February 15, 2005
The Other Football
We get basic cable tv in our house and lately we've been teetering between the ideas of making the jump to digital cable or canceling our cable service altogether. As the salesperson says, "Digital cable is only a few dollars more per month!" But that's a few dollars on top of an ever increasing pile of dollars that we pay for basic cable.
So our dilemma is compounded by the fact that there are only a few things we really want to watch, but we really want to watch them. Most of Kari's interests can be assuaged by Netflix, but one of my main interests can't: international soccer.
Right now there are more Americans playing top-flight professional soccer than ever before. Claudio Reyna is about to come off injured reserve for Manchester City, Brad Friedel's Blackburn Rovers are flirting with the relegation zone, Landon Donavan just got his first start for Bayer Leverkusen, Gregg Berhalter is captaining the Energie Cottbus team, and Damarcus Beasley is making a name for himself at PSV Eindhoven.
Not to mention Cory Gibbs at Feyenoord, Carlos Bocanegra and Brian McBride at Fulham, Kasey Keller at Borussia Moenchengladbach, Daniel Hernandez at Necaxa, Tim Howard at Manchester Unitied, and others. In fact, it's telling that Soccer America seems to have given up on maintaining a full list of Americans playing overseas and now just limits themselves to a listing of the top 20.
Maybe we should get satellite tv instead.
You could always enhance the satellite tv by also getting Tivo. That would be great for the soccer games and such.
Posted by: kay at February 16, 2005 07:44 AMWell, with digital cable, you can get a tivo-like device included...for just a "few dollar more per month," of course.
I had no idea you were a soccer nerd, Ken.
I went to high school with Daniel Hernandez (and his younger brother--his father was the soccer coach). Daniel was also the football place-kicker and holds the distinction of making the longest field goal in TX high school football history (63 yards).
I have digital cable and watch a lot of Fox Sports World, the spanish equivalent of FSN, ITN, and a couple of other channels that occasionally show international matches. (Our local Fox Sports Net shows all the Metrostars games). I'm a big Man U fan, but also root for Everton now and then.
Posted by: Matt B at February 16, 2005 10:51 AMYeah, I played in high school, but never paid much attention until I went to UVA for grad school during the Bruce Arena/Claudio Reyna era.
I've always been partial to Chelsea, but I can't claim to be a big fan--I'm steadfastly resisting fair-weather fandom after their brilliant run so far this season. Mostly I follow the players, like Reyna, Friedel, McBride (I also lived in Columbus for a few years), and now Beasley (just because he's awesome).
So yeah, we'll probably get digital cable or a dish at some point (definitely sometime before WC 2006).
Posted by: ken at February 16, 2005 11:24 AMBen-Lag
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