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You can question the sense of the FIFA women's soccer World Cup running concurrently with the Rugby World Cup, but there you have it: Football of one sort competing with football of another for international headlines.
Then again, perhaps there won't be a competition for headlines.
Wire and photo services, including The Associated Press and Reuters, announced yesterday they have suspended RWC coverage until the sport's governing body agrees to ease restrictions on the amount of photo images and video that can be distributed. In the digital age of online publishing, this is an important issue for newspapers.
The Canadian Press, Agence France-Presse and Deutsche Presse-Agentur also have stopped coverage, as have photo services Getty Images and the European Pressphoto Agency.
In terms of television, the women's soccer tournament in China, which starts Monday, will give Canadian viewers more bang for their buck than the RWC in France.
A 21-game schedule on CBC will consist of nine live telecasts, including Canada's games as well as the semi-finals and the final. The digital channel CBC Country Canada will provide an 11-game schedule of which three will be live, plus repeats. CBCsports.ca will stream live all 32 tournament games.
CBC reporter Erin Paul will file reports from China. A studio panel in Toronto will be made up of host Scott Russell, analysts Craig Forrest and Dick Howard, and former Canadian team member Helen Stoumbos.
The CBC's first telecast is Wednesday, when Canada, seeded ninth, plays Norway at 7:45 a.m. (EDT).
For the RWC, Rogers Sportsnet will provide live telecasts of Canada's four games, starting Sunday with Canada-Wales at 8 a.m. (EDT). But the remaining games will cost you money.
Setanta Sports, a pay digital channel, will air a 25-game schedule that does not include live coverage of the playoffs. A premium pay-per-view package will carry 23 live games, including the full playoff schedule. It will cost $199, but a la carte is available at $24.99 a game, $34.99 for the gold-medal match.
Invective sells
The brand of football that really counts in North America is, of course, neither soccer nor rugby, but the NFL, which begins its first weekend of the regular season.
When delinquent players weren't the lead stories on newscasts during the off-season, Tiki Barber, the retired New York Giants running back, was getting attention for his putdowns of former teammates and head coach.
Barber, who will work for NBC as a studio analyst, cited Giants quarterback Eli Manning for weak leadership and said coach Tom Coughlin killed his desire to play.
For some in sports media, it sounded more like sour grapes than analysis.
Jimmy Johnson of Fox Sports said this week: "If it hadn't been for Tom Coughlin, Tiki Barber might not have even been playing these last couple of years. [Barber] dropped the ball so many times that there's a good chance he'd be over on the sidelines." Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe, on ESPN, said Barber should just shut up.
Is Barber guilty of settling old scores? His colleague at NBC Sports, Cris Collinsworth, also a former NFL player, didn't think so.
"The first thing everybody wants to do … is debrief you about your old team," he said. "It's just a fact of life. My question back to you is, would you prefer he said: 'Tom Coughlin did an unbelievable job with us, helped me with my fumbling, and my teammates were the greatest guys in the world. I've never been around a greater bunch of guys.'
"Collectively around the universe you would hear remotes going click, click, click."
Super Series shocker
Hockey Night in Canada's new analyst Craig Simpson, the former Edmonton Oilers assistant coach, said yesterday he is "shocked" by Canada's dominance of Russia in the junior Super Series.
Simpson, interviewed by Jeff Marek of AM 640 Toronto, said Canada's biggest advantage has been its teamwork compared with the individual efforts and general disarray of the Russians.
Marek happens to be a big fan of fighting as well as the old-style NHL. When he started waxing fondly about the spectacle of players trying to free themselves from hooking and holding, Simpson said the NHL is better off without the obstruction.
Despite Canada dominating the Russians — perhaps because of it — the audiences for the last two Super Series telecasts have been excellent: 452,000 watched Game 5; 431,000, Game 6. The first four telecasts from Russia averaged 170,000 viewers.
- The Toronto Blue Jays-Boston Red Sox game on Rogers Sportsnet on Wednesday drew 426,000.
- Andre Agassi's work in the broadcast booth, as a guest analyst during the Roger Federer-Andy Roddick U.S. Open match, mirrored his style as a player: Self-important, but quick and smart.
