They’ve announced the schedule for the shotgun marriage USSF 2nd Division soccer league that will bridge us from 2009’s Season of Internal Unpleasantness to 2011’s Season of Complete Chaos. The 12 teams in the hodgepodge league will each play 30 games from early April to early October (that’s 26 weeks, kids - half the year) before the two division winners and the next six best teams go into the playoffs¹.

My team, the FC Tampa Bay Rowdies², plays six of its first seven on the road and opens at home May 8 against Austin at Steinbrenner Field, right across from the former site of Tampa Stadium, where the original Rowdies ran here and ran there and kicked the ball around.

Having a third of their home games played midweek won’t help the ticket sales for the new team, but that’s the price you pay when you have to work your schedule around a minor-league baseball team. If they can ever get their proposed soccer stadium built, that won’t be an issue in the future³.

1 - Yeah, go figure…a league with two teams called FC, another called AC and one named after an English club is going to have playoffs.
2 - Stupid, lawsuit-inspired name.
3 - And if my mom had two wheels, she’d be a bicycle. Or a Segway.

Yes, he’s a fabulously gifted passer. An amazing quarterback. One of the best ever. Until yesterday, I’d have said he was justthisclose to being considered the best ever.

He has size, smarts, stats and a Super Bowl ring.

But Sunday’s 31-17 loss to the Saints in Super Bowl μʹδʹ pointed out one thing Peyton Manning doesn’t have yet: a legend.

Think about it for a second: if I ask you to tell me The Legend of John Unitas, you can do it easily, right¹? “Pittsburgh kid, cut by the Steelers, picked up off the sandlot for an 85 cent phone call, the drive in the ‘58 overtime NFL Championship Game, back-to-back titles, 47 straight games with a touchdown pass,” etc. etc. etc.”

How about The Legend of Joe Montana? “Joe Cool, The Catch, the clutch drive to win Super Bowl XXIII for one of his four titles, three-time Super Bowl MVP, the Cotton Bowl his senior year,” and so on.

You can do these things off the top of your head, right? John Elway has a legend (”Blew off the Colts, The Drive, 0-3 in Super Bowls until winning the last two.”) Dan Marino, too (”Everybody passed on him, then he passed on everybody else, 5,000 yards in a season, the Marks Brothers, #13, all the records when he retired.”). Brett Favre’s is the small-town upbringing, the ironman streak, bringing a title back to Titletown, the game after the death of his father, the retiring/unretiring thing.

What’s The Legend of Peyton Manning? Scion of a great Southern football family isn’t enough for me, sorry. Never beat Florida? Not the type of thing you want on your tombstone, either. The whole “Ryan Leaf or Peyton Manning?” thing? No, don’t think so. #1 overall pick? So was Jeff George. Four-time MVP? Okay, but that’s not really a moment in time you can point to. Super Bowl MVP in the Colts’ first title in 35 years? He had a fairly pedestrian (for him) day and Dominic Rhodes ran for 113 yards and a touchdown and could have won it.

Manning had a chance yesterday to cement his legend: Down 24-17 in the Super Bowl with 5:35 to play, ball at his own 30 and all three time outs. If he takes them down the field and ties it up (or goes for two and the win²), there’s his legend.

As you no doubt have heard, he didn’t do that. On 3rd-and-4 from the Saints’ 31 with 3:24 to go, he threw an interception that Tracy Porter took back for a touchdown and a 31-17 lead. A few minutes and some terrible clock management and play-calling later, his night - and the Colts’ chances of a second title in four years - were over.

Manning turns 34 next month. Surely he has a few years left in him. But as Marino knows, you’re never guaranteed to get back to the Super Bowl. And until he does - and until he wins one in dramatic fashion, or does some other amazing feat - Peyton Manning might have to be content with being the greatest quarterback without a legend.

