Are you ready for some Football!!!

No not that football, but EPL football. English Premiere League Football. Tomorrow, August 11th is the first game of record for the season.

First a quote from this mornings sports reporter on CNN Europe. "Now that David Beckham cannot pick his nose without it making the news, he made his MLS debut last night." Ok it might not be word for word, but the sentence definately had "Beckham", "pick his nose", and "news" in the sentence. Which if the English teachers will check me are a subject,verb with direct object, and an indirect object. It is statements like that that really make the news worth watching over here.

Back to the post.

I found out this last trip that across the various marine crews my company has, there is a fantasy league so I signed up as along with 6 other of my crew mates. This morning the EPL was kind enough to send me an e-mail with my roster of 11 players and reserves. Unfortunately two of my starters are doubtful, one of which I knew about, but his return date is set as August. Kind of general, so I was going to leave him in, because if he didn't play my reserve midfielder would automatically be put in the line up. However, the other one is a complete surprise, and has me really gutted as I was having problems setting my defense as it was.

I am hesitant to use any names because the competition might have found the blog and I don't want to give anything away.

Now I am going to take a few minutes and explain why the EPL, or maybe the whole British system of football is superior to just about any sports system. Now I'm not talking about tactics or skill level, I am talking about the fact that the teams in the top level can be moved down. Using baseball as an analogy. Imagine the St.Paul Saints, over the course of several years getting into the majors and playing the Twins.

Professional British football has four levels, Premiere, Championship, League 1, and League 2. Baseball has the majors and then, AAA, AA, and A. Of course the analogy does break down a little in that AAA, AA, and A are affiliates of the majors, but the levels are my point. At the end of the season the top three teams from each league are promoted to the higher league and the bottom three teams are demoted to the lower level. For the Baseball fans, can you say good-by Devil Rays. Or for the die hard NFL fans, good-by Oakland. Of course there is always the FA Cup as well, which is basically a nation wide tournament, kinda like Minnesota's State Hockey Tournament before they made it a two tier system. A lowly League 2 team could win, just not very likely.

Just one more thing that has nothing to do with EPL, back to my very first ever post, here is an article from slate magazine, enjoy.
http://www.slate.com/id/2171870/?GT1=10346

Yes, I think he used my blog entry as the basis for his idea.

Jon