Matthew Stafford is the starting quarterback for the Detroit Lions. The Detroit Lions are terrible. Yet even a QB for a terrible team gets to be a scratch-and-sniff plaything for a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. In public. And the whole episode gets recorded for posterity. Must be nice.

Of course, Stafford probably deserved to have a moment like this happen to him just by virtue of being drafted by the Lions. He might never experience a win this epic again.

(H/T: The High Definite via @unsilent)

If Super Bowl commercials had not jumped the shark before, they certainly did this year. Even the “good” ads were severely lacking in entertainment value, and the misogynistic streak that ran through this year’s ads was unnecessary and self-defeating.  106.5 million Americans watched this game; at least some of them were bound to be women. Why air an ad that makes your business seem like a comic book store?

What’s more, as the video above shows, this year’s ads used a hell of a lot of gag violence to try and keep people’s interest. A few of those spots were entertaining — the dog collar ad was good for a laugh, and watching Betty White and Abe Vigoda get tackled was funny — but the more you look at this montage of slaps and pratfalls, the more it seems today’s mad men have fewer ideas than Hollywood.

My favorite spot? EA’s ad for Dante’s Inferno, simply because you don’t expect to hear Bill Withers in a video game ad. And I like that song. Well done, EA.

(Hat tip to Boing Boing for the first video.)

We cannot leave this city. Not now.

That’s essentially what NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue told New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Lower 9th Ward and left us with painful images of a shattered Superdome full of desperate people. Benson spent several years prior to Katrina demanding that the city and the state of Louisiana build him a new stadium on their dime. He threatened to move the Saints to another town that would buy him a shiny new stadium.

Lest we forget, even after Hurricane Katrina, Benson fought with the fans, assaulted a cameraman, and flat-out lied to the world about the condition of his facilities in Louisiana. He was itching to ditch Bourbon Street for a richer, sunnier city. Even San Antonio would have been just fine for Benson.

Paul Tagliabue said no. He saw what Katrina did to New Orleans, and he all but ordered the team to stay. He knew the message it would send. If the NFL abandoned New Orleans, then America had abandoned New Orleans. Someone had to be there to stand up for this city and its people. Who better to do that than the man in charge of America’s biggest sporting obsession?

Last night was Paul Tagliabue’s gift to the people of New Orleans and the survivors of Katrina. Decades of heartbreak, frustration and empty promise finally faded into the background. Sean Payton rolled the dice and won. Drew Brees played the game of his life — a game that the leadership in Miami or San Diego didn’t think he could still deliver four years ago. And in one fell swoop, Tracy Porter and his terrible haircuit turned the Super Bowl on its head.

If Paul Tagliabue had not stood up for New Orleans, would we have all lived through this Twitter-smashing moment? Would we be celebrating with a city that was nearly left to die four and half years ago and is still rebuilding today?

In the last four years, the Saints have come to embody the spirit of New Orleans. That spirit might not be there today if it weren’t for the NFL encouraging us to “Be a Saint.” That is Paul Tagliabue’s legacy. His leadership made last night’s celebration possible. With so much talk of the NFL disappearing in 2011, perhaps Tagliabue’s successor would do well to remember the importance of that kind of leadership.

Of course, just as soon as I make some exceedingly inane remark about shiny trophies, we get this monstrosity from the Russian Football Federation. This trophy, which goes to the club who has the best combined finish in the Russian Premier League and its equivalent youth competition, is made of almost 44,000 diamonds and 2.5 kilograms of gold. Yet somehow, it cost only $1 million to make, prompting Kobe Bryant to feel a sudden pang of buyer’s remorse.

And the bald dude in the reflection? He judges. Quietly.

This information comes to us from Yahoo’s brand-spanking new soccer blog Dirty Tackle, a gig that Brooks Peck got because A.) he’s very entertaining, and B.) I’ve been phoning it in for the last 18 months and still don’t have a plan for the future. But pretty much A.

Since I’m still phoning it in, though, here’s some other football-related stuff you should be reading:

• Every possible storyline for Super Bowl XLIV, and then some. [NFL Fanhouse]
• The annual Madden sim has the Saints winning by 10. No word yet on what Tecmo Super Bowl predicts. [Shutdown Corner]
• The Colts’ biggest fan? Jared. Way to go, Indianapolis. [The Sporting Blog, which, by the way, is all over this Super Bowl like white on Zenit St. Petersburg rice.]
• Memo to bakeries: don’t give the icing gun to people who know nothing about football. [Cake Wrecks]
• Anthony Bourdain takes on Miami cuisine. Sort of. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]
• Jason Whitlock thinks NFL owners are foolish for even considering a lockout. He missed the part where the TV networks have to pay the owners in 2011 whether there’s a season or not, and wealthy men don’t stay wealthy by doing things that make them less money. [Fox Sports]
• Online betting in the USA is still technically illegal. And really sketchy. [Shutdown Corner]
• Drew Brees points out how the NFL is attempting to use the courts to become a single entity, rather than 32 separate teams. Kind of like Major League Soccer, come to think of it. [Washington Post]
• A complete list of soccer podcasts. And there’s a whole hell of a lot of ‘em, too. [EPL Talk]
• Royal Bank of Scotland has apparently had it up to here with Tom Hicks and George Gillett. [The Independent]
• The head of the Confederation of African Football banned Togo from the African Cup of Nations, just weeks after Angolan separatists sprayed machine gun fire at the Togolese team bus, killing 3 people. Here’s why he should resign after such an appalling decision. [Pitch Invasion]
• That whole thing John Terry getting his teammate’s girlfriend pregnant? He was just following John Harkes’ lead. I suspect it’s far less likely that England’s World Cup gets ruined over this. [Dirty Tackle]
• Brian Phillips is working on something awesome. Can’t wait to see it. [The Run of Play]
• Oh, by the way, the NAB Cup begins in a week. Are you ready for some footy? [AFL.com.au]

You might have seen my name pop up on EPL Talk recently — specifically for this piece about the Green & Gold protests at Manchester United. I’ll be contributing a bit more to EPL Talk and its sister site, Champions League Talk, over the next few months. My first piece for Champions League Talk takes a look at why the Champions League Final has become a bigger game than the Super Bowl — although the gap between their average audience figures (109M to 106M) is actually pretty small.