1 - Assuming you’re not a girl, or 15 years old.
2 - There is not a coach in the National Football League that would go for two down 24-23 late in the Super Bowl, not even The Brave And Daring Sean Payton^TM.

• Building a statue to Bud Selig.
• Un-retiring a retired number.
• Claiming sex addiction.
• Bill Cowher’s continued bellowing yesterday that the NFL overtime rule has to be changed. As if the current rule is that the team that wins the coin flip gets to go out there with its offense and the other team doesn’t get to send out its defense.
• Most of the Super Bowl commercials. Seriously, whatever you’re paying your ad agencies, Corporate America, it’s too much.
• Warren Sapp. He’s just a bad guy. Always has been a bad guy.
• And the parenting skills of the Spears family. Honestly, any men out there reading this: it’s paramount that you have a positive relationship with your daughter(s) and make them feel loved and respected. Else they’ll end up (a) on the pole, or ( b) a mom at 16 and dating a 28-year-old at 18.

I took the Packers to task not long ago for saying with a straight face that they needed to raise ticket prices by $10 or $11 to remain competitive. I said I’d have more respect for them if they’d just come out and say “We know you’ll pay it, so we’d be stupid not to¹.”

Now the new Cubs’ ownership has just admitted that, yeah, the semi-free ride of games on WGN is slowing down for financial reasons.

“Certainly the superstation — the fact that we were in 70 million homes outside of Chicago — was in large part responsible for the national love affair between this great franchise and its fans,” president Crane Kenney told fans at the Cubs Convention. “So we’re very respectful of that. But the fact is, we as a club make twice as much with the games being played on cable as opposed to over-the-air television.”

Having previously called for a team to just fess up, I can’t very well call Crane Kenney an idiot for fessing up. That said, he is an idiot on general principle², this episode notwithstanding.

As for me, I’m kinda proud that that crap organization has gotten none of my money since July of 2008, and that will continue.

1 - Due, in large part, to meatheads like this guy.
2 - If you saw his speech at the unveiling of the Ernie Banks statue, you’ll agree.

Apparently that’s a Spanish proverb about how unlucky Tuesday is (”On Tuesday, neither marry nor begin a journey“). Loves me some Wikipedia.

Anyway, here’s a few things for this unlucky day:

• The future of American soccer is, apparently, 35-year-old midfielders. AC St. Louis¹ signed hometown favorite Steve Ralston as player-coach yesterday. I love Steve Ralston and I’m happy for him, but if they’re paying him somewhere in the neighborhood of the $150,000 he made in MLS last year, and he is still rehabbing a knee injury, it’s a great deal for him and not such a great deal for ACSTL. He’d have to be the highest-paid second division player (probably) ever, and I don’t know how many tickets he’s actually going to sell. Meanwhile, FC Tampa Bay² signed Takuya Yamada, who their press release (and this regurgitated nonsense from The Examiner) describes as “iconic.” The icon has been with four J-League teams in the last five years and the most recent of his highly-touted “four caps for the Japanese national team” came five years ago. Plus, he was so in demand, he flew to Tampa at his own expense to try out. This should go well.
• Remember Jay Needham? Drafted by DC United in 2007, he spurned the offer of a lowball MLS contract to go play for Puerto Rico in the USL (where he was rookie of the year). Then he went to Norway. Now he’s back in the States, having just signed with the Austin Aztex. I’m sure someone will continue to hold him up as another example of MLS letting its best and brightest get away.
• Actual daily announcement from the high school where my kids go: “There will be a sex traffic seminar of February 5th at 2:40 and 6:30. Shirts will be available to buy.” Hope they’re not out of XXL.
• Remember, new Twitter feed: @kendovision.
• Ever wondered how to survive a fall from 35,000 feet? Here you go. Just in case the airline industry gets any worse. (Thanks to Dustin for that link.)
• Even though it’s pretty far-fetched to begin with³, this story, despite being refuted and refuted, hasn’t been retracted. Such is what passes for journalism in 2010.

