How hard is this to figure out?
Texas has enough good quality schools to fill up its own conference. It can keep rivalries and begin to form new ones.
Schools need to get along and come up with a balanced solution to television revenues so that teams don't have to travel and crisscross the country to find competition.

Putting footballing rivalries aside for the benefit of the greater good isn't something that happens too often, but if it's happened anywhere, it's not surprising that it would be in the Bundesliga. Praised as "a model of financial virtue and good governance," the league has rejected gluttonous spending in favor of actually turning a profit.

The idea of a soccer "derby" eluded me when I was younger. Not only because I heard it as a "dArby", but also because American announcers would always make a point to distance it from our petty little rivalries in the US. Derbies are a rivalry, but fueled by years of bad blood and proximity - where immense soccer fervor allowed multiple teams to pop up within a few miles of each other.

I'll always remember the first game of football I ever went to: I was aged six; the location was Aggborough in Kidderminster as the Harriers took on Aston Villa in Graham Allner's testimonial. It was a few years before I was ever introduced to top flight football at Villa Park or First Division football at Molineux.

Saturday, January 28

England FA Cup, Liverpool-Manchester United (7:30amET FSC): The most heated of English rivalries?

African Cup, Ghana-Mali (2pmET Al Jazeera Sports USA)

Italy, Juventus-Udinese (2:30pmET FSC, ESPN3.

The FA Cup may well be the oldest football cup competition in the world a fact that television viewers will doubtlessly be reminded of around three hundred times over the next seventy-two hours or so -but football supporters that don't have to habitually wipe rage-induced spittle from the corner of their mouths could well be forgiven for approaching this weekends fixtures in the Fourth Round of the competition with a degree of trepidation.

Spend too much time examining the MLS scheduling format and the philosophies therein, and one will inevitably fall down a logical rabbit hole - though, to be fair, this doesn't differ significantly from other "major-league" North American sports.

MLS version 3.0, or 2.1, or whatever we are up to, has become all about "local rivalries", or so it seems.

Photo: Paul Rudderow

With the release of the Union's 2012 regular season schedule, I, along with my colleagues at the PSP, am buzzing about the prospects of the new season. Just 66 more days (stupid leap year) until the Union take the pitch in Portland to get Year Three underway. In the meantime, now that MLS has thrown out last year's balanced schedule (take that purists) we have plenty to talk about with respect to the construction of the 2012 Union schedule.

Photo: Nicolae Stoian

Philadelphia Union

Reaction to the release of the 2012 schedule:

The Goalkeeper notes that the Union is hosting New York and DC twice. "This strikes me as unfair from a competitive balance standpoint...As such, it would seem to me to make more sense to have each team host one team once and one team twice.

Let's start with the good news about the 2012 MLS schedule: Despite earlier announcements that Seattle Sounders FC would be playing on March 10, the league office has thought better of it and gave them the weekend off. In fact, the Sounders and Toronto FC will get the weekend off in order to focus on their CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals matches on March 7 and 14.

There has been, as has seemed perpetual over the last few months or so, a lot of bad news about recently. Whether we are driving to distraction over racism, looking at football clubs that are staring into the financial abyss or lamenting the death of anything approaching civility within our national game, putting our heads above the parapets of modern football for longer than a fraction of a second can be a thoroughly dispiriting experience, and it can become a thorough bind to even seek to engage with the wider world of football at times.

The Chicago Fire opened Red Bull Arena in 2010. In 2011, the Men in Red had the 'honor' of opening Jeld-Wen Field in April and Livestrong Sporting Park in June. In the three away games, Chicago was outscored 5-2 and had two losses and one draw. I'm not a big fan of the Fire opening stadiums because the opposition brings their top game for the special event.

By Dario Camacho - MIAMI, FL (Dec 19, 2011) US Soccer Players -- When you are a kid living in Bogota, Colombia there comes a time and realization that one day, you must pick a side. The eternal battle between the local teams, Millonarios and Santa Fe de Bogota is one of the countries oldest rivalries.

Is it necessary to have 70,000 seat stadiums? Can 50-55,000 do the trick?
It's common knowledge that people aren't always in the mood to rush out to the stadium fighting traffic, paying parking and high ticket prices.

Tweet of the day (and it's not even noon) thanks to Revs President

If you don't follow New England Revolution President Brian Bilello on Twitter, you probably should. Last night the Revs unveiled their hideous jerseys and announced that Shalrie Joseph is returning to the team in 2012. After a barrage of tweets on how horrible their new jerseys are, Brian sent this out this morning:
"Consensus is that most #revs fans like the jersey and really like that SJ21 is back but #cf97 fans don't like our team, our jerseys or me.

By Darshan Joshi

Progress prolongs our existence. It is a beautiful reality that progress will one day find the cure for cancer, the solution to global warming and the end to discrimination. Even individually, each day is progression. We might do nought but lay in a hammock on a golden Maldivian beach, wordless, but not thoughtless – never thoughtless – and that is progress in itself.

Happy Cyber-Monday everyone! I've been scanning the internet using some of the new apps that check for deals and its been making things a lot easier. Although it feels like cheating when you don't even have to work on your search-fu to find bargains. Cyber-Monday is another day for celebrating the glories of American consumerism by blowing off work.

Go to any article on the MLS site that has anything to do with the Seattle Sounders or the Portland Timbers and you will find back and forth snide comments from Seattle and Timbers fans. Even in the Goal of the Year and Save of the Year articles you had the constant bickering between the two fan bases.

So now we enter into that long, dark, cold, lonely time that the more cavalier among us call the "offseason". Basically, we won't be seeing any real MLS action until March. Granted, there's the Superdraft and some other small events in between, but for the most part we're now adrift in an MLS-less winter.