Check out those shiny trophies, though. Who wouldn’t want to leave their fingerprints all over either of those?

One day, we’ll have our grand underdog story again in a major football final. Just not right now. The stars have all aligned once again to give us another all-Goliath final.

It happened last May in Rome, when Spanish champions Barcelona met English champions Manchester United in the UEFA Champions League Final.

It happened in Melbourne last September, when the St. Kilda Saints and Geelong Cats, quite clearly the two best clubs in the AFL all season, gave us an epic Grand Final.

And it will happen again in Miami, when Indianapolis Colts, clearly the best team in the AFC, meet the New Orleans Saints, clearly the best team in the NFC, in Super Bowl XLIV.

Don’t think for a moment that these aren’t the two best teams in the NFL, either. There were no worthy challengers in the AFC, and whatever argument the Minnesota Vikings had vanished in a haze of fumbles and turnovers. Back in November, when these teams were both 8-0 and we absurdly spoke of runs at history, there was plenty of talk that Colts v. Saints would be the best possible matchup, the game we wanted to see.

And you know what?  We do want this. For all our big talk about Hoosiers and Joe Namath guarantees and Bloody Hell! Wimbledon beat Liverpool!, there’s something just as appealing in seeing the two best teams battle it out to determine who will be champion. Yes, we as fans have our allegiances to teams that ultimately fell by the wayside on this path, but we’re also fans of these football games, and what could be more compelling to us as fans than #1 v. #2 for all the marbles?

We will still dream of the improbable and revel in the glories of past upsets, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll tell you we want to see two Goliaths battle it out, too. The spectacle is just as grand, and ultimately, it makes us appreciate the underdog stories just that much more. Besides, if upsets happened all the time, wouldn’t they start to smell a little funny?

We’ve already seen Usain Bolt have a mini-kickabout at the Bernabeu, but how is he when he has the option to use his hands? The boys from Kerry County found out recently, as they taught the world’s fastest man a few of the finer points of Gaelic Football. Given Bolt’s height and speed, I’m surprised they didn’t offer him citizenship on the spot.

Then again, Bolt probably would have heard how much GAA players actually make and politely declined.

If you’re new to this blog and unfamiliar with Gaelic Football, click here for some basic info. We don’t discuss Gaelic Football that often here, but it’s even more of a national obsession in Ireland than the NFL is here in America.

(Thanks, Coachie Ballgames.)

Let’s be fair. This is not the worst thing Prince has ever written. If you dig around the Crystal Ball collection or The Rainbow Children for a while, you’ll find a few things more unbearable than this. Plus, the man did give us the best Super Bowl halftime show ever.

That said, is this a “fight song”? Is this supposed to rally the troops? Would this make a Vikings fanatic like, say, Drew Magary want to run through a brick wall? I’d say no. Fight songs have some energy to them. This is more like an alma mater, complete with alma mater-ish lyrical oddities.

the eyes say ready 4 battle
no need 4 sword in hand
we r all amped up like a rock n roll band
ready 2 celebrate every score
ready 2 fight the elegant war
ready 2 hear the crowd roar
that’s what we came 4 and so much more
in the name of the purple and gold

It’s a bit more modern that “Gloriana, Frangipana, e’er to her be true,” but the vibe is pretty much the same. I get more pumped up hearing Brett Favre sing “Pants on the Ground.”

Prince seems better suited toward writing party songs, love songs and the occasional socio-political commentary — no fronting on “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night,” please — than a fight song for a football team. Let’s just hope he doesn’t try to put this up against what U2 & Green Day did in New Orleans a few years ago. Bono’s a total dick about copyright, but at least he picked a song that got the crowd completely psyched:

(Hat tip to Joe Ovies for the heads-up. Video from The Huffington Post.)

If Major League Soccer follows through on its threat to lock out the players union, does that mean Landon Donovan gets recalled from Everton?

I haven’t seen anyone else ask, and I figure I should, because if it’s true, it would suck on several levels. Donovan played awfully well in his first Premier League match, getting an assist on a well-placed corner kick, smoking Arsenal left back Armand Traore on the wing, and getting the English press to take notice. He showed signs of challenging Clint Dempsey’s position as best non-goalkeeping American footballer in England.

If he has to sit in England because of a labor dispute in America, that does nothing to help the U.S. Men’s National Team in a World Cup year — and really, wasn’t that the primary reason MLS was launched in the first place?

My interest in the NFL playoffs seems to have hit an all-time low.

I’m still paying attention, of course, but aside from being utterly transfixed by that shootout in Arizona, I haven’t actually been watching all that much. Saturday’s Wild Card playoffs were mostly background noise in my living room, while the Ravens’ win over the Patriots on Sunday seemed like a good time to go run errands.

