And are you ready for it to suck?

Irish publication The Sunday Business Post reported late last month that ESPN is considering acquiring Setanta Sports, the Irish satellite network that has the broadcast rights to all manner of football leagues and competitions, including the English Premier League, the Australian Football League, the Gaelic Athletic Association and a wide variety of rugby union and rugby league competitions, including the 2007 Rugby Union World Cup.

For ESPN, buying Setanta would be the easiest way for them to get those valuable TV rights to the Premier League and FA Cup, and if they closed out a deal this summer, they could grab in the Rugby World Cup as well. Setanta programming would also give ESPN yet a possible replacement for ESPN Classic, which starting closing up shop in January and has devolved into the poker-and-American Gladiators-rerun channel. ESPN could do far worse than to replace that with soccer, rugby, Aussie rules and Gaelic football.

But will they? ESPN has become such a running joke these days that some sports fans — including several commenters on this blog — are already asking, “Gee, how will Bristol ruin this for us?” I can already envision them turning Setanta Sports into nothing more than “ESPN Soccer Channel,” thus cutting off all the rugby, AFL and GAA fans from the football codes that made them want to subscribe to Setanta in the first place.

On the other hand, maybe they’ll keep the rugby. After all, ESPN is nothing if not shamelessly self-promotional. If ESPN bought Setanta and acquired those exclusive Rugby World Cup TV rights, it would be the perfect excuse for yet another typical all-out marketing blitz…

Watch exclusive live Rugby World Cup action on ESPN2 and ESPN World! What’s that? You don’t have ESPN World? Call your cable operator and scream in their ears until they submit to your will! Call them right now on your ESPN Mobile phone and say, “I want my ESPN World, dammit!”

Of course, that whole vision breaks down when you remember how big a failure ESPN Mobile was.

Really, though, the only question I have is this: if ESPN does bring Setanta’s programming into the Bristol family, will the resulting network continue showing AFL matches? Will that be a marketing tactic as well? (We’re even bringing back Aussie Rules!) I suppose we can only hope, but I’m pretty sure the boys at Bristol will find a way to ruin this for everyone but the soccer fans in the long run. But hey, at least it stops YouTube from making them irrelevant, right?