For 20 years now, Williams's cry of "Are you ready for some football?" from his anthemic "All My Rowdy Friends" has been the Pavlov bell that brings football fans to their television sets. But not last night.

Why? Because earlier Monday, Williams shot his mouth off on "Fox and Friends." After being introduced as "the voice of Monday Night Football" who "knows a little about politics," Williams quickly embraced his new role as pundit, saying he didn't like any of the GOP candidates and referring to the golf summit between the president and House Speaker John Boehner as "one of the biggest political mistakes."

"It would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu, OK?" he explained. "Not hardly." Is it any wonder that on Monday's broadcast, even the reliably nonsense-minded hosts of Fox and Friends seemed unable to make heads or tails of what Williams was saying? When pressed for clarification, Williams said, "You know, they're the enemy. They're the enemy…" He then spelled it out: "Obama!"

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When it comes to sports and media and gender issues, Mary Jo Kane is among the nation's most outspoken critics of the sexualized imaging of women athletes -- what was Venus Williams wearing!?!? -- and a dogged chronicler of scant coverage of women's athletics on sports pages and TV channels.

A University of Minnesota professor and director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports, Kane is the author of such page-turning journal articles as "Sexual stories as resistance narratives in women's sports: Reconceptualizing identity performance" and "Expanding the boundaries of sport media research: Using critical theory to explore consumer responses to representations of women's sports."

So, who'da thunk that the good professor would be asked inside the macho ESPN tent?

Kane has joined an advisory panel that will guide the ESPN behemoth on its future coverage of women's sports and women athletes. In fact, ESPN is in the process of launching a new business and digital platform called espnW . . . which stands for ESPN women.

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It came after an exhausting 1-0 victory in extra time over the Netherlands on Sunday. Two years after winning the European title, the stylish Spaniards did even better.

This was a physical test of attrition that sometimes turned dirty -- a finals-record 11 yellow cards were handed out and the Dutch finished with 10 men. In the end, it was Andres Iniesta breaking free in the penalty area, taking a pass from Cesc Fabregas and putting a right-footed shot from 8 yards just past the outstretched arms of goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg.

For the Dutch and their legions of orange-clad fans wearing everything from jerseys to jumpsuits to clown gear to pajamas, it was yet another crushing disappointment.

Their first World Cup title tantalizingly within reach, they failed in the final for the third time. This one might have been the most bitter because, unlike in 1974 and 1978, the Netherlands was unbeaten not only in this tournament, but in qualifying for the first World Cup staged in South Africa.

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Not anymore. There's nothing of value here. If sports are revealing of culture, then I hate our dumb, callous, corporate guts. This is all a cynical exercise in futility. We as fans are choosing to live vicariously through people who quite possibly hate us, or at least wouldn't mind manipulating us for a better TV rating. In the run-up to LeBron's announcement that he would leave his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers to play for the Miami Heat, I defended every sordid aspect of the exercise as great theater. The free agent hype was like the unveiling of a new Apple product or Harry Potter book. Detractors were merely stuck in the throes of humorless jealousy.

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The Nielsen Co.'s overnight measurement in the nation's 56 biggest cities show more than seven of every 100 homes with television sets was tuned to ESPN to see where James would play. It's expected to be the biggest audience ESPN has ever gotten for a news program.

In Cleveland, "The Decision" drew a staggering 26 rating -- meaning more than one in four homes had TVs tuned to ESPN to see James say he was leaving his hometown Cavaliers for the Miami Heat.

In Miami, the show had a 12.8 rating.

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ESPN is making a huge investment in World Cup coverage, paying $100 million for the rights to the 2010 and 2014 tournaments, based on the conviction that not only do Americans know the beautiful game, they want all they can get.

The 2006 tournament on ESPN and ABC drew the largest audiences for a World Cup outside the United States. But research afterward showed the network could do more to show fans it's taking the sport seriously.

Now the network is trying to do just that, and to attract even more viewers, despite the time zone challenges of this year's event in South Africa, which is six hours ahead of New York and nine hours ahead of Los Angeles.

"The simple math of ratings, if you can take that audience and get them to watch for a longer period of time, it has the same effect as growing the number of viewers," said Jed Drake, executive producer for ESPN's World Cup coverage. "We really have targeted our presentation now for a knowledgeable soccer audience."