And why not? I’m a Steelers fan. The Ravens and the Pats are the last two teams I want to see in a playoff game. If my team were playing one of them, that would be a different matter, but the Steelers’ season is over. I’m pretty sure most Washington Redskins fans weren’t so interested in watching that Cowboys-Eagles game on Saturday night, either. (Assuming Daniel Snyder hasn’t browbeaten their love of football out of them all together, of course.)

Football has always been tribal like this. This is our club, and these are our colors, and we will fight to beat your club and your colors. We love the Packers, screw the Vikings. We support Arsenal and want to kick Tottenham arse. Carlton rules, Collingwood drools. It’s a battle without a war, games in the place of guns, a fulfillment of primal urges that doesn’t leave massive scars upon civilization. This is why we express so much shock whenever real guns come into play, either by choice or by circumstance. We don’t want actual war to intrude on our tribal skirmishes.

It’s also why I was puzzled at some of the comments I read on blogs discussing the whole USL-NASL brouhaha.

It seems there’s at least a small contingent of people out there who think that there should be no other soccer league in America except Major League Soccer. Here are a few samples taken from MLS Talk and The Kartik Report:

“MLS is still trying to build itself into one of the top leagues in the world. We are getting there, but aren’t there yet. The NASL by invoking nostalgia for a failed league that bought big foreign players but left behind tons of debt threatens that. USL threatens that by signing MLS players to contracts that include free loaner cars and paid rent/apartments.

“MLS is the league we should all be following and investing our time and effort into. The investors that put money into USL or NASL are hurting MLS. Can you imagine if we could bring that money into MLS as well? It could be such a fantastic league.”

“MLS is our league and only by supporting the established brand does soccer get stronger. USL has always been an annoying little neighbor with fans who say “look at us, look at us.” but finally instead of continuing to dress up an ugly step sister, we are rejecting her entirely and sending away for good.

“I also call on CONCACAF to suspend all current and former USL clubs from the Champions League. We do not need a hard earned MLS spot being taken away again by an annoying Puerto Rico Islanders team that played 180 minutes of anti-football to defeat a superior TFC side.”

“Neither league ought to be in business and it would be good if those who have supported USL for years focused on MLS this year, with viewership and attending games. Together with one league we can move forward.”

Now, on some level, I suppose I can see this tribalism extending to leagues. It happens with college conferences in America — ACC v. Big East, Big Ten v. Pac-10, etc.

That said, I cram to understand why soccer fans in America are supporting leagues over clubs, or why these MLS fans feel so threatened by the existence of another league. Is the Premier League threatened by the existence of the Coca-Cola Championship? Hell, is the NFL threatened by the existence of the UFL? There are multiple football, baseball, basketball and hockey leagues all over this country. But no, MLS should be the be-all and end-all of soccer in America.

These people annoy me, because they’re basically saying that my local club, the Carolina Railhawks, doesn’t deserve to exist, and neither do any of the other pro soccer clubs in North America — unless they pony up $40 million and build a stadium to join MLS. They’re basically saying, “I support this specific corporate structure over yours,” oblivious to the fact that there’s plenty of room for both.

If the NFL suddenly went bankrupt tomorrow — I know, I know, work with me here — do you think its member clubs would just give up and go out of business? Of course not. The clubs themselves would reform and figure out a way to keep going, and their fans would continue to support those clubs. They wouldn’t say, “Oh, no, we support the NFL, and if you’re not in the NFL, you don’t deserve to exist.” Well, what happens if the NFL doesn’t exist anymore? Does pro football just die? Of course not. It remakes itself and moves forward, just as it always has.

I don’t care what league my team plays in. I’m going to support my team. The league itself is merely the structure that facilitates the tribes, not the tribe itself. That’s why I care about what’s happening in the lower divisions of American soccer, because that’s what impacts my club, and I want my club to succeed. The league in which they play is ultimately irrelevant. Why try to force people to be fans of a race in which they have no horse?

It’s also I’m not paying much attention the NFL playoffs this year. Maybe if I had an urge to gamble on games, I’d care more, and I’ll still watch the Super Bowl, but as it stands, my tribe’s season is over. I’m waiting till next year. So it goes.

After opting not to sanction either the USL or the breakaway NASL for 2010, the U.S. Soccer Federation quietly grabbed everyone by the ear, yanked them into a smoke-free back room, knocked their heads together and said, “Okay, this is how it’s going to be this year.” The end result is a strange stopgap hybrid league with six USL clubs in one conference and six NASL clubs in the other.

And no more lawsuits. That was kind of a big deal.

Kenn Tomasch liveblogged the USSF conference call on the matter, which was dominated by USSF boss Sunil Gulati, and as expected, Gulati sounded like he was the only one satisfied with the arrangement. Tomasch wrote that acting NASL commissioner Jeff Cooper didn’t sound all that sincere when he said the temporary league was “A fair resolution for USSF, for the teams, the players and most of all for the fans.”

Here’s how it breaks down:

USL Conference: Austin Aztex, Minnesota Thunder, Portland Timbers, Puerto Rico Islanders, Rochester Rhinos, Tampa Bay Rowdies
NASL Conference: Carolina Railhawks, Crystal Palace Baltimore, Miami FC, Montreal Impact, A.C. St. Louis, Vancouver Whitecaps

Presumably, the league will run a 32-game schedule, with 20 in-conference ties and 12 inter-conference ties, and the conference champions will compete in the finals. Schedules and TV deals are expected to be announced before the end of the month.

