Soccer: Plan to Replace American Football With Soccer 'On Track,' Says Europe :by Andy Borowitz

A ten-year European plan to gradually phase out American football in the United States and replace it with soccer is “very much on track,” a spokesman for the European Union confirmed today.

The E.U. spokesman, Alf-Jergen Holmboe, said the replacement of American football with soccer was the third in a three-step plan to transform the U.S. into a European country.

“The first two steps were electing a socialist President and instituting national health care,” he said. “Once soccer replaces football, our work will be done.”

Holmboe said that the E.U. could take no credit for the legalization of gay marriage in the United States, but called it “a very welcome development.” He added, “Once a country has socialism, national health care, and gay marriage, soccer is usually next.”

The spokesman offered no timetable for eliminating baseball, but indicated that it was “in the works.”

Read more: Plan to Replace American Football With Soccer 'On Track,' Says Europe : The New Yorker

Roger Goodell: NFL could potentially have a division of Europe-based teams

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the league could potentially create a division of Europe-based teams if efforts to bring the game to the international community are successful.

Goodell, who spoke in London ahead of the game there Sunday between the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers, said no such move is imminent. The league first wants to expand the number of neutral-site games in Europe, possibly as early as next season.

For more: Roger Goodell: NFL could potentially have a division of Europe-based teams - The Huddle: Football News from the NFL - USATODAY.com

Boston Globe; European soccer - Why Karl Marx would love America's sports -- and hate Europe's - by Steven Stark

For the complete report from the The Boston Globe click on this link

European soccer - Why Karl Marx would love America's sports -- and hate Europe's - by Steven Stark

When it comes to big-time sports, it's Europeans who are the real free-market meritocrats - rewarding success, leaving failure behind, and letting every man fend for himself. By comparison, American professional sports is organized as a giant welfare state, where wealth is shared, luxury spending is taxed and passed to the poor, and even the weakest are never allowed to fail.

The contrast is most striking in football. To many abroad, the National Football League is America. And the NFL is about as redistributive an enterprise as one can imagine - a living example of "share and share alike." The league's revenue-sharing provisions mean that its massive television revenues go into a huge pot, which is handed out evenly regardless of success - the bigger, successful teams essentially subsidizing the smaller failures. There are also salary caps, and scheduling and draft mechanisms that empower the poor at the expense of the rich - all in the name of equality, otherwise known as "parity."