The same network that drew criticism for calling 20 matches from U.S. studios four years ago is putting together a staff of 300 people to produce the event in South Africa. ESPN has hired British announcers and plans 65 hours of live studio programming from Johannesburg.

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Was it only last month you ditched Paul Shirley after his kooky open letter to the people of Haiti in which he requested, among other gems, "Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?" Wasn't it just last fall you canned Steve Phillips after a fling with an assistant turned into a tawdry debacle of vengeance and TMI?

Perhaps it's little wonder, then, that when word got out yesterday you'd suspended "Pardon the Interruption" host Tony Kornheiser for two weeks after a few choice remarks about SportsCenter anchor Hannah Storm, our reaction was, "A stupidity outbreak at ESPN? Shut UP!"

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Deep into the night "SportsCenter" aired a brooding "Behind the Music"-style retrospective that blamed Tiger Woods for pretending to be a "model of propriety." Who knew that hawking razors (the kind that get you laid, if the woman ever stops fondling your face) made Tiger's adultery hypocritical? What was Woods preaching and was the green jacket part of Eldrick's ridiculous evangelical get-up?

This is the apotheosis of Sports Kabuki, a subconscious dance that keeps the good ol' American way from morphing into a Norman Rockwell painting of a man having sex with his Thanksgiving turkey. Once their humanity is discovered, athletes are shamed into a cringing renouncement of who they are, so we don't have to think about who we are. The folks at ESPN could be squeezing Woods because he's a driving, chipping, putting reminder of scandals at their own debauched network.

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There had been rumors during the postseason, denied by ESPN, that the network was about to break up the 19-year pairing of Miller and Morgan.

Instead, the four-letter has turned to the oldest trick in the long-running TV series book: It's brought in Cousin Oliver.

Phillips is the new kid, introduced to give a little goose to a program that's gone flat, that has -- if I may use a catchphrase that has MySpaced -- jumped the shark.

Steve Phillips is Seven on "Married ... With Children." He's Olivia on "The Cosby Show." He's Chachi.

I'm not sure the show needed freshening up -- I mean "Sunday Night Baseball," not "The Cosby Show." But I do know that Phillips is just the guy to not do it. The former New York Mets general manager has been with ESPN since 2004, working some games but mostly on the panel of "Baseball Tonight," where he's provided a steady stream of reasons for the other 29 teams not to hire him.

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A whole generation of readers is wondering what the heck pay TV is. ESPN's free, isn't it? It's on basic cable. It's the rare viewer under 30, and maybe under 40, who thinks of ESPN or other cable networks that carry major-sport playoff games as being significantly different than CBS or NBC.

Doomsayers have been warning since the 1970s that someday, all the big sporting events would be on pay TV, which at the time meant cable. The doomsayers were pretty much right, but only because almost all TV is pay TV now.

Depending whose figures you want to use, something like 88 percent of U.S. households that have televisions pay for cable or satellite service. That leaves roughly 14 million households with sets hooked up to nothing more than an antenna for watching TV. But a Nielsen Company survey last month found that nearly a quarter of those sets aren't being used to watch TV programming. They're hooked up to DVD and VCR players and video-game systems.

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Well, not really, but he sort of inadvertently made the classic sabermetric point that while clutch hitting obviously exists, there's no such thing as the skill of clutch hitting.

I was excited to have Morgan on my side of the street, however fleetingly. And I mean that in the larger sense of doubting the conventional baseball wisdom. On the specific question of clutch hitting, I'm pretty much with the old school. I believe it exists as a skill, that the statheads just haven't figured out a good way to measure it yet.

Morgan takes a lot of heat as a kind of sabermetric whipping boy, but I like listening to him. I really enjoy his broadcasts with Jon Miller. I thought he was great Sunday stopping Reggie Jackson in the middle of Reggie trying to deflect some praise from himself onto lesser Yankees like Paul O'Neill and Tino Martinez.

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That almost certainly won't happen, and that means this is another year when the once great Yankees franchise has fallen short of the postseason.

It's another year without a championship for Derek Jeter, who at 34 has had a down season and may be in his decline phase. If the Yankees don't get things turned around soon Jeter may well retire with only four World Series titles and six pennants to his name. Has any player so great won so little?

