Hits like this one that Adrian Peterson delivers on William Gay are a big reason why people watch the NFL.

On the other hand, Peterson was compared to Earl Campbell here, and hits like this are a big reason why Campbell can’t walk anymore. Playing American football often requires sacrificing  your future quality of life. How much do you love this game?

(Spotted on Shutdown Corner.)

Because really, athletes secretly wish they were musicians, and musicians secretly wish they were athletes. What better way to combine the two than through a gigantic video game mod?

Imagine if they could get some Premier League footballers to do this. Could Arsenal rock out more than Tottenham? Here’s one way of finding out…

(Spotted on Joystiq.)

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a sports bar in Philadelphia, which was filled with people in Phillies jerseys who gathered to watch the Raiders upset the Eagles and kvetch about Andy Reid together. At some point in the game, this happened:

You never see those lazy gulls in Melbourne get involved in a footy match, but this pigeon? Yeah, he’s ready to go. And it would have been just a fun little aside — until Justin Fargas spoke up and said that the pigeon was the reincarnation of Marquis Cooper, the Raiders linebacker who died in a boating accident last March.

So how does a little piece of Marquis Cooper end up in pigeon in Oakland? Let’s examine this a bit further, beginning with the notion that, as the old saying goes, you are what you eat.

Marquis Cooper was lost at sea and presumed dead after suffering from hypothermia in the waters off the Gulf Coast of Florida. So we can suppose that his body sank to the bottom of the Gulf, where he was likely eaten by some fish. So those fish carried little bits of Marquis with them.

Perhaps those fish then came closer to the shore, where some pigeons (Mine! Mine! Mine!) occasionally go diving into the water for dinner. So one of those pigeons nabbed a fish that had dined on Marquis Cooper’s brain cells and took it back to its nest, where it fed its babies. That little bit of Marquis Cooper — the one that understood where it needed to be on punt returns, probably — was then infused into the being of one of those baby pigeons.

And when that baby spread its wings and learned to fly, it just knew where it had to be. So it began the long, arduous cross-country trip to Oakland — making plenty of new friends along the way, of course — where it could rejoin its teammates and play outside contain against the Eagles. After all, an eagle tried to attack our hero pigeon somewhere over Colorado, so he’s no fan of eagles. No fan at all.

This amazing tale has inspired me to come up with my own plan for reincarnation. When I die, harvest whatever working organs you need from me, then take what’s left of my carcass, drop it in the dirt, and plant an apple tree on my ass. Then, after that tree has fed off my remaining bits and started appling, invite everyone to come eat those apples. Eventually, some young couple who partook of those apples will get it on one night, and nine months later, voila! I’m back! Hand me my Terrible Towel, mom! The Steelers are playing!

Yes, it all makes perfect sense — until you realize, of course, that NFL players are more likely to suffer from dementia as a result of brain injuries than most of the general population. NFL players also seem to end up bankrupt more often than not. So maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t take at face value the ideas of someone who plays a game that is likely to leave him broke and stupid.

Oh, well. It sounded like a good idea.

Take a minute. I’ll wait. Then look after the jump for the answer.

It was quite a day yesterday in the UEFA Champions League, too, what with Russian Champs FK Rubin Kazan walking into the Nou Camp and stunning Barcelona, 2-1. That upset, combined with Dynamo Kiev’s 2-2 draw against Inter Milan at the San Siro, has left Group F deadlocked, with Barcelona, Dynamo and Rubin Kazan level on 4 points and Inter on 3. Surely, that will be the group to watch from here on out.

Meanwhile, Lyon came back from a goal down to plunge Liverpool into an even deeper crisis. I would encourage people not to listen to the British press about Rafa Benitez’ job being in jeopardy, though. They won’t sack him for one simple reason — there’s no way any equal or better manager will work for Tom Hicks and George Gillette right now, with the club in such financial chaos. Plus. Rafa still has the support of the fans. Middlesbrough finally sacked Gareth Southgate because supporters started losing interest. Are any Liverpool supporters losing interest right now? Hell, no. Phil Brown will easily beat Rafa in the sack race.

Finally, for a while last night, I wondered if the spirit of upsets was about to flow from Europe to North America. In the CONCACAF Champions League, D.C. United had a 1-0 halftime lead against Toluca in Mexico, where no U.S. club has ever won a match. Alas, Toluca converted a clear penalty in the 62nd minute to earn a 1-1 draw — a good result for any MLS club, to be sure, but one that will likely send D.C. out of the competition.

D.C. United, you’re no Rubin Kazan.

