The cable guy screwed up!

I hadn’t been so excited since I was 13 and I realized the family TV got ESPN.

“The cable guy screwed up,” I said then, in a shocked whisper; “The cable guy screwed up!” I shouted with intense glee.

Yes, the screen was snowy: Dan Patrick looked like a troll; okay, Dan looked normal, but the rest of the screen was really tough to make out.

It didn’t matter. I was getting ESPN for free!

That same excitement raced through me Wednesday when I clicked on ESPN360.com and discovered that I could watch the USA World Cup qualifier against Trinidad and Tobago streaming on line for free (through my expensive broadband connection).

“The cable guy screwed up,” I gasped, just moments before Ricardo Clark’s thunder strike put USA up for good 1-0.

But the cable guy hadn’t screwed up – he had cut a deal.

I had tried to watch ESPN360.com before but couldn’t because Comcast, my bastard Internet provider, refused to pay ESPN for the right to broadcast its content. But unbeknownst to me, in July, Comcast agreed to start paying and began offering ESPN360 to its customers.

ESPN has become such a dominant player in the sports marketplace that it can bend cable companies to its knees. Now I and 43 million other American households get ESPN360, because various Internet providers have agreed to pay an estimated $25 million to deliver content over the next year.

This is a revolutionary business model on the Internet where content is paid for often by advertising, occasionally by consumers, and sometimes by no one at all.

What’s next, some newspaper with cojones the size of Kent telling Google that its search engine will have to pay to link to the paper’s Website?

Well, ESPN, remember, “Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of fun.”

So good luck and bring me more free soccer!

Sounders make marriage work

If the Sounders can’t go 3-0-3, do they even deserve to stay married?

My blog begins with two big pieces of news: I just got married and the Sounders have about a 55 percent chance of making the playoffs, which, coincidentally, is just about the same as my odds of staying married (60 percent).

Now, there's been a lot of talk on the blogs about which other teams to root for in order to increase the Sounders playoff chances. (See the posts here and here and here).

This talk of odds (while kind of addicting) misses the point. With six games left, it's way too early to be rooting for results in games where the Sounders aren't playing. It's like me rooting for a sunny day because it puts my wife in a better mood -- if our marriage depends on the weather, then I've got bigger problems.

The truth is, the Sounders and I are both firmly in control of our playoff and marital destinies. To demonstrate, here are the remaining Sounders games and their marital equivalents:

D.C. United – Take out the garbage
Chivas USA – Keep it in your pants
New England Revolution – Ask her how she's doing, listen, nod and repeat.
Columbus Crew – Remember key dates: birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
Kansas City Wizards – Have fun together (take her to the last regular season Sounders home game)
FC Dallas – Bring home the bacon (get a job)

Okay, so Chivas is definitely a must win game for both of us. But the others… well, let’s just say you don’t have to remember every birthday to make the playoffs. Nope, no one, not even my wife, is expecting 6-0-0.

For example, if I can Keep It in My Pants (Chivas), Bring Home the Bacon (Dallas) and Have Fun with My Wife (Kansas City), I’ve got a pretty good chance of making the playoffs (80 percent according to the stats gurus at sportsclubstats.com). And really, if the Sounders can’t go 3-0-3 (9 points in their last six games), do they even deserve to stay married? Probably not.

In fact, if the Sounders can exceed the bare minimum and even remember to take the garbage just some of the time (draw at DC), then they’ve got a 96 percent chance of making the playoffs.

Now, as my wife would say, “Is that really too much to ask?”