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.

YA BETTA ASK SOMEBODAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!

(Flickr photo from tomrichnc. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, look here.)

The chill bros at Shutdown Corner reminded us earlier this week that this was the week the NFL was promoting the fight against breast cancer, and to do that, our pal Eeyore will be wearing these pink shoes on Sunday. We’ll also see pink gloves and towels, coaches in pink shirts, and probably some pink Gatorade, too. They’re doing this for you, ladies, because like me, they don’t want to see anything bad happen to that awesome rack of yours.

Franck Ribery approves of the use of these shoes…

Of course, Cutler and Ribery are sending very different messages with their pink shoes. Cutler’s shoes are telling the world, “Breast cancer is a terrible thing, and you ladies should have your lovely breasts checked out regularly. By a doctor, I mean. Yeah, a doctor.”

I suspect ol’ Franck cares just as much about breasts, but that’s not what his shoes are saying here. Those shoes say, “I’m ugly as sin and I wear pink boots, and you’ll still love me, because I’m that good.” It’s a message of courage and self-esteem. I think that’s also a worthwhile message. Wouldn’t you agree?

Somewhat more interestingly, then, I think the lack of interest in this game is a minor, local reflection of the fact that what we think is good in soccer and what we actually want to watch aren’t always the same thing. To leap to another example, almost everyone is opposed to the creation of a European superleague, me included, because of what it would do to old traditions and old meanings within the game. At the same time, I think it’s safe to say that confronted with the choice of Barcelona v. Arsenal or Stockport County v. Huddersfield Town, a huge subset of anti-superleague fans would choose the superleague game every time. Me irrevocably included.

What that means, I’m not really sure, except that it probably points to one reason football has such an overheated moral rhetoric compared to every other sport in the world. And it probably suggests one of the basic, weird features of the game’s evolution at this moment, which is that the administrators and owners who are conventionally depicted as bad guys (people who want football to be a business, people who only care about money) are in many cases pursuing their nefarious ends by trying to give fans what they would actually choose for themselves if it were available—only to be actively opposed by fans who have somewhat surprisingly (and maybe prudently) defined their own interest as something else.

Read the rest at The Run of Play.

That’s why it annoys me more than it should to read about the number of people canceling their cable and satellite TV service in favor of Netflix.

Today, nearly 3 million users access Netflix’s instant streaming service, watching an estimated 5 million movies and TV shows every week on their PCs or living room sets…

Netflix, which lets subscribers hold on to movies for as long as they like, was cheaper, easier, and more convenient for consumers than building film libraries; DVD sales have plummeted as Netflix has grown. And while his streaming service would seem to present a similar threat to cable companies, (Netflix CEO Reed) Hastings argues that their real challenge comes from the Internet in general, not just Netflix. “I mean, will people disconnect their cable over time?” He shrugs. “Potentially.” Hastings may undersell the impact of his service, but some of his partners don’t share his gift for diplomacy. “Our goal is to have everyone cancel their cable subscription,” Roku’s (Anthony) Wood says.

Well, that’s sounds awesome. What if you’re a sports fan?

I mean, if all you watch is baseball, then sure, you can get that through the Roku Player, which my parents can’t stop praising. But how many sports fans watch only baseball?

Cable and satellite companies have us by the balls, because they have all those ESPN and Fox Sports channels we need, and if we want to watch all the games at home, we have to shell out for it. The WWL probably isn’t interested in changing this model, either, given that it makes $4.3 billion a year from all cable and satellite subscribers, including those who don’t watch ESPN.

Does that change if millions of people cut the cable in favor of Netflix? Given that about 98 million homes still have cable or sat TV, losing a few million here or there wouldn’t change much. ESPN would have to see their subscriber revenue cut in half before they did anything drastic, and even then, they would still be a behemoth. Plus, ESPN is owned by Disney, which benefits plenty from the current TV system.