ANSWER: That’s a Roma player holding off Nicolas Anelka there. Roma’s down in the Europa League this year. In fact, Roma visits Craven Cottage tomorrow. You can see the likely highlight of Clint Dempsey’s club season on GOLTV on Thursday at 3:00 PM.

These were the scenes on the streets of La Ceiba last night after Honduras beat El Salvador 1-0 and the USA got a last-second equalizer from Jonathan Bornstein to earn a 2-2 draw against Costa Rica. Those two results gave Honduras an automatic berth in the 2010 FIFA World Cup and forced Costa Rica, who beat the US squad 3-0 the a qualifier in Saprissa, into a playoff with Uruguay. It also prompted my buddy Jeff to ask whether Costa Ricans will now talk about Bornstein the way Bostonians talk about Bucky Dent.

My favorite part of this video might be the chants of “USA! USA!” at the end. The USA had already qualified on Saturday by beating Honduras 3-2 in an epic match that should have been shown on ESPN2, but was instead limited to closed circuit TV to any establishment willing to pay $1,000 or more for the game.

So of course, four of my fellow Railhawks supporters and I decided to pay $20 to go watch it. At a Honduran restaurant. In full Team USA regalia — shirts, hats, scarves, flags, the works.

We expected a lot of dirty looks, but the owner seemed genuinely happy to see American fans show up — and pay, no doubt — and the mostly Honduran crowd whooped and clapped at us  as we walked into the room. We stood in the back and kept to ourselves, enjoying the atmosphere — the loudest shouts came when the satellite feed briefly went out — and marveling at the fact that Conor Casey was capable of scoring two goals in a game of that magnitude. Perhaps we’ve underestimated that ever-lovin’ oaf.

Even after the USA’s solid comeback victory, the Honduran fans showed us respect, shook our hands and told us they wanted to see us beat Costa Rica. After last night’s results, I’m pretty sure we’ll be welcome there back in June to watch World Cup matches.

I’d be remiss, of course, if I didn’t mention the 9th minute cheers for Charlie Davies, the striker who was seriously injured in a fatal car accident on Tuesday morning. (Match Fit USA had the best coverage of that story, as well as the best photo of the tribute I’ve seen yet.) I’ve been quiet about that accident, in part because stumbling across Ashley Roberta’s Facebook page and Twitter feed left me at a loss for words. Davies will live through this and might become the American Eduardo, but a very pretty 22-year-old woman’s life is over, leaving her friends and family to grieve and ask why. It’s a sobering reminder that this can all be taken away in a instant, so we need to enjoy these moments while we have them.

It also left me wondering if Bornstein’s last-second header was just as metaphoric of this, though perhaps now isn’t the time to explore that.

Either way, I was happy to see that she was far from forgotten in last night’s tributes. After the game, Landon Donovan grabbed a banner from the stands for his teammates to hold up. Ashley’s initials were next to the large 9 on the banner. Well done, USA supporters.

One more quick note: US defender Oguchi Onyewu suffered a torn patella tendon late in the game and had to be carried off the pitch. He’s expected to return to action in February, so the injury shouldn’t keep him out of the World Cup.

In soccer, clubs loan players to other clubs all the time, usually because those players are young prospects on the end of the bench that need some experience. So big club A and small club B have a chat, and small club B gets to put said prospect in their starting lineup for a set period of time. Villarreal loaned Jozy Altidore out to Hull City for this season. (Of course, why Phil Brown isn’t playing the young man remains a mystery to me.)

We need this policy in the NFL, and the first deal should be for the Pittsburgh Steelers to loan Limas Sweed to the New York Jets.

Why? Because apparently, the New York Jets actually teach their receivers how to catch the ball.

Seriously, you saw Braylon Edwards out there in Miami last night, right? It took him all of one game to go from being Ol’ Iron Hands in Cleveland to making one clutch catch after another in a Jets uniform. That performance must have had every Browns player thinking to himself, “Damn, who can I punch to get the hell out of this town?”

So how did Braylon Edwards suddenly become clutch? Was he suddenly free of staph? Does Mark Sanchez put some special mojo on the ball that Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson don’t? I doubt it. Clearly, Edwards got coached up in a few days in New York, and that might have been better coaching than he had gotten in several years in Cleveland.

What a shame that the Steelers can’t loan Limas Sweed out to the Jets to figure this out. Clearly, Ben Roethlisberger throws a decent ball. He’s neck-in-neck with Peyton Manning for the league lead in completion percentage. There must be some reason why can’t Sweed catch his passes. He wouldn’t have been a 2nd-round draft pick if he couldn’t catch, right?

