So Archer and Monday are beating up on poor Steven Cohen. (Remind me to stay on Archer and Monday's good side, tia)

Whenever the discussion turns to Phox Phootball Phone-In, fairness and full disclosure demand that I point out that Steven Cohen and Nick Geber fired me a few years ago. Myself and another person who I'm going to assume doesn't want to be dragged into this had a radio show on their network. Since I don't think there are archives up of the show anymore, let me assure you that it was AWESOME.

Anyhoo, it didn't make any money. That wasn't my fault, necessarily, but Cohen could rightly point out that if he thought my talent was indispensable he could have asked me to stay in some capacity, so there.

From my acquaintance with him, I would guess that while he believed then, and believes today, every word of what he said in the Arsenal America interview, if he thought he would get more listeners by saying the opposite, he would. I don't exactly know how they get mileage out of a business model of insulting listeners/viewers who after ranting about the hosts decide to support British Airways or whoever's sponsoring them now, but they do, so nice work if you can get it.

This may play into 10% of it, as well, but every Los Angeles-based soccer reporter detests the Galaxy, and has done since long before Beckham showed up. If I had to put food on my family based on getting information out of Anschutz Entertainment Group, I'd probably hate them, too. Grahame L. Jones, T.J. Simers, the people at Sideline Views, Eric Wynalda, Nick and Steve...on the other hand, dealing with that group probably would have turned Peter Wilt into Howard Hughes, so there's that.

Another 10% of it was that their original audience were English Premiership snobs who would rather have watched their family pets being made into pies than MLS. They've expanded slightly, but it's easier to be Jim Rome than Jim McKay.

To this day, I don't know how I feel about him wearing the Chelsea shirt. (I haven't seen the show since God was a boy, so I don't know which shirt Nick Webster wears, but I'll assume for a moment he keeps up the schtick that Nick Geber did, and represents some other Premiership team.) No, they never made the team; no, they don't speak for the club; yes, they're supporting teams on the wrong continent. But it's honest, or at least representative of their audience. They're not pretending to be unbiased suit-and-tie types. If anyone were dumb enough to put me on television, I'd probably rock out the '96 Galaxy jersey once in a while.

The best thing you can do with them is take them entirely at face value - that's probably as close to the truth as we'll get. I don't even know whether that's an insult or a compliment at this point.