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’s a historic day for America, folks. Enjoy it. God knows Steven Cohen of World Soccer Daily will be insufferable today because of it…

Incidentally, in his interview with Chris Berman on Monday Night Football, Barack Obama said he would like to see a college football playoff. Will that happen now? Joe Ovies of 850 the Buzz doesn’t think so.

Psssh, please. Obama might be able to fix the economy, work for peace in the middle east, and usher in an age of energy independence…but the Rose Bowl answers to no one.

But before I get to any of this, I have to take a minute to chide Facebook’s ad servers. Look at what they served up for me today:

What is she, about 12? 13, maybe? At point did Facebook’s ad system look at my profile and decide that I might be interested in dating a girl who’s still in middle school? And if I give this ad a thumbs down, will it go even further down the rabbit hole and start inviting me to join NAMBLA?

Maybe I should tell Facebook that I admire Wayne Rooney. Then, any dating service it tries to sell to me will involve women over 50. Sheesh.

I got back from Las Vegas on Sunday night just before midnight, unpacked my bags, collapsed on my sofa around 1:00 AM, and didn’t wake up until about 10:30 or so.

Yes, it was that awesome a weekend — hanging out with the fun folks at the New Media Expo, watching the water show at the Bellagio, lounging out to Richard Cheese, getting propositioned by the hookers at the Hilton, sampling everything at the buffets, winning a poker tournament at the Mirage, losing a Premier League parlay (bloody Tottenham), partying on Fremont Street, watching from the Stratosphere Tower as the city lit up at sundown…

It was a grand adventure — until the jet lag hit me like a Martin Taylor tackle on Monday. I would lie down for a few minutes, lose an entire half-hour of my day, then get dizzy just by shifting to sit upright. Even two days later, I’m still shaking off the last vestiges of this. I wonder if this is how Merrill Hoge feels sometimes on the set of NFL Matchup…

Anyway, in a half-assed attempt to catch up, I’m going to throw some stories out there that I figure are worth mentioning here. I’m sure I’ve missed more than this. I’ll worry about that later.

• Jeremy Wilson of the Telegraph serves up this interesting piece on how the credit crunch is about to impact English football. As if Leeds United wasn’t enough of a warning to clubs borrowing on future success.
• Meanwhile, Deuce of Davenport shows us some non-league football supporters in England telling their goalie what they really think of him. Quality.
• Here’s one I missed completely — Chelsea chief exec Peter Kenyon told non-Big Four clubs to get their houses in order. From now on, he will be referred to here as “Marie Antoinette.”
• Dude, how ’bout that Hull City? How can you not cheer for that club?
• A musical about David Beckham’s career. That should cement his status as a gay icon. Hell, he might yet dethrone Cristiano Ronaldo.
• Maurice Edu is headed to Rangers. He’ll have to wade through a season of Scottish football to play in Europe, but it would have taken him just as long to make the CONCACAF Champions League with Toronto FC, anyway. Still, the timing of this move puzzles me. Is Scotland really that much better than MLS? And why Rangers, a club that doesn’t play anything close to attractive football? Of course, maybe that’s why they got Edu in the first place.
• Speaking of Yanks abroad, Cardiff City was unable to pull Kenny Cooper out of Dallas and now wants to lure Eddie Johnson away from Fulham, which shouldn’t be too hard. Plus, if you want to watch Jozy Altidore in La Liga this season, you’ll have to get DirecTV. I think it’s time for me to make the switch…
• It was always going to be just the U.S. women to win a medal in Olympic soccer, wasn’t it? The gold medal match between the USA and Brazil kicks off at 9:00 AM tomorrow. The Argentina v. Nigeria men’s soccer final, should be fun to watch. That starts at 12:00 A.M. ET on Saturday morning, so you’ll have to stay up late to see it live.
• Meanwhile, south of China, the A-League season started with a brawl between Sydney FC supporters and Melbourne Victory supporters. It looked slightly worse than the handbags between West Ham and Columbus Crew fans. Maybe.
• Speaking of Australia, Geelong has once again clinched the top seed in the AFL Finals Series, while Collingwood appears to be one drink away from falling out of the Top 8, and the credit crunch is pimpslapping the Pies, too.
• Two years removed from their Grand Final victory, the West Coast Eagles are getting a priority draft pick, and everyone’s all upset about it.
• Here’s your roster for the US Revolution footy team, which will be playing in the AFL International Cup, which begins in a week in Melbourne.
• Pittsburgh Steelers safety Ryan Clark played the race card when a local writer described Anthony Smith’s behavior as “thuggery.” Uh, no, we use that word on anyone who beats up teammates in practice for no apparent reason. Joey Barton is also a thug. (Steve Smith is, too, but at least he’s our thug…)
• Speaking of the Panthers, those offseason acquisitions aren’t looking so hot for them right now, save for Jeff Otah.
• Whatever you do, NFL coaches, keep Kenny Chesney away from your locker rooms.
• Remember that upstart league that Mark Cuban a bunch of other guys planned to launch? Apparently, they’re waiting for Senor Mexico to get out of jail first. Classy.
• Brett Favre is not God, and this is why.
• Whatever you do, don’t try to take Warren Sapp’s picture without his permission. Seriously.