On the other hand, Steve Jobs is on the board at Disney, isn’t he? And he has this little device called Apple TV that’s languishing in obscurity at the moment. If there were a way to get all the WWL channels on there, wouldn’t it make that gadget just a little more compelling? If you could pay monthly for the sports channels you want, then pay a la carte for everything else and get all the free podcasts and YouTube vids you can handle on top of that, would you?

But of course, why pay a la carte when you can get it all on demand from Netflix, right? Roku’s got that. What if their set-top box, which has Netflix and Amazon video-on-demand, also offered all the sports channels you wanted in HD, plus over-the-air digital TV, YouTube and video podcasts for a low monthly fee, with all manner of on-demand and PPV items on top of that? Would that not make it an even more compelling device?

Alas, how would they deliver those sports channels? Over the internet? You think cable and telephone companies will let you use their pipes for that, when they’re all trying to sell their own TV services? Satellite? Yes, it’s getting cheaper to launch sats these days, but designing the right technology for them is still a huge upfront expense, and even then, you can’t predict the weather. Whitespace broadband? We’re not there yet, and the National Association of Broadcasters will scream bloody murder when we are.

So Netflix and Roku can talk all they want about getting everyone in America to cut the cable and dump the dish, and yes, they’ll get plenty of customers. They will not, however, get us football fans, because they can’t give us what we want. We’re the ones who get the honor of keeping the cable and satellite companies in business for a long, long time to come. And they know it.

It wasn’t nearly as pretty or as high-scoring as the Round 14 clash between Geelong and St. Kilda. A downpour in Melbourne coated the turf and made the ball slick, and the high stakes made it seem even slicker and made the hits seem harder. The Cats and Saints wrestled and struggled through the ugly conditions, producing a Grand Final that had all the flow of a dammed stream.

But damn if you couldn’t take your eyes off of it.

With the score deadlocked at 68-68 in the dying moments of the final frame, the match cried out for a moment of genius to determine the winner. In the end, it was Geelong who made it happen, as Matthew Scarlett kicked a wobbling ball off the turf directly to Gary Ablett Jr., who used tons of space in front of him to boot it to the goal square, where it finally found Paul Chapman, who quick-snapped it high enough to hit a scoreboard in Dallas and watched as it finally flew through the goal posts for the game winner. A late goal at the siren proved meaningless, aside from making the final score 80-68.

St. Kilda was shut down after that. The Saints proved once again that nobody could disrupt the Cats’ transition game better than they could, but in the end, they were done in by inaccuracy in the 2nd and 3rd frames, where 9 of their 15 scores were behinds. A few more goals would have changed this one considerably. Getting the ball to big center-forward Nick Riewoldt proved difficult as well, as he was triple-teamed just about every time the ball was sent inside the 50 to him.

It was the Cats’ day, however, and with two Premierships in three years, this team has cemented its place as one of the greats in footy history, and they show no signs of slowing down. As for St. Kilda, they’ll be back as well, but their first title since 1966 will have to wait.

The only question I have left is this: what were the TV ratings like in America? How many people watched and/or recorded this Grand Final here? If the numbers are good, it could help Aussie Rules build an audience here. If you see the numbers before I do, feel free to post them in the comments.

Cats the last ones standing in epic battle. (afl.com.au)

And see this?

Anyone? Just me? Okay, just checking.

James Harrison can do this…

…and he’s considered awesome.

Meanwhile, Craig Bellamy can do this…

Bellamy & Garrido – More amazing video clips are a click away

…and he faces an inquiry from the FA?

Okay, perhaps Bellamy didn’t need to get involved there, but still, this rule really needs to change. You want to curb pitch invasions, FA? Stop giving yellow cards and suspensions for players who go after these idiots. Nobody would run out of the Kop at Anfield if they knew that Jamie Carragher was allowed a free shot at him.

Better yet, make it Stevie G. The pitch invader might be able to outrun Carragher at this stage.

(Bellamy vid spotted on EPL Talk.)

The huge amounts of money flowing around football these days make it easy for us to forget that some parts of the world don’t have it so good. In these places, you have to use what you’ve got to get what you want.

