Week of 2007-09-01 17:00 to 2007-09-08 16:59

Drink a Guinness for your health! The BBC is reporting on a study that shows a Guinness a day keeps the heart doctor away.

A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as an aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks.

Since I always feel better after having a pint of Guinness, this seems to confirm my findings. ;)

“…the bottom 3 Clubs in the table at the end of the Season shall be relegated to the Football League.”

— from English Premiership Rule B.28 (see their Handbook).

So a minor league team (the USL’s Seattle Sounders) beats two out of three MLS teams in the US Open Semi-Finals. What’s the story with a promotion/relegation system a la the EPL?

From the Wikipedia article on Promotion and relegation:

In many sports leagues around the world (with North American and Australian professional leagues being the most notable exceptions), relegation (or demotion) means the mandated transfer of the least successful team(s) of a higher division into a lower division at the end of the season. This is usually accompanied by the most successful team(s) from the lower division enjoying the opposite procedure, promotion.

The USL allows team promotion from the Second Division to the First Division, but it’s not exactly the same idea.

Earlier this year, Alexi Lalas weighed in on the topic, saying relegation was a “very foreign concept to sports in the United States.” That linked article by David J. Warner discusses some of the key differences between American league and European league systems, including the concept of parity:

Every major sports league that has formed in America since then uses this franchise model that the National League created. Hence, American sports leagues — especially the NFL — began to thrive on the idea of parity. More clubs had a shot at winning the title every year, and bad clubs were rewarded with high draft picks that they could use to bring in college players that would help them improve their chances of getting back into title contention. In the NFL, everyone shares the wealth for the benefit of the entire league.

I can’t see a European-style system in place here in the near future, if ever. There’s too much money wrapped up in the franchise concept.

Hardcore Casual reviewed the Wii soccer game Mario Strikers Charged recently and liked it well enough to call it “a worthwhile purchase.”

I don’t have a Wii, though if I were to buy a new console in the vaguely near future, Wii might be the one. Pretty sure this particular game wouldn’t be on my to-buy list, but, as Hardcore Casual says,

As with many other Wii games, you can’t exactly point to one factor of why it’s entertaining, but it is, and you keep coming back for more.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

When life gives you record high temperatures, you make chocolate chip cookies in your car.

(Via blogging.la.)