Some cracking games this week from around Europe, including two of the biggest rivalries around - one from Germany and one from France.

Top 10 greatest sporting rivalries: Celtic v Rangers, Holland v Germany, Barca v Real and more

The biggest rivals in sport revealed by talkSPORT

View the full story here: Talksport

A news article on 2011-11-15 12:36:49 from: Talksport

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

One game. Everything on the line.

This is the stuff that rivalries are made of.

Philadelphia Union vs. the New York Red Bulls. On national TV. It's so on.

If Philadelphia wins, the Red Bulls go home for a long winter. Their disastrous season is over. The Union win the Eastern Conference and home field advantage if they make it to the conference finals.

Man United v Liverpool and six of the best intercity rivalries

Some of football's biggest rivalries extend far beyond the confines of a single city

View the full story here: Talksport

A news article on 2011-10-14 13:29:21 from: Talksport

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

On this week's report we take a look at one of the fiercest rivalries in English football: Liverpool versus Manchester United. Which team is older? Which has won more head-to-heads? Have they ever played each other in a final? Which of them has won more league titles? These and other questions are answered in this week's report, which also has a transcript

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it. | Subscribe: Main Listening Report | Complete List Here

On this week's report we take a look at one of the fiercest rivalries in English football: Liverpool versus Manchester United. Which team is older?

The Glazer family discussed the possibility of individual selling of overseas television rights with John W Henry and his colleagues at Liverpool before club chief executive Ian Ayre floated the subject this week, The Daily Telegraph understands.
Ayre's suggestion that the biggest clubs in the league abandon the Premier League's collective selling model and exploit their overseas rights individually has met with opposition from the league and clubs concerned that it would ultimately weaken the competition.

Euro Cup 2012 qualifiers are well underway with today's play off draw renewing old Euro Cup rivalries. This mornings draw placed Turkey v. Croatia, reminding us of one of 2008′s... Read more »

End of an Era for Television Revenue Distribution?

Ever since the Premier League's inception in 1992 its constituents have been able to shelve even the fiercest of rivalries in order to thrash out fair and even distribution agreements for the billions of pounds that is raked in from TV deals each season.

Liverpool first-team coach Steve Clarke believes the international break has created a "difficult situation" ahead of next weekend's clash with Manchester United.
Liverpool, currently fifth in the Premier League, take on the league leaders on Saturday in one of the most fiercely contested rivalries in the game.

Kenny Cooper has received his fair share of criticisms this year for under performing based on expectations from fans from when he was an FC Dallas striker. Admittedly it was probably a little unfair for many of us (myself included) to expect a repeat performance of his 2008 self with a brand new team.

• Kop That: Liverpool linked with German wonderkid http://t.co/SkMLpkuj 22:47:32, 2011-09-27
• Kop That: Why Scottish caps 'didn't count' at Bayern Munich in the '90s http://t.co/RDoXIQGi 22:30:11, 2011-09-27
• Kop That: Would visiting the Munich air crash site could stop vile chants for good?

City rivalries set aside to fight crime

A campaign which has seen Liverpool unite with Everton to reduce crime is celebrating its fifth birthday.

View the full story here: Liverpool FC

A news article on 2011-09-27 16:09:39 from: Liverpool FC

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

Big congratulations to the U.S. Women's National Team for their thrilling 3-nil blow out against the Canadian side, not that anybody expected another result in Portland. I was, unfortunately, unable to attend in person, which is a huge shame because I really enjoy women's soccer and, on many occasions, believe it brings a better, more technical game than MLS does.

On a muggy, warm and cloudy day in Tukwila the main interest at practice was Mr Alan Hinton. With the game against the Vancouver Whitecaps he, Brian Schmetzer and Roger Levesque represent the history across generations and represent the history of this rivalry that is represented by the Cascadia Cup.

Graham Hays of ESPN writes of the great rivalry in women's soccer between Duke University and the University of North Carolina, which is led by two of the finest coaches in the United States in Anson Dorrance of UNC and Robbie Church at Duke.
If you don't know what you're looking for, the soccer practice field is easy to miss as you drive along the far edge of Duke's campus.

Money Can't Buy You Love

The ever increasing gulf in class between Barcelona and Real Madrid is definitive proof that a love for football and the shirt that you don can trump any amount of financial muscle. At a time when Liverpool are facing up to the prospect of competing with teams who are able to burn cash as freely as an ageing playboy, this is a very reassuring sentiment.

Photo by B-vk Thapa FC Barcelona

Don't miss Barcelona against Real Madrid in the Spanish Super Cup, second leg, live on ESPN Deportes (4pm ET, 17th August).

One of the most heated rivalries in all of Europe will face each other Wednesday night when Barcelona host Real Madrid in the second leg of the 2011 Spanish Super Cup.

Week 17 of MLS action held some remarkable moments. Amidst the slate of games we saw a Dax McCarty and Dwayne De Rosario showdown in New York. A strange goal from a David Beckham PK gave LA the win and we saw one of the greatest soccer rivalries in North America on national television. All in all, a fun weekend of MLS play.

Football in Europe is big business with a number of the world's best teams participating in Italy and Spain. Some of the game's most fierce rivalries exist in the continent with Barcelona vs Real Madrid and Inter vs AC Milan to name but a few, with a battle on a season-by-season basis and millions of [.

Britain's most succesful football cities - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Football has always thrown up rivalries, mostly between two or more side's that inhabit a city. Liverpool and Everton, Manchester United and City, Glasgow Rangers and Celtic all are at loggerheads with each other and are constantly looking for bragging rights in their individual battles.