That’s how they do it in one African village shown in this cool Football Made in Africa video, in which a coach turns a condom, some plastic grocery bags and a few balls of twine into a ball that the kids can kick around all afternoon. For all the talk of creativity in football, it doesn’t get much more creative than this, does it?

I think this would be a fun cultural exercise for youth soccer players in America leading up to the World Cup, but I’m pretty sure an army of uptight birthers would show up and scream bloody murder at any coach who would hand out condoms to U-14 footballers, regardless of the purpose. Anything associated with Africa or proper sex education is the devil, don’t ya know…

(Spotted on MAKE Magazine via Pitch Invasion.)

I think we all know which one of these methods will end up working better in the long run.

Spike TV, being a TV network and all, is counting on the former. In the wake of Setanta UK’s collapse and the American network’s big sell-off of non essential properties, Spike bought the rights to Australia’s National Rugby League and is airing matches from the NRL finals series on Friday nights. While there won’t be any Russell Crowe sightings this year — his South Sydney Rabbitohs missed the Finals by 2 points — the NRL fits right in with Spike’s “manly men doing manly things” programming. Plus, it gives them an opportunity to expose their core audience to top level rugby league without spending a whole lot of money.

That’s probably not the case for the founders of NRL USA, a new rugby league competition in America that is slated to launch in 2010 with 8 teams in 8 cities. Ignoring the fact that this country’s econopocalypse has encouraged everyone to stop spending money, these guys have to convince sports fans to come out and watch “the USA’s premier rugby talent.”

Do we even have premier rugby talent here? It seems like this will be a bunch of dudes who played football (or rugby union at a high level) in college and are looking for another athletic outlet. We all know the premier rugby league talent is primarily in England and Australia. It’s the reason some soccer fans mock MLS and USL — the top players just don’t play here. Sports fans want to see the top players play at the top level. That’s why the Premier League and the NBA are so popular worldwide.

I do wish the NRL USA boys success with their venture, just because having three popular football codes in America would get us one step closer to the footballing awesomeness of Australia, but man, they’ve got a steep mountain to climb to find their audience. They’ll need help from both Spike TV and Russell Crowe even more than they realize.

Whether this meeting is happening or not, of course, remains a mystery, but the mere mention of it is certain to spark every American soccer fan’s fantasy of a true promotion-and-relegation system. Look! Now we can be just like Europe and South America! New York Red Bulls games might actually have meaning now!

Well, someone needs to piss on this parade, and it might as well be me.

If an MLS2 actually happens — and I have my doubts, despite this ready-made cluster of clubs who would jump at the chance — it won’t be American equivalent of the Coca-Cola Championship. It’ll be the soccer version of ArenaFootball2 — that is, a separate entity that exists only to develop players, build the brand and cheaply expand into markets that aren’t quite developed enough for MLS. Harbor no illusions, Montreal Impact supporters, that you could win your way into MLS from MLS2 and replace San Jose in the process. The Saputos will still have to cut a large check to play, just like the Portland and Vancouver ownership groups did.

This isn’t to say that MLS2 is a bad thing, or that I would be against my Carolina Railhawks joining such a league. There are obvious benefits on both sides.

The TOA member clubs would gain a bit more legitimacy and have a slighty better marketing machine supporting them. Plus, the ownership structure within MLS is closer to what the TOA would like than the current USL model. There are question marks about salary caps and all those arcane allocation rules within MLS, but the owners probably won’t be thinking about that too much. Just being attached to the MLS brand, even at a lesser level, could give clubs a greater sense of legitimacy. Few people know what USL is. They know what MLS is, even if they don’t think that highly of it.

Meanwhile, MLS would practically eliminate its nearest rival by swiping some of USL’s biggest clubs. USL would be relegated to 3rd-division status in the wake of MLS2. Plus, MLS2 could quickly expand into markets MLS currently isn’t reaching, including a soft launch in major league sports cities like Atlanta, Miami, St. Louis and St. Paul. (And Raleigh. We won a Stanley Cup, y’know.) These markets could serve as test beds for future MLS expansion franchises. If Atlanta proves successful in MLS2, its owners could decide to pay the expansion fee, get a bigger stadium built and move up to the top flight. Smaller cities could emerge as decent MLS2 markets, too.