1 - Stupid, Europosing Name #1
2 - Stupid, Lawsuit-Inspired Name #1
3 - Not that Pitt would join the Big Ten, but that they’d have reached a decision this quickly.

Here’s a look at a Super Bowl ad you’ll see Sunday:

Some quick notes for the last workday of the week:

• The Uniwatch blog has graciously run a column I wrote about the late, barely-lamented Senior Professional Baseball Association, which completed its one and only full season twenty years ago this weekend. Many thanks to Paul Lukas for that.
• Women’s Professional Soccer lost its Los Angeles franchise after just one season. This once again proves that winning doesn’t always mean financial success, and apparently robust attendance figures (LA led the league by averaging 6,298 per game) don’t always tell the whole story.
• I’m told the Chicago Fire will be training here in Phoenix for two weeks in February, at the same time that the San Jose Earthquakes will also be here. Real Salt Lake is supposed to be in Casa Grande (south of here, the only thing between here and Tucson) the 13th through the 27th and play two unnamed opponents on the 20th and 26th. Supposedly Chivas USA will be around during that time frame, so there may be an RSL/Chivas game around these parts. I know this: if it’s in Casa Grande, I ain’t going.
• Oh, goody, TIME Magazine knows how to fix football. Let me guess, change the overtime rule?
• New twitter feed: @kendovision. It’s for those of you who aren’t interested in what I had for lunch. Kind of the “edited for television” version.
• Apparently as of today I’m going to be the sole breadwinner in my household. It’s the economy, stupid. And, as I have to write (almost) an entire magazine today, I’d better get cracking.

Huh. That’s strange. Per Goff, MLS and the players’ union have agreed to extend negotiations for almost two weeks.

Now I suppose those who’ve been overreacting will parse this as doomsday and blah blah blah blah. But a dozen extra days takes off some of the external pressure. The two sides have been apparently talking quite a bit. And this shows both sides’ willingness to do things other than go right to the nuclear option.

MLS’ New York Red Bulls have released the patch they’ll be sporting on their shirts to mark the opening of their new arena.

Can you believe this will be their fifth season as the Red Bulls after ten as the MetroStars?

They haven’t played a game yet, but the new Tampa Bay Rowdies FC Tampa Bay are already on their second logo. The one above left was revealed September 25, 2008. Yesterday, when they revealed they’d be playing at a baseball stadium for a year or two, they quietly replaced that one (which had lasted 16 months and was never put on a t-shirt or a jersey, though does apparently appear on the nifty new NASL scarves you can see in this photo as well as on the front page of the NASL’s website) with the one you see at right, above.

Why the change? They didn’t say. They’re still calling themselves the Rowdies (though FC Tampa Bay Rowdies is, again, beyond stupid), but perhaps it had something to do with the (apparently ongoing) litigation with a Texas company¹ about who owns the trademark to the name “Tampa Bay Rowdies.”

As for the badge itself, the green and gold colors and stripes remain, as does the star (for some reason - it’s supposed to symbolize the original Rowdies’ 1975 Soccer Bowl championship), but the “1975″ notation is gone (good move). The old-school soccer ball (more obvious in the older badge than the new one) remains, but now “FC Tampa Bay” is emphasized. The badge appears slightly thinner and the top edges are straight rather than beveled in the new rendering.

The bottom line? Meh. This one, designed by a fan in Miami, was miles ahead of either of the two above².

EDIT: Inside Minnesota Soccer has an interview with Rowdies (yes, they’re still the Rowdies, you just can’t buy anything with that name on it if you’re a fan) CEO Andrew Nestor, in which he addresses the badge/lawsuit issue.

1 - The company in question once used section219.com as its website, but now the URL is classicsportslogos.com and you don’t appear to be able to order online anymore. I have a Rowdies t-shirt I bought from them, it’s nice.
2 - And this one is still the best wordmark.