Maybe this will be the purpose of the UFL in the long run. Maybe the Steelers will be able to loan Sweed out to the California Redwoods one day and let Dennis Green coach him up. Until then, though, we have to settle for watching the Jets work miracles, while we hope Hines Ward and Santonio Holmes don’t pick up an injuries — because, y’know, they can catch a football. That’s why the Steelers pay them.

Plus, this popped up on the UFL’s Twitter feed:

Y’know, it’s almost as if someone other than Different Dave and Jeff actually reads this blog. Interesting. Perhaps I mention here that the league standings tab on the front page needs updating, too…

Imagine my surprise, then, when I went to the UFL web site and discovered they were showing the Versus feed online for free. That page is still up, too, with an on-demand replay of last night’s broadcast. That’s a quality move by the league.

On the other hand, they probably could have done a better job publicizing it as it was happening. They have a Twitter account like everyone else — myself included, of course — but they didn’t use it to say, “Hey, DirecTV subscribers, missing Versus? Watch Locos v. Redwoods live on UFL.com RIGHT NOW!” There’s no hint of such a message in their Twitter feed. That might have helped a little. (Apparently, it did show up on FanHouse, which is now billing itself as an “Official UFL Digital Partner,” but I don’t check there as often as I check Twitter.)

You know what else could help? A nice little game recap.

This is all the info that the UFL web site has about the game — a final score. No summary, no statistics, no highlight reel. No hint that J.P. Losman got off to a slow start, then recovered to lead Vegas from a two-touchdown deficit to victory, or that Locos kicker Graham Gano went 3-for-3 in field goal attempts, including a 53-yarder, which led to other players paying for his drinks at Tabu afterward*. Nope. Just the score.

That needs to change in a hurry. Fans of the gridiron game like numbers, and those numbers need to be up on the page. The NFL’s web site is loaded with stats, as is the CFL’s web site. So why am I getting more info about the game from FanHouse and the Las Vegas Review-Journal than I am from UFL-football.com?

These are problems that need to be addressed quickly — in no small part because the quality of play on the field isn’t so terrible. It might be damning the league with faint praise to say I saw a higher level of play from the Locos and Redwoods last night than I did from the Redskins and Buccaneers last Sunday, but there you go. These are guys with NFL experience getting coached up by guys who have coached games in January. They knew what they were doing out there. I wish I could say the same for the folks who designed the UFL’s web site.

* – May not have actually happened, but likely would have been awesome.

If you’re going to create these slick-looking highlight reel web sites on Hulu for the  Premier League and the UEFA Champions League, try to do a better job of keeping them updated. Matchday 1 of the Champions League is still missing, and there haven’t been any new EPL highlights since the Manchester Derby, which was a full three weekends ago.

Sure, given the sue-happy nature of both the EPL and UEFA, the fact that these sites even exist at all is pretty remarkable, but if you make ‘em, you gotta keep ‘em fresh. Dig?

(Spotted on EPL Talk, for whom I’ll start writing again in a few weeks, I think.)

For those of you not familiar with rugby sevens, it’s a 7-on-7 version of rugby union (which is usually 15-on-15) that was created in 1883 in Melrose, Scotland, by Ned Haig, a butcher who was trying to raise money for his local club. It’s played on a full-size pitch with 10-minute halves, which allows an entire tournament to be played in a weekend. Because there are only 7 players per side, the game is much more wide open, so it emphasizes speed over brute strength.

The biggest sevens event is the IRB Sevens World Series, an eight-city affair that runs from December to May. Most of those Sevens World Series events tend to have a party atmosphere, including women dressed in costume, if this Flickr photo set of the New Zealand Sevens is any indication. That should make it a perfect fit for Rio in 2016.

The question remains, though, whether this will make other forms of rugby more popular around the world. The wide open nature of sevens might make some rugby-curious folks look in on something like the Tri-Nations series or the Heineken Cup and decide, “Eh, I like sevens better.” The Sevens World Series could be the only real winner here in the long run.

Then again, perhaps the fact that this will make anyone rugby-curious — and it will — is a win for the code. We’ll have to wait and see, though, what this does for the next Rugby World Cup 2011. I suspect even then, it’ll be too soon to tell.

By the way, the future might belong to China, but with the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016, the next decade definitely belongs to Brazil. We need to start learning to speak some Portuguese.

Well, there’s one thing I can do better than Cristiano Ronaldo. Hell, even Eli Manning is looking at this thinking, “I’m better than that, right?”

(Spotted on 101 Great Goals.)

Yeah, me neither. I tried to get myself excited about the new United Football League, telling myself that this might be the only football league operating in 2011 — and this could still happen, given the current state of NFL labor negotiations — and that they have some decent coaches running the show here, so hey, maybe we should pay attention.