It’s worth noting here that the dividing line here is not geographical, but political. It’s fairly clear which clubs took which side — save for Rochester and Tampa Bay, two of the clubs USL sued for breach of contract when they bolted to the NASL. Crystal Palace was also named in that lawsuit, but for whatever reason, they swapped places with Minnesota in this arrangement. The Atlanta Silverbacks and FC New York are also missing from this league, though the press conference revealed that neither club would be ready until 2011 — something nobody was really certain about until now.

The end result is a clear fork in the road for 2nd-division soccer in North America. The NASL is going one way, the USL is going another way, and once this hokey hybrid year is complete, they won’t cross paths again, except maybe in the U.S. Open Cup. The NASL will continue to push for full sanctioning in 2011, as Railhawks majority owner Selby Wellman said in this spin-happy interview with Triangle Offense’s David Fellerath:

“This is nothing more than a 2010 transition. After two and a half years of work, we are going to launch North American Soccer League for 2011. And during this transition year we will launch our league. It’s a lot of work to launch a league and that’ll be our focus at the league level, to launch a league this year. The transition is nothing more than a way to compete on the field. There are nine NASL teams and three USL teams. Three of the NASL teams (Rochester, Minnesota and Tampa Bay) will play in the USL Conference, but they are members of the NASL body and they will be playing in the NASL in 2011.”

Wellman makes it clear there won’t be much to stop this league from getting sanctioned next year, especially if the league owners continue working closely with the USSF on the matter.

“What (Gulati and the USSF) discovered in this process is that the standards for Division 2 need to be tightened up a little bit. There’s a piece of work that’s going to take place at the federation level very quickly to tighten up those standards in terms of league needs to be in order to be sanctioned a Division 2 league. The day after they revise those standards-we will apply the following day. We already have enough information to know that we will pretty much qualify already…

“I would expect to see stadium standards. For example, one of the major problems we had in the past with USL was stadiums: playing high-school football stadiums on not-properly sized soccer fields with football lines. That’s not proper. We need to make that a standard: You’ve got to be on a soccer field in a soccer stadium.”

If nothing else, that’s going to raise the bar of entry to the NASL. However, it might not do much to allay USSF fears that the NASL will attempt to compete with MLS in the long run. After all, it costs $40 million just to join MLS. That money could be put toward building a stadium — Saputo Stadium in Montreal seats more than 13,000 and cost $14 million to build — and paying quality players more than MLS could, and the U.S. Open Cup is still a gateway to the CONCACAF Champions League. On the flip side, though, that sort of thinking might encourage the kind of reckless spending that eventually killed the original NASL in the early 1980s. I doubt the current league owners wish to see that history repeat itself.

Meanwhile, what becomes of USL is still anybody’s guess. The USL Second Division appears to be operating this year with only six clubs: Charleston, Charlotte, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Real Maryland and Richmond. Do Austin, Puerto Rico and FC New York join them in 2011 to form one single pro league? And can they manage to obtain Division II sanctioning when several of these clubs probably won’t meet updated stadium guidelines?

There are tons of questions left to be answered about the future of American soccer below MLS. That said, this is the setup we have for one year, so we might as well make the most of it. I can’t wait to see how Fox Soccer Channel ends up advertising this. “The USSF Second Division! Only on FSC!” Doesn’t sound so hot, does it? Here’s hoping they find a sponsor for this mess. I hear Coca-Cola may have a few extra bucks to spend these days.

There it is. Avatar and its 3D blue-skinned hot chicks are making too much damn money at the box office, and now big media wants us to spend all this cash to duplicate that 3D experience at home so that we can all remain mesmerized by the pretty computer graphics and not think about just how shallow and artless the actual story is.

So now everyone is jumping on the 3D bandwagon — including ESPN, which has big plans to make you wear stupid glasses on your living room sofa just so you can see that Cristiano Ronaldo free kick coming right at your head. It’s dipping! Don’t flinch!

Please. 3DTV might the biggest waste of time and money this side of JaMarcus Russell. Most of us (except me) just spent our hard-earned cash to get nice flat panel HD screens or in our homes. We’re just now getting accustomed to 720p football, and we’re not the least bit bored with it. It’s awesome. And that’s not enough anymore? We’re now being asked to throw out perfectly good HDTVs that most people are still paying off and spend another $2K to $3K so that the action “pops out” at us? The cost of entry for HD was high enough, and it provided actual value. 3D doesn’t do that.

Number two, has anyone come up with a 3DTV solution that doesn’t involve wearing some sort of silly glasses? If you turn your head wrong, the 3D effect disappears. So if we get up and shout at the TV like your average football fan, or turn our heads back to our laptops to chat with friends about the game, it gets weird. Unless you’re a steward at Old Trafford, you can’t force football fans to sit still and passively watch football.

And yet everyone is jumping on this 3DTV bandwagon, because Hollywood demands that James Cameron’s gigantic blue cock ego must be stroked. They’re all missing the point. 3D is a gimmick meant to be consumed in small doses in IMAX theaters and dodecaplexes. People will pay for it there because it only costs $10 to $15 a pop for a night of entertainment. Ask those same people to blow $2,500 to kinda-sorta bring that gimmick home — especially when so many people just spent close to that on a new home theater — and they’ll laugh you out of the room.

IMAX 3D is something that can’t be duplicated by a home theater. That’s the point. It’s supposed to get you out of the house to experience something more engrossing than even the 10-foot HD image your friend’s projector throws at his wall. I enjoy a good IMAX 3D experience. In fact, if my local IMAX theater announced it was going to show England v. USA live in giant-screen 3D for $50 a head, I’d buy a ticket. That doesn’t mean I want to see Wayne Rooney’s ugly mug jumping out of my TV set — and even if I did, it still wouldn’t duplicate the experience I could get in an IMAX theater. After all, if it’s nightmare fuel you want, it might as well be larger than life.