Imagine you're Mariano Rivera. You're the greatest closer in history, yet you've never had a chance to pitch in a playoff game, except in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.

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"ESPN to Chronicle Final Game from Yankee Stadium"

Really. Color me surprised. Up till now ESPN has been silent on the Yankee Stadium closing story for all of 200lastyearofyankeestadium. I mean 2008.

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What had been a five and a half-game lead on the morning of Sept. 1 had shrunk to half a game after the Sox won the series opener Monday night.

1. This was a big, fun September game, but not so much because of the pennant-race implications. As hobbyhorsed in this space before, there really isn't much of a pennant race going on between the Sox and the Rays because, barring a total collapse, the second-place finisher will make the playoffs anyway as the wild card.

Now, the Rays had been looking pretty total collapsy before Tuesday's win, losing six out of seven, and that could still happen. But that would be a total collapse and wild-card race story, not a pennant-race story.

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Network poobahs told reporters that focus groups in several cities had told ESPN what they wanted to see on ESPN's football broadcasts. You'd better sit down because this might shock you. It evidently shocked ESPN. Viewers wanted to see the game.

This is one of those good news stories. The season debut of "Monday Night Football," the Green Bay Packers' 24-19 home win over the Minnesota Vikings, was a delight. A sideline-reporter-free delight.

"Monday Night Football" had been employing not just one but two sideline reporters, Suzy Kolber and Michelle Tafoya, in its first two years on ESPN. That's an awful lot of "I talked to So-and-So's mom this week" reports and two sideline reporters too many, though both Tafoya and Kolber are excellent when they have worthwhile work to do.

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Each time the picture went out -- the last was moments after Germany's Philip Lahm scored the game-winner in the 90th minute -- game announcers Derek Rae and Andy Gray quickly threw the broadcast back to the studio, where Rece Davis, Julie Foudy and Tommy Smyth tap-danced until the feed was restored.

Davis was quick to point out that the problem was lightning strikes in Switzerland, where the match was being played, and that broadcasters all over the world had lost the feed.

In other words: Don't blame ESPN! This isn't our fault!

Fair enough. But why didn't Rae and Gray stay on the air and describe the action, radio style? The answer was obvious if you were paying close attention when the video went black: The ambient sound went out too, though Rae and Gray could still be heard. They were sitting in a studio in Connecticut.

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The elder Weeks was on a cellphone, describing the action to his father, Victor Weeks, who ESPN's announcing team said is legally blind. "That was a little outside, but he called a strike on him," he said after the 2-1 pitch. "Two-two count."

Jemile hit the next pitch over the right-field fence for a two-run homer and a 2-1 Miami lead. ESPN's camera caught Weeks high-fiving his neighbors and yelling into the phone: "Woooo! Home run! Home run, Dad! Home run, Daddy!"

"That," said color analyst Robin Ventura, "was the best home run call of the whole series."

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At least non-obsessed football fans have heard of a few of the guys in the first two or three rounds of the NFL draft. You have to have your nose buried in Baseball America, which as a baseball wonk I recommend, to have even heard more than one or two names from the first round of the baseball draft.

I've heard the names of most of these guys, I've even seen a couple of the college players play on TV, but I don't know much about any of them except one, my favorite player in the draft, Buster Posey, who went at No. 5 to my favorite team, the San Francisco Giants. He's my favorite player not because of anything he's done on the field, though he's a nice player, an athletic catcher who can hit and even closes for Florida State, but because he's practically named after my kids, Buster and Daisy.

By the way, I just learned that a posey is not a type of flower, like a daisy. It just means any flower, or a bouquet of flowers. Now you know why I'm not writing a botany column.

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Much has been made of new center fielder Aaron Rowand's weekly team-building bowling outings and Barry Zito's move into Bonds' old suite of four lockers in the spring training clubhouse, parceling it up with Matt Cain.

The players and manager Bruce Bochy are talking about how they're a team now, with no more of the old double standard, about how they'll have fun together off the field and scratch and claw together on it, manufacturing runs and swaggering with warrior spirit, as noted on the matchy-matchy T-shirts they've been wearing.

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