Then I saw some of the names on the rosters: Brooks Bollinger, Ingle Martin, Tatum Bell, LaBrandon Toefield, Taye Biddle, Bobby Sippio, etc. You’ll forgive me if I’m not quite gung ho on the level of talent on display here.

The fact that DirecTV and Versus are still squabbling doesn’t help matters, either. What’s that? I have to go find a sports bar that has Versus in order to watch that big quarterback duel between J.P. Losman and Mike McMahon?

These are just a few reasons why I’ve shut down The Star and Clam and redirected what little traffic that site had back here for the time being. That domain is available to pretty much anyone who wants to buy me a Jozy Altidore Hull City jersey. If I were getting paid to care, it might be different, but I’m not. Sorry.

Besides, if I really want to watch low-quality American football this year, I could always turn on the NFL. As my pal Bomani Jones pointed out on Monday, the NFL just isn’t that good this year. Look at teams like the Rams, the Chiefs, the Browns, the Buccaneers, the Panthers and the Titans, all of whom are winless and hopeless. Then there are teams like the Raiders, Cowboys, Redskins, who continue to play terrible football while their owners rake in the dough. The Steelers’ 4th-quarter play this season has been atrocious. Hell, the Denver Broncos are the worst 4-0 team I’ve ever seen.

On top of that, the number of truly compelling storylines in the NFL this season seems awfully small. It’s little wonder that ESPN shouted Favrity Favre Favre Favre to the high heavens on Monday night. What else is there to talk about? The fact that Tony Romo sucks? The contempt that Daniel Snyder has for Redskins fans? The lack of attendance in Jacksonville? The whimpering return of Ron Mexico? The Jets’ sudden fascination with jealous receivers who can’t catch? The possibility of a work stoppage in two years?

It’s no wonder the NFL media is so obsessed with Twitter. It’s a welcome distraction from the complete lack of positive NFL stories this year — unless you can find something positive in Favre’s latest comeback (no) or the possibility of a Manning v. Manning Super Bowl. (maybe)

And yet it’s still more compelling than watching Simeon Rice and Dexter Jackson try to relive their glory days in a startup minor league.

I wish you well, UFL, but if you’re looking for me, I’ll be getting up early on Halloween to watch the North London Derby on ESPN2. Good luck with the whole Versus thing, too.

I wonder if the USL First Division Final trophy presentation will be the same way.

You see, on Saturday, USL dropped the hammer on three members of the Team Owners Association. The league told the Carolina Railhawks, Miami FC and Minnesota Thunder that they were no longer USL members and that all their players were released from their contracts. Those three clubs had not renewed their contracts with USL for 2010, and the league decided it would punish them rather than negotiate with them. The league also removed links to the clubs from its web site.

So why were the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps — also TOA members who have not re-upped with USL –  not included in this announcement? Because they made it to the USL-1 Finals. Montreal knocked off Puerto Rico 4-2 on aggregate, while 7th-seeded Vancouver upset the top-seeded Portland Timbers to make it an all-Canadian (and all-TOA) final.

If the USL were to punish the Impact and Whitecaps now by cutting ties with them and canceling its final, it would turn the entire league into a complete farce. So the league will play out the season, then give those two clubs the same cold shoulder a few days after the trophy’s been awarded.

What does all this mean for the lower divisions of professional soccer in the USA? Nobody is quite sure just yet. The bottom line for the TOA is that it needs 8 clubs to form a new league that will be recognized by FIFA. Carolina, Miami, Minnesota, Montreal and Vancouver make five. St. Louis Soccer United, also a TOA member, makes six. The Tampa Bay Rowdies would make seven, but it’s unclear whether they are bound by contract to play in USL in 2010. The Atlanta Silverbacks would make eight and give the new league a strong southeastern presence, but USL seems certain to make some sort of legal claim to that market — especially since NuRock Holdings, the new owners of the league, are based in Atlanta.

The one voice we haven’t heard from yet? Don Garber. We know that TOA members have met with MLS to discuss the possibility of an MLS2. We also know Garber is eager to put USL in its place. Awarding Portland and Vancouver expansion franchises was proof of that. If Garber shows up at the MLS Cup Final and announces an MLS2 with these 8 clubs in place, it could potentially crush USL. The Puerto Rico Islanders, the Charleston Battery and FC New York would look at MLS2 and think, “Wait a minute, why aren’t we involved in that?”

Inside Minnesota Soccer is doing a bang-up job following this story. David Fellerath over at Triangle Offense is also following this story from the Railhawks’ perspective. If you’re interested in the inner workings of pro soccer in America below the MLS level, keep an eye on them. There will be plenty more twists in this tale before it’s over.