Maybe if ESPN set up a network to show big games in IMAX theaters, it would find an audience. It won’t find that audience for a 3D sports network at home. I’m sticking with HDTV, thanks. 3DTV has FAIL written all over it.

You know what would be even more out of character than Landon Donovan sneaking across the border to play the Mexican lottery? Landon Donovan sneaking into Anfield to talk smack to Fernando Torres. “Two-nil, bitch! Ha! And you’re next, Gerrard!”

(Spotted on Soccer By Ives.)

Let’s just hope they’ll open the channel up, rather than continue to charge $15/month. Basic economics suggests this will happen. If Fox can get FS+ into 20 million homes and charge the carriers a mere $0.05 per subscriber, the channel will already bring in more cash than Setanta Sports and its mere 65,000 subscribers.

Damn. Look at that goal. Look at it. Then look at it again. Damn.

A few days ago, Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport called Clint Dempsey the best left winger in the Premier League. If he’s capable of strikes like that, though, Bob Bradley needs to get him off the wing and move him up front. The U.S. national team can find a few decent midfielders to play out wide. It won’t find a striker anywhere who can do that.

Granted, we still haven’t heard from Marcus Tracy yet, but he’s got some work to do if he wants to top that.

(Spotted on 101 Great Goals.)

Every change creates ripple effects, which makes it all the more difficult to see the big picture until enough time has passed and we can look at the bigger picture. If John Bassett hadn’t contracted lung cancer, would he have been able to prevent Donald Trump from leading the USFL over a cliff? Maybe, but we couldn’t see that while it was happening.

That’s why some soccer fans in America are having such a negative reaction to the news that Fox Sports International is about to buy out Setanta Sports USA. They only see the immediate change in the world in front of them. If Setanta goes away, it would mean on the surface that there would be less Premier League matches to watch each weekend.

Nothing, however, operates in a vacuum, and most of these fans are ignoring the $4.3 billion elephant in the room.

The problem with Setanta Sports has always been cost as a barrier to entry. You have to be a truly dedicated football fan — or a paid blogger who’s creative with tax write-offs — to shell out an extra $15 a month to watch that much more football. This is why Setanta has only been able to attract about 65,000 subscribers in the USA, giving it a monthly income of $975,000.

By comparison, Fox Soccer Channel is in 32 million homes and pulls about $0.06 per subscriber from cable and satellite providers. That’s $1.92 million a month, almost double what Setanta takes in monthly, and because it’s part of a massive media conglomerate, FSC is always going to have the upper hand.

They don’t get any more massive, however, than ESPN, which pulls a whopping $3.65 per subscriber from cable and satellite providers. Multiply that by 98 million homes, and you’re talking $357.7 million a month.

So it stands to reason that if company A 1.) brings in 366 times more cash than company B, and 2.) wants something you have, it might be willing and able to pay just a little bit more cash for it.

That something, of course, is the TV rights to the Premier League and the UEFA Champions League in the USA. Fox has these things for the next three years. ESPN, meanwhile, has the FIFA World Cup, and it doesn’t want all those world-class players to fade from memory after the World Cup is over.

Those world-class players don’t play here. The world’s best baseball, basketball and hockey players play in the USA, sure, but the world’s best footballers don’t play in MLS. Hell, most U.S. national team members play in Europe these days. Even Landon Donovan is in Merseyside right now, and Stuart Holden seems headed for the UK himself. Given the current state of MLS labor negotiations, we don’t even know for sure if our domestic league season will start on time.

Plus, the Premier League fits ESPN’s programming schedule better than anything American club soccer has to offer, and the quality of play is generally higher. The WWL can pull much better ratings with baseball and basketball in prime time while filling its weekend morning and weekday afternoon schedules with soccer. EURO 2008 was cheap mid-day programming for ESPN, but the Nielsen ratings proved there was an appetite for top-shelf soccer in this country.

So why didn’t ESPN just acquire the TV rights to the Premier League and Champions League itself, rather than ceding them to Fox? For the same reason ESPN let Setanta UK fail before swooping in themselves — to save money. Let Fox shell out the big bucks to get those TV rights, or to try and mesh what’s left of  Setanta’s corporate culture with its own. Sub-licensing Premier League matches is much cheaper for ESPN, who only has to pay for a studio team in Bristol and make way for the league’s own satellite feed.

As for the Champions League, Fox’s buyout of Setanta allows them to keep this year’s knockout stage exclusively on its own networks. UEFA set up the schedule for the knockout stage so that only two matches would be happening simultaneously on any given day. That means one match on FSC and one on Fox Sports Net. What happens next season remains uncertain, but I think Fox wants to keep this competition to itself.

And what about the FA Cup or the other leagues in Scotland, France and Russia? Fox could easily sub-license those to ESPN as well, and the WWL could shuttle them over to ESPN360, which already has La Liga, Serie A and the Football League, among other things.

So do not fret over the Setanta buyout, fellow soccer fans. You won’t be getting fewer games as a result of this deal. You’ll just watch them on different channels.

Now, if you’re a rugby union fan, you’ll probably have to shift your cash to Rugby Zone or some other online feed — unless those matches wind up on ESPN360, too, which is entirely possible. That’s where the Australian Football League ended up last year. If you’re Irish and want to watch the GAA… well, honestly, I don’t know what to tell you at this point. This deal was always about those filthy garrison games. You might be out of luck.