Most importantly for MLS, though, MLS2 could serve as a home for all those reserve squad players who can’t quite make it onto MLS rosters, because… well, MLS rosters are too damn small. So why not put all those squad players in a competitive environment and allow them to be called up to a top-flight club when they’re ready? That might sound a little too much like minor league baseball to some football purists, but AAA teams still draw decent crowds around here, and if MLS could allow MLS2 clubs to maintain some indepedence — like letting them compete in the U.S. Open Cup, for example — they could strike enough of a balance to let supporters feel like their club is still much more than, say, the Durham Bulls. It’s a thin line, but it’s not impossible to tread.

Exciting as this might sound to them, however, American soccer fans need to be reminded how much of a non-starter a pro/rel system is in any American sports league. No MLS owner will want to risk throwing away the huge expansion fee they paid by getting relegated. Sure, in a finer world, they would have to earn it on the pitch, but American sports owners just aren’t built that way. If all those owners choose to keep their league closed, it will remain that way.

That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t sign off on an MLS2, though. Even without a pro/rel system in place, MLS2 has enough other benefits to make it worthwhile for Don Garber and the TOA to team up and launch it. I’d still advise supporters of TOA clubs not to pin their hopes on MLS2 just yet. We’re a long way from writing the final chapter of this sordid tale.

Then again, MLS is taking a World Cup break and playing a balanced 30-game home-and-away schedule in 2010. Suddenly, anything seems possible, doesn’t it?

Take a minute to think about it. I’ll still be here.

The man on the left, of course, is Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor, who got himself into some trouble on Saturday after scoring on his previous employers at Arsenal, then running all the way across the pitch to taunt the traveling Gooner fans. This sparked a near-riot that got a Man City steward injured and resulted in no small amount of condemnation in the press and among call-in show voices.

But here’s what I want to know — didn’t Wayne Rooney, the man on the right, do something awfully similar to this in Goodison Park not too long ago?

I seem to recall that Rooney, who moved to Manchester United from Everton in 2004, scored a goal against Everton a couple years ago, then turned to the stands, kissed the Manchester United badge on his jersey and shouted at Everton supporters like he had just stabbed them all through the heart simultaneously. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall Everton supporters reacting like this:

(Animated GIF spotted on Gunner Blog.)

Now I’m sure there are people who will argue that those Gooners were also reacting to Adebayor kicking out at Robin Van Persie’s face earlier in the match.

I don’t intend to defend that action here, because really, it’s not defensible. You can see in that animated GIF — also from Gunner Blog, by the way — that Adebayor acted deliberately and earned the multi-match ban he’ll surely get for violent conduct. You don’t kick at someone’s head and get away with it these days. Just ask Albert Haynesworth.

Perhaps this is what separates Adebayor from Rooney. Clearly, Wayne Rooney would never kick out at a vulnerable opp– oh, wait…

So these are two immensely talented strikers who have volatile tempers and are prone to ugly acts on the pitch. So why does it seem like Emmanuel Adebayor is getting a lot more stick here than Wayne Rooney has ever gotten for his thuggish behavior? What exactly is it that separates the two of them?

The answer is not what you think I might say here, but it’s not that far off: Wayne Rooney wears an England kit.

To all football fans in England, even those who hate Man United with a passion, Rooney is still “one of our boys,” so he’ll escape the universal condemnation in the press that players from other countries might get, because everyone believes Rooney is a crucial cog in England’s World Cup wheel. Adebayor? He’s not English, so screw ‘im.

That’s a slightly different xenophobia than some might think is at play here. Ultimately, though, it does beg the question — if we were talking about, say, Emmanuel Shevchenko from Donetsk pulling a stunt like this, would those Arsenal fans have reacted with the same vitriol?

The fact that I’m not 100% sure of the answer does not speak so well of you, England.