Great story in the Vancouver Province today.

I love this moment, where a(n alleged) Cosmos fan shows he needs to brush up on current events. (H/T to Nico, originally happened here.)

It’s cool that Phoenix FC got some play on CBS5 news here in Phoenix this morning.

It’s not so cool that CBS5 used a(n outdated) W-League logo as part of the graphic.

(Not surprising…just over a year ago, CBS5 used an NFL logo that was four years out of date.)

Syracuse Silver Knights president Tommy Tanner, who famously said his MISL team would “sell out every game” before it played one, is perplexed about why they haven’t actually sold out every game. Or come close, even.

“We’re still not where we need to be,” said Tanner, who vowed there will be, at least, a third campaign for his bunch. “We got about 2,000 a game last year and we’re getting about 2,000 a game this year. It’s almost exactly the same. And I can’t explain that. I really can’t.”

Well, I can explain it: you seem to think tickets just sell themselves. You seem to have two people charged with selling group tickets, which is great, but you need a lot more people selling all sorts of tickets if you’re going to average more than the 3,424 announced that is ahead of only Wichita and Chicago in the seven-team MISL.

What’s really strange is Tanner’s assertion that they were getting “about 2,000 a game last year and… about 2,000 a game this year.” The Silver Knights announced an average of 2,951 per game (sixth out of seven teams) last year and have announced an average of 3,424 this year (an increase of 16 percent). So they appear to be growing.

Unless you’re going to tell me that indoor soccer teams aren’t entirely truthful about their attendance figures. Which, come on.

(All this said…I don’t know who he is, but Syracuse’s play-by-play announcer is really good. REALLY good. Great description of the game, just the right amount of enthusiasm, knows the terminology, keeps up with the action, good voice. I don’t know how he got good, but he’s good.)

The future starts now, all right. Thursday, February 7, 2013 is next Thursday. This announcement comes to you from the local USL Pro team, the Phoenix FC Wolves, who have their first home game in less than 60 days, and are kind of behind the 8-ball. They haven’t announced ticket prices yet, haven’t hired anyone in sales and marketing yet, have no one in the organization who has ever actually sold a ticket, and have six home games by Memorial Day. I hope they do well, but everything I’m hearing (except from local fanboys) is head-scratching.

Old and Busted: Greg Schiano, October 16, 2012, after cornerback Aqib Talib was suspended for four games by the NFL: ”He’s going to be back with us. You’ve got to just trust us on this one.”

New Hotness: Yeah, he’s not going to be back with us.

Looks like it was quite the ordeal for whatever intern is responsible for content on the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper as well.

From the June 27, 1994 issue of The Sporting News comes this story on the new soccer league that would start up less than two years later.

Yeah, loud wrong.

You may member an indoor soccer team called the Phoenix Monsoon (the one that listed me as its play-by-play announcer despite not actually, you know, consummating a deal with me). This was its maiden season in the PASL, and they had big plans for it. Well, the original owner was out before Christmas and the new owners have changed the name of the team to the Arizona Storm.

The above is what you see when you go to the team’s new website. So, yeah.

“Storm” may be the single most-used name for a soccer team ever. Just off the top of my head, I remember the St. Louis Storm, the Memphis Storm, the Chicago Storm and now the Arizona Storm indoors and the New Orleans Storm, Seattle Storm and Sacramento Storm outdoors. I’m sure there have been others.

Oh, and after winning their first game ever, they’ve lost their last nine and are now on their third home field since Halloween. Surely, things are trending upward.

EDIT: They’ve now noticed their typo.

Perhaps had superagent Leigh Steinberg waited for the grapes in the photo accompanying this Chicago Sun-Times story to turn into alcohol, he would have had time to pull himself out of the spiral that cost him millions of dollars.

And, no, there are almost no editors left at newspapers anymore, thanks for asking.