The rest of us, though, will be saving $180 a year for the same amount of football, which is awesome. I’d use my savings to get season tickets for my local club, if only Sunil Gulati would stop trying to stamp it out of existence. He’s looking more like Agent Smith to me every day.

And the best part about it? I didn’t buy it. It was a Christmas gift.

Sure, I did have to buy all my HDMI cables and throw $100 at DirecTV to get my set-top box upgraded, and my satellite bill will jump as well, but the TV itself? Didn’t cost me a dime.

There’s a lesson in this for Chris Johnson. Going into the final week of the NFL regular season today, the Tennessee Titans running back needs 128 yards to reach 2,000 rushing yards in a single season. Johnson, however, may or may not be hedging on the gifts he buys his linemen this year. Last year, he bought his linemen 55″ flat-screen HDTVs for helping him gain 1,200 yards. This year, he reportedly said he would buy them all cars — except then he said he wouldn’t.

“I never promised any cars. I said the offensive linemen wanted cars if I got 2,000 yards. I never promised anything like that. I’ll have to think of something nice.”

You can imagine why he’d be hesitant. Even if he only spends $25K on each of his five starting linemen, that’s a $125K outlay — no small chunk of change, even for the future first pick in every fantasy draft next season.

This is proof, however, that Johnson has yet to learn the first rule of being rich: Don’t spend your own money to get stuff.

This is how rich people stay rich. They get other people to buy stuff for them. You think those Hilton and Kardashian girls spend their own money on those expensive clothes? Hell, no. They convince designers that they have influence in the marketplace, and those designers fall all over themselves to give them free stuff.

Take a look at Malcolm Glazer. When it came time for him to buy Manchester United, he didn’t spend a dime of his own cash. He financed the whole deal, and he’s letting the fans pay for it. Sure, the fans aren’t happy about it, but did that keep them away from Old Trafford today for a 3rd-round FA Cup tie? Of course not. Glazer knows the fans aren’t going to stop supporting a club that’s in contention for major and minor trophies every year. Why not let those fans buy the club for him?

(Of course, the fans won’t be there for a 4th-round FA Cup tie, but there you go.)

Johnson is on the verge of becoming only the sixth running back in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards in a single season. That’s easily worth at least a million in endorsement cash. That is the money that would pay for those Escalades for his linemen, and there would be plenty left over to help him through the seemingly inevitable 2011 work stoppage. All he has to do is show up for a few commercials, and voila! The linemen get theirs, Johnson keeps his paychecks, and everyone’s happy.

That’s how you do it in the 21st century, folks. You build your reputation, and other people will pay for it. 2,000 yards is all the reputation Johnson needs to get that sweet, sweet endorsement cash — and if he can’t turn 2,000 yards into seven figures, he needs a new agent. The economy might be bad, but it’s not that bad.

In other words, the USSF has told these kids to stop fighting or they’ll turn this car around right now. And they really mean it this time!

I fail to see how this decision will help to advance the Association game in America. What the USSF has done is force all parties involved to slap together a plan that none of them want, and what we’ll be left with is a 2nd division league that will be little more than a joke. What’s more, if this decision forces the breakaway NASL clubs back to USL, you can guarantee that a number of those NASL clubs will shut it down in 2010 rather than return to USL — assuming USL even lets them return at all.

Also, it’s entirely possibly the USSF just forced at least one club (Minnesota Thunder) out of business all together with this decision.

Perhaps the lawsuit-happy nature of the USL forced the USSF into this decision. We all know how FIFA feels about legal action in football. Still, forcing both sides to compromise seems certain to result in a number of clubs canceling their seasons, which would leave a lot of supporters with nothing to support in 2010. Again, how is this any good for the game in America?

UDPATE (4:10 PM): Goal.com editor Andrea Canales is writing that the USSF refused to sanction the NASL in order to project Major League Soccer. Sadly, this seems quite plausible. Nothing scares MLS more than a rival league; it’s why they chose USL strongholds Portland and Vancouver in the last round of expansion. A resurrected NASL, even as a 2nd division league, must scare the shit out of MLS.

Take a few minutes to watch this video all the way through. I’m just gonna say this: if you can’t hold a 4-goal lead against the worst team in your league, then the next league up ain’t got no use for you. Just stay right where you are until you get your house in order, dig?

(Spotted on 101 Great Goals.)

Remember when we said that Randy Moss is a quitter who only plays when he wants to play? Two weeks ago suddenly seems like two decades ago, after a scoreboard cameraman in Gillette Stadium found a dude in a Randy Moss mask in the stands, and Moss decided to have a little fun with him during a replay review.

Oh, by the way, the touchdown stood, and it was one of three that Moss scored on Sunday to help the Patriots clinch the division title. Well played, Randy. On both counts.

(Spotted on Shutdown Corner.)

So let me get this straight.

Jim Caldwell leads the Indianapolis Colts to a 14-0 record, a rarity for any NFL head coach, let alone a rookie head coach, and he remained anonymous. Caldwell could have walked into the White House wearing a Colts hat and a sandwich board that read “HI, I’M JIM CALDWELL,” and even President Obama would have asked, “Who?”

Then, once the Colts had clinched home field advantage in the AFC playoffs, Caldwell decides to bench his starters midway through the 15th game, and the Colts lose.

And now everyone knows who he is? And they’re all blasting him for not chasing history?