Okay, that’s enough for now. I’ll be more focused in another 24 hours, when I’ve fully gotten over walking out of the Mirage with a chain wallet full of Benjamins and blending into the blissfully unaware crowd as I nonchalantly sauntered back to my hotel room. And I’m not even sure that was my favorite moment of the weekend.

Hey, remember a few months ago when photos of Stuart Scott, Charles Barkley and Dennis “Principal Belding” Haskins showed up on Deadspin and With Leather — about 19 months after the party actually happened?

Well, the annual Jimmy V Classic afterparty happened again in Raleigh last Sunday, and while Sir Charles was not present to buy everyone’s alcohol this year, Stu and Mr. Belding both showed up, as did Jay Harris and Branford Marsalis, and they showed the world they’re not afraid to grab a karaoke mic and act a fool in front of their drunken friends and associates. Here’s a look at Stuart Scott showing the ladies his sensitive side…

So, how did you spend your Sunday?

More pics from the party are after the jump. Click for large photos.

Still, this thought has been stuck in my head for the last day or two, and it’s time I got it out. It involves one of my favorite sports TV shows — ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption.

Here’s the thing: PTI co-host Michael Wilbon is afraid of sports bloggers.

“The notion of blogging scares the hell out of me… There’s no accountability….stuff isn’t edited. It just goes out there as gospel. What it is is opinion.”

Yes, that’s exactly what a worthwhile sports blog is. It’s one person or a group of people giving their opinions on the day’s sports stories. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s thought-provoking. The good blogs, though, remain consistently entertaining and/or informative.

So how is PTI any different?

Seriously, here are two guys going through the day’s sports stories and sharing their opinions on those stories with us. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s thought-provoking. Most of the time, it’s entertaining, or else it wouldn’t have remained on the air for so long.

When you really look at it, though, Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser are doing the exact same thing good bloggers do. They look at the headlines, offer their commentary on them, tell a joke or two and move on. Give Kornheiser hair, replace the Gabor sisters jokes with dead hooker jokes and swap the bear on the trampoline with skateboarder faceplant videos, and he is Matt Ufford.

So what really separates PTI from Deadspin and With Leather? Is it the fact that the hosts have experience in mainstream media? Plenty of bloggers do, too. Is it the fact that the hosts are held more accountable for what they say? The lack of accountability Wilbon thinks blogs have is a myth. Here’s your proof. Is it the fact that they touch upon different topics? PTI didn’t shy away from those Matt Leinart photos, did they?

How about the fact that PTI is backed by a large corporation that has to adhere to certain standards? I suppose that’s true for some folks, but guess what? I write for AOL, which is owned by a large corporation, and I can’t curse when I write for them. I can type “fuck” here all day long, sure, but if I did that on a FanHouse post, I’d probably get fired or, at the very least, suspended — the same way Kornheiser was put “on vacation” the day after he told Wilbon, “Wouldn’t you like to get it done under Oprah?”

Seriously, if a couple of guys did a show a like PTI in their living room and were as entertaining as Kornheiser and Wilbon, their show would be just as big a hit. Outside of sports, such a show exists — Diggnation. The whole show is just two guys sitting on a sofa and shooting the breeze about items that are popular on Digg, a social news web site that one of them created. (Digg, by the way, was the template for sites like Yardbarker and BallHype.) They drink beer and swear a little more, but that’s not the point. The point is that personalities of the hosts and the interplay between them made Diggnation as popular as it is today.

Likewise, the personalities of PTI’s hosts made that show so popular, and the personalities of certain bloggers makes them so popular. We’re all doing pretty much the same thing here. So why does Wilbon fear the bloggers, when in reality, he’s does the same thing a blogger does every weekday?

