Thursday, November 09, 2006

Magic of the Little Guy


In the United States it hard to image a team like the Tulsa Drillers playing the New York Yankees for a championship, but in England it happens every year. With the proper FA Cup ready to start in England this weekend, I can not think about how great it would be to have an event like this in any sport in United States. This year, there were approximately 687 teams entered into the cup and every year one of the teams from the lower division decides to shock the soccer world and beat one of the EPL larger teams. The format is easy, sometime in later summer teams from smaller division play off to see who gets to the first round of the cup. In the first round the teams from the first and second division of the Football league join them. In the third round, the EPL teams join the event and all of the crazy stuff starts.
But there is something different about this, teams are not bracket up and they play through to the end. They are draw out of a hat and put together, so after you win you have no idea who you are going to face, there could be a fourth round game that futures the top two teams in the EPL and another fourth round game that features two lower level teams that advanced.
That is the magic of "The world's oldest knockout competition."

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