Sure, there’s a part of me that hates his decision, too, since it made the Pittsburgh Steelers’ improbable shot at the playoffs that much more improbable. (Then again, does a team that lost to Cleveland, Oakland and Kansas City, three teams that are a combined 12-33, really deserve a playoff berth?) Houston Texans fans are pissed, too, as are all those football fans who would love to see Mercury Morris shut his mouth for once. Plus, at least one crazy Jets fan is probably wishing he had kept his mouth shut…

But let’s at least be honest about a few things here. For starters, Mercury Morris won’t stop yapping until he’s dead. Plus, how much did going 16-0 help the Patriots two years ago? Did they walk away with the Lombardi Trophy? In the end, what matters more — winning every single game in a season, or winning that one big game at the end of the season?

We know where Michael Irvin stands on this, but I suspect he’s in the minority. In the end, history will remember those 2007-08 Patriots as losers when it mattered most. Show me a Pats fan who wouldn’t trade that 16-0 regular season for a Super Bowl ring, and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t understand the NFL. Without looking it up, can you say how many teams had better records than the Steelers the season they won Super Bowl XL? I can’t, because it doesn’t matter. In the NFL, the destination matters far more than the journey.

If Caldwell’s Colts had won every regular season game and lost in the playoffs, we’d all say, “Same old Colts, always winning the regular season and nothing else.” By ending it now, Caldwell can refocus the Colts on the real goal, which is winning the Super Bowl. If he accomplishes that, all this 19-0 nonsense will be forgotten. There’s a big difference between perfection and greatness. If you can’t see which one is more important in this league, then I can’t help you, man.

It doesn’t seem like much of a Christmas song, really, but you do have to admire the recording engineers’ ability to subtly auto-tune up to 8 footballers’ voices simultaneously. That takes far more skill than most people realize. (Hat tip to The Offside for unearthing this.)

I’ll have more to talk about soon. In the meantime, have a very happy December 25th. Put the kids to bed early tonight, and if you’re a soccer fan who lives the USA, put yourself to bed early tomorrow night, because your presents arrive on Saturday.

At the age of 36, Ryan Giggs should probably be out of club football and in the announcer’s booth with Jon Champion by now. Yet there he is on the pitch for Manchester United, still scoring, still setting up his teammates and still contributing at the highest levels. He’s even winning awards for his longevity.

So what do these two geezers have in common beyond thriving past their expiration dates? Would you believe it’s yoga?

As the Guardian mentioned yesterday, Giggs has been practicing Hatha Yoga since 2003, and many believe that this has healed Giggs’ dodgy hamstrings and prolonged his career. Some have also suggested that yoga has helped shift Giggs’ reputation from typical party-boy footballer to mystical Premier League shaman — even though Giggs himself calls it “just stretching really.”

Williams, of course, would suggest it’s a little more than that. After all, he stumbled upon yoga when he disappeared into the California hills a few years ago, and he became a dedicated yoga practitioner and instructor. When he made his comeback two seasons ago — mostly because of that $8.1 million judgment the Dolphins held over him — he showed he hadn’t lost much of the rushing power that won him the Heisman Trophy at Texas in 1998. Perhaps he’s more centered now. Perhaps his body is just that much bendier than everyone else’s and can take the punishment. Either way, he’s making an impact at an age when most running backs (*cough* LaDainian Tomlinson *cough*) are too beat up to compete anymore.

When Williams has no further debt to the Dolphins, he’ll probably disappear into the hills again, where he can teach yoga — and perhaps resume smoking weed — all he wants and not worry about any billionaires’ lawyers knocking on his door and asking for a refund. Giggs probably won’t follow him up there, but if the two of them ever meet for a salad and a toke, someone really ought to be there to film the conversation.

Maybe I should have a chat with my buddy Elsie about this. I could use something to help me be a better blogger in 2010.

The latest battle in the Aussie Football Wars, however, won’t be fought over beers. Lost amidst the massive English and American bids for the 2018 World Cup is the fact that Australia would like to host FIFA’s big show, too, because soccer is growing down under, too.

And guess what? The AFL and NRL aren’t giving up their stadiums for your girl’s game. Oh, no.

See, unlike England and America, Australia has not one, but two major pro football leagues in season in June and July, and those leagues aren’t too keen on giving up some of their stadiums in the middle of the season. Sure, the World Cup might be the biggest sporting event on the planet and might bring unprecedented tourism dollars to Australia. That won’t stop the AFL and NRL from looking at it as a not only a huge shot in the arm to the competition, but a massive pain in the ass.

Perhaps if Football Federation Australia really wants to follow through on its darkhorse bid, it should start considering some new construction. Melbourne Cricket Ground can fit 100,000 people, but for a soccer game, they’ll all be about half a mile away from the action. Imagine paying the GDP of Slovenia for front row seats to the World Cup Final, only to find your view is partially obstructed by that bench 20 yards in front of you.

As much as I’d love to see the World Cup return to the States, I’m now hoping Australia does get it soon, if only to see just how ugly and bitter the Aussie Football Wars can get. I can’t wait to see the AFL devise ways to lure packs of Brazilians and Ivorians down to Docklands. “We’ll show ya some real footy, mates!” The resulting confusion alone might make for great television.

(Spotted on Pitch Invasion.)

Not if those bitter old bastards at NuRock have anything to say about it, apparently.

According to Canadian soccer blog The 24th Minute, the USSF held meetings with representatives from the USL and NASL, and the USL continued to insist that several NASL clubs were contractually obligated to play in the USL in 2010. One source claimed that the USL was “threatening to sue everyone at the table” if the NASL was certified.

In essence, a USL representative walked into the room and shouted, “BITCH BETTA HAVE MY MONEY!”