It might just be the label. People slap this “blog” label on certain sites to keep them separate from the big media. “Oh, we’re not like those people. We have standards and practices.” Ultimately, though, there’s really very little that separates PTI from the top sports blogs. It’s all just media — text, video, audio, photo, etc. We’re all just making media like they are, and we’re having fun doing it, or else we wouldn’t be spending so much time on this it in the first place. Some of us are still finding our voice, and some of us might be a little more vulgar than others, and but really, we’re all the same. We’re just here to watch the games and tell you what we think of them, and we hope it entertains you.

One day, I really hope Michael Wilbon understands that. I believe he can, too. Hell, three years ago, I was telling everyone I knew that soccer was evil, and now look at me.

• Awful Announcing
• Every Day Should Be Saturday
• FanHouse
• Fire Joe Morgan
• The Run of Play
• Techdirt

The more I read about Bissinger’s tirade, though, the more one thing seems to pop up in my mind — he sounds an awful lot like music industry executives, doesn’t he?

About six months ago, Wired ran this profile of Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music. Morris is 68 years old and has a documented history of calling iPods “repositories for stolen music.” He also served up this gem:

All the sharing of the music, right? Is it correct that people share their music, fill up these devices with music they haven’t paid for? If you had Coca-Cola coming through the faucet in your kitchen, how much would you be willing to pay for Coca-Cola? There you go. That’s what happened to the record business.

There’s one underlying and unspoken thought that connects Morris and his peers with Bissinger and his colleagues, and it’s the same thought that rattles around the heads of corporate executives across America: We don’t understand the Internet. We don’t know how to react to these changes. We prefer for things to stay as they were.

Those RIAA labels grew up in a world where they controlled the distribution, and that monopoly ensured they made all the money and had full control over the flow of music. Likewise, the newspaper and magazine columnists used to have a monopoly over opinion in sports. They could control the flow of information and shape that opinion among the people.

That doesn’t exist anymore. Any band can create a Myspace page and start selling their music right there. Any sports fan with half a brain (or less) can create a blog and start typing. The barriers to publishing have deteriorated. All it takes is cheap web space and a worthwhile product, and individuals becomes just as easy to access as the biggest media monoliths. A few of those individuals will become well-liked and well-respected, because they produce interesting and/or entertaining material. Sure, there will be dick jokes. People like dick jokes, or they wouldn’t tell them.

This frightens guys like Morris and Bissinger. They used to have final say over what was interesting and worthwhile, and thanks to this Internet thing, they don’t anymore. What makes this tragic is that they refuse to accept this fundamental change. They would rather paint their new competition as the great Satan and lure the huddled masses back to their old harbors.

Sorry, guys. The huddled masses all have blogs and Myspace pages now. We don’t want to be mere consumers anymore. We want to be creators, too. But hey, you guys are more than welcome to come join the party. It’ll be going on for a while.

UPDATE: Here’s the video.

Of course, this became an excuse to spend some of my FanHouse money. I ran out to Best Buy last night to get a relatively cheap new laptop. The new plan is to use the new laptop as my every-day PC while my old laptop will handle more specialized tasks. (And before anyone asks, no, I did not get a frigging Mac. Blogging for AOL doesn’t pay me nearly enough to afford a Macbook that isn’t built like a Frito.)

Anyway, this new plan would work better if the new laptop didn’t annoy the hell out of me. Between Windows Vista and the sheer amount of crapware loaded on to this thing, I can barely get through half a minute without some pop-up window asking either for permission to run a program or telling me something “helpful” about my new PC. You want to be helpful, computer? How about you shut the hell up for 2 minutes and let me do what I’m trying to do here?

I’ve already looked around the web for a few tips and tricks, but if any of you fellow football fanatics out there would like to share your own tips on making Vista behave itself, feel free to post a comment. A lot of my headaches will probably be solved when I get rid of all that crapware — even if it did make the laptop so cheap in the first place — but I’m sure there’s something here that I won’t see.

By the way, is it just me, or does Schalke 04 really look like they couldn’t kick a rock into the ocean right now?

Hey, who’s that dork with the big cell phone standing next to Stuart Scott?

(Spotted on With Leather. Photos published by Don Chavez. My half-assed story about this particular party is here. Why it showed up on With Leather today remains a mystery to me.)

Last month I upgraded from my old Treo 650 — the phone I used to liveblog NFL games from sports bars three years ago — to a new Treo 755p. At least, it seemed like an upgrade. The 755p had more memory, built-in EVDO for faster Internet speeds, a headphone jack that worked and the ability to use high-capacity memory cards. I threw an 8MB microSDHC card in there and declared it my new MP3 player.

