No soccer and the Sound and the Furyk

There should have been a blog post yesterday. It should have been about soccer. It should have been an enthusiastic and breathless account of an incredible soccer game that was determined by penalty kicks.

As you can see, there was no such post.

You see, a funny thing happened on the way to the stadium. I had a run-in with the law, the direct result of having a run-in with the back of a Chevy Suburban. As such, I watched my Honda Accord get hauled away by a tow truck right around the time the game was starting.

I thought I might be away without a ticket, since once they found I was a sports reporter for the Statesman, the police only wanted to talk to me about Cedric Benson. No such luck.

Anyhow, a story I wrote about a family of champions... err, one champion and a couple of runners-up, is running in the Williamson County edition of the Statesman tomorrow. So for those of you who don't live in WillCo, here it is online.

And while I won't be at Torrey Pines for this year's U.S. Open, I will be following intently. I am participating in a pool with some moolah at stake.

Need a reason to watch golf? Root for these guys.

My golfers are Jim Furyk, defending-champ Angel Cabrera, Jason Gore, Mike Weir and Ben Curtis. I also drafted some dudes named Artemio Murakami, Nick Watney and Rickie Fowler (an amateur), but I don't really expect them to carry me to victory (I'll happily eat crow if proven wrong).

While I'm pretty content with my lineup and think Furyk has a legitimate shot at the title, this "expert" says my top pick has only the 13th best shot at winning.

For my money, with el Tigre a question mark, Phil Mickelson has to be the favorite going in. Rick Reilly agrees in this column, which is a return to form for the former Sports Illustrated scribe. So much a return to form, that it reminds me very much of this column. You know you're the best when you start ripping off your own ideas.

Then again, who am I to criticize? I'm just the intern.