This should give you some idea of how much USL actually cares about soccer in America. It doesn’t. The people in charge of this show only want to get paid, and anyone who has any funny ideas of creating a league where club owners have some say in how the league works should be forced out of business for insubordination. These people would rather destroy second-division soccer in America than let any of these clubs be free to decide how they want their league to operate. That might give you some idea of how much money the USL was raking in from this “business model” of theirs.

This is bad news for several of the NASL’s breakaway clubs — especially Carolina, Miami and Minnesota, who led this charge in the first place. If the USSF decides not to certify the NASL, that would force several clubs reportedly under contract to play the 2010 USL-1 season. Several more would end up sitting out 2010 all together, either by choice or by USL lockout. That would undo all the good work the Carolina Railhawks did in putting a good team together last season, and it might force the Minnesota Thunder to shut its doors for good.

On the other hand, all this might do is delay the inevitable. Any clubs forced back into USL for 2010 would be certain to avoid any contractual obligations to USL in 2011. That might give the NASL the time it needs to ramp up properly and build a worthwhile league.

But would that be too late? This is a World Cup year, after all, which means more attention on soccer in America. What happens when potential fans look at what’s going on below MLS and find out just how much of a joke it really is?

USL isn’t thinking about what’s good for the game. It’s thinking about what’s good for its bank account, and we’re all starting to realize it always has. Enjoy that CREAM, fellas, and thanks for nothing.

UDPATE (12/09): USL has filed its first lawsuit, claiming the Rhinos, Rowdies and Crystal Palace Baltimore are in breach of contract. Clearly, they don’t care what anybody thinks of them anymore.

GROUP B: Argentina, Nigeria, South Korea, Greece

GROUP C: England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia

GROUP D: Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana

GROUP E: Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon

GROUP F: Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia

GROUP G: Brazil, North Korea, Ivory Coast, Portugal

GROUP H: Spain, Switzerland, Honduras, Chile

My initial thoughts:

• I was fully expecting the USA to get the Group of Death after drawing England early, but it’s actually not bad. Slovenia will be tougher than we think — they did knock off Russia to get here, after all — but advancing to the knockout round does seem a little more possible than it did a few weeks ago.
• Group G is the Group of Death this year. Brazil, Ivory Coast & Portugal in one group? It’s enough to make you want to see Cristiano Ronaldo cry. Again. (Note from Brian Phillips of The Run of Play: “I really want to know how Group G is going to be written up in the North Korean state media.”)
• If Argentina fails to advance from Group B, the Church of Maradona will get torched. By its followers.
• Spain and Italy are stone cold locks to advance, and France will probably get through in spite of itself.

So there it is. We have six months to talk about this before it actually happens. What do you blog readers think of this?

Meet Nyrel Sevilla. He’s six years old, and he’s here to knock your sorry ass into next week, bitch. And unlike Ben Roethlisberger, he’ll never have any trouble playing with a concussion.

Here’s a quick glance at some other stories worth reading:

• The Saskatchewan Roughriders lost the Grey Cup when Montreal’s missed field goal was negated by Calgary having too many men on the field. Montreal made their second field goal attempt, and the quest is on to scapegoat the 13th man. [Canada.com]
• Hines Ward’s comments on concussions makes the Steelers look far worse than they’ve looked on the field lately. [The Sporting Blog]
• Merrill Hoge has a slightly different take on concussions. [NFL FanHouse]
• Premier League CEO Richard Scudamore wants to kick your filthy pirate ass off the Internet for using Justin.TV to watch Stoke v. Burnley. Don’t expect him to offer a legal alternative anytime soon. [Techdirt]
• Can legal gambling and football co-exist in the wake of match-fixing scandals? [Pitch Invasion]
• Grahame Jones lays into the FIFA executive committee, calls them “rogues and villains,” tells us nothing we didn’t already know and can’t really change. [L.A. Times]
• Lionel Messi wins the Ballon d’Or. Predicting the sunrise was tougher than predicting that. [The Offside]
• MLS will give commissioner Don Garber a sweet contract extension on one condition: he gets the new collective bargaining agreement done during the offseason. Any more grenades y’all wanna toss on that powderkeg, MLS owners? [WVHooligan]
• The Rochester Rhinos have bolted USL for the new NASL. This is rather big, and I will write more about it very soon. [Triangle Offense]

And since this site still has extensive links that cover football’s origins and evolution, here are a couple of interesting pieces about that.

• Aston Villa pays tribute to William McGregor, the Scotsman who came up with the idea of a “football league” back in 1886. I’d say that idea was a success. [BBC]
• Here’s another look back at the gridiron game a century ago, when nobody wore any padding and players were killed regularly. Hines Ward would have loved it. [Every Day Should Be Saturday]

Before this incident, Hull City had collected 27 points in 18 matches and were the surprise club of the Premier League season. In their last 20 matches, Hull managed only one win and 8 points in their last 20, and they only avoided an instant return to the Coca-Cola Championship because of Newcastle United’s general incompetence. So when Hull returned to Eastlands yesterday and Jimmy Bullard’s penalty leveled the score at 1-1… well, just watch…

Even Phil Brown couldn’t stop laughing. Well played, Mr. Bullard. Well played.

The halftime talk on the pitch was widely regarded as the beginning of Hull’s downward spiral last season. Could this bit of fun lift Hull out of the relegation battle? Either way, there needs to be some reason to watch Hull aside from wondering why Jozy Altidore doesn’t look like he’s doing much out there.

(Spotted on 101 Great Goals.)