Of course, the last few days have made me wish I hadn’t sold that iPod on Craiglist so quickly. To put it mildly, the 755p is a big, fat buggy mess. It freezes at inopportune times and often requires 2 or 3 reboots a day. Connecting it to my PC results in an instant blue screen of death, so I have to use a backup tool on the phone itself to save my data in case things go terribly wrong — which has happened twice already. I’m getting just as good at hard resetting this Treo as I am with reinstalling Windows on my laptop.

Why do I put up with all this? Because in spite of all the bugs, the Treo does everything I want it to do and then some. I remain enamored with this whole idea of the “swiss army knife” gadget, the one device that does everything. The Treo is my cell phone, my calendar, my organizer, my on-the-go camera and word processor, my email-and-web-anywhere device, my road atlas (thank you, Google Maps), my MP3 player, and my portable video game console. If I had a Slingbox, I could watch live Champions League matches from anywhere.

The Treo does all these things — and it excels at absolutely none of them. When it works, though, it’s still pretty cool, because I can still do more with my Treo than I can with anything else. You can’t play Ms. Pac Man on an iPhone — only a 5G/6G iPod — while I have MAME on my Treo, so I’ve got Ms. Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Galaga, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Hat Trick and obscure shit like Pepper II, Spectar and Q-Bert’s Qubes.

On top of that, I’ve got a console emulator on here that can play Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Turbo Grafx-16 games. They can play hacked ROMs, too, so Roethlisberger-to-Ward in Tecmo Super Bowl is doable. (And kind of cool.) The 16-bit console emulators are buggy as hell and require a lot of soft resets to run properly, but that didn’t stop me from going out looking for ROMs to run on them.

In fact, in my search for Genesis ROMs, I found not only multiple versions of Madden and FIFA, but also this little gem:

Yes, EA Sports gave us Rugby World Cup 95 for the Genesis, and it looks exactly as you think an EA Sports-coded rugby game for a 16-bit console might look:

Of course, I don’t have the first clue how to control the damn thing — ROMs don’t come with instruction booklets — but if I ever have some time to kill, I’m going to figure it out. I think it might help me appreciate rugby union a little bit more, and if I’m lucky, it’ll only require one or two reboots to work properly.

Still, you can’t do that on your iPhone or Crackberry, can you? Typing on an iPhone sucks, and it won’t run 3rd party apps (yet) or work with a Bluetooth keyboard, among other things. So I’ll stick with my buggy-ass Treo, thanks.

What I really want to know is this — where are the Aussie Rules games for the old 16-bit consoles? Did they not make any AFL games until the Playstation came out?

Being A.) a sports blogger and b.) a guy, I feel somewhat compelled to mention here that the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue — that little piece of historical kitsch that became a giant marketing monster with tits — arrived on newsstands in America this week. Those lovable pervs at With Leather were much more focused on this “event” today, with separate posts for the athletes’ wives — what, no Premier League WAGs? — the NFL cheerleaders, Danica Patrick (pictured above) and, of course, the pros.

Of course, most folks who visit this site won’t be all that interested in this swimsuit issue. It doesn’t include the one woman that seems to lead everyone here…

We’re waiting, Pam. Don’t let Erin Andrews beat you to the punch.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that since I uploaded this video, Fox never shows any part of Pam Oliver below the shoulders? I apologize to all of you for that. Seriously.

As a few of you know, I’m something of a beer snob. I refuse to drink any sort of brew that offends my taste buds. Cheap American swill advertised during NFL games won’t cut it, and if you have a problem with that, well, it’s your problem.

So I stopped in my local Total Wine store for a variety six-pack. For whatever reason, I was in a dark beer mood and started sifting through stouts and porters for something interesting. That’s when I stumbled upon this:

That’s right — Entire Butt English Porter. It’s not just part of the butt. No. It’s the whole damn thing.

Who in their right mind would name their beer this? Did someone drink this and determine that the “ass-tertaste” warranted putting potential customers on notice? “This brew is all ass, people. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.” This must be the kind of beer that drunken frat boys would buy to haze the pledges — that is, if the drunken frat boys weren’t getting kegs at the Big Red instead.

Suffice to say, I had no interest in drinking this Entire Butt, but hey, if that’s your thing, knock yourself out. It might be just the right brew for that Seahawks-Panthers game this weekend, or that Derby County v. Middlesbrough match.