• Pete McEntegart: The 10 Spot -- Fri., Jan. 14 • Truth & Rumors: Chrebet done as a Jet? • Richard Deitsch: Soccer gets its own channel • Daniel Habib: $10,000 will really teach Moss • Arash Markazi: Lighten up on Randy Moss • More Blogs: Elliott | Markazi | Bradley | Rolfe