Aug. 27 - Nike sells the USL to NuRock soccer holdings instead of the team of owners. The owners are believed to be considering a new soccer league.

Oct. 3 - The USL releases players from Carolina, Minnesota and Miami, stating that they own the contracts to each team and the team's decision to leave the league makes them null and void. Left out of this was Montreal and Vancouver, which were playing in the USL final and are successful enough to plan for jumps to the MLS. However, the players remained with their teams as the owners maintained the USL did not, in fact, own the contracts.

Nov. 3 - Minnesota, mired in debt, releases its players for real this time. It had previously lost its general manager and coach.

Nov. 10 - Carolina, Minnesota, Miami, Vancouver, Montreal, Atlanta and St. Louis submit an application for a new league to the United States Soccer Federation. This is one team shy of the 8-team minimum the USSF normally requires as Tampa was dropped from the initially rumored list.

Nov. 20 - Tampa and Baltimore are added to the list, which is significant because it gives the new league nine teams — one more than eight should Minnesota fold (more on that on Sunday). However, the USL struck back later that day with a release vowing to pursue all (legal?) actions to keep Tampa and Baltimore in the USL. The USL says it believes the TOA is meddling with current USL teams under contract for the 2010 season.

Q: Just to be clear, you never paid the [USL franchise fee] for this upcoming year right?

A: No, I got out several months ago. 

Q: Was there a team that did pay the fee but is leaving the USL?

A: Not in our group. There's a few others in the league now that still haven't paid the fee. They're kind of sitting on the fence waiting to see what will happen. 

Q: Is there any talk about switching to the FIFA calendar?

A: There’s nothing serious in the time. Now, FIFA likes that, for everyone to be on the same calendar but you’ve got all these objections. We’ve got teams up in Rochester, Minnesota, Montreal and Vancouver. So there’s some objection to it. Now the answer to it is really not all that difficult. The way they do it over in Europe – they have cold weather over there too – so what they do is basically take two seasons. They usually start about August and end around April. But what they’ll do is split it. They’ll play from August till like December. Then they’ll take a big ol’ break during the cold months and maybe do some friendly matches and things like that in between. And then they’ll start the second half of the season late February/March. That’s how we’d do it in the United States to get around the weather problem. To me, that’s probably several years down the road.

The second round of the playoffs are here, and we've got three teams in
it, and all three could win (even though one would certainly be an
upset). Let's take a look at the games involving the season's three
winningest Tri-Nine teams.

I know we've kept you all on pins and needles waiting for this week's edition, and I apologize for the wait. As you may have known, half our of six advancing football teams are now out of the playoffs. (15) Cary lost 7-0 at (2) Hoggard, (14) Panther Creek lost 63-34 at (3) Jack Britt and (12) Holly Springs lost 24-0 at (5) New Hanover. The three home Tri-Nine teams all won their games.
The worst part is while I made predictions for these, I didn't publish a blog on it nor pick by how many points. But just so you know, I had my best week ever, getting all six playoff games correct.

The Cary Chargers will represent the Triangle's Consolidated Football Federation in the Pop Warner Little Scholars Mid-South Regional Football Championship on Nov. 28.

Thanks to the six Division I recruits from last year, Tri-Nine schools now boast enough active NCAA Division I basketball players to field a team.

In the print edition of today's The Cary News and Southwest Wake News, I mistakenly said the All-Conference team for the Tri-Nine would be announced Monday.
As I found out later that night (and after deadline), the team was simply decided upon Monday and won't be announced until after the last conference team is ousted from the playoffs (so here's hoping we don't know that list for awhile).
Which brings me to today's column which looked back on the year at-large.

1. Fuquay-Varina (+1)

2. Athens Drive (E)

3. Middle Creek (-2)

4. Panther Creek (+1)

5. Cary (+1)

6. Apex (+1)

7. Holly Springs (-5)

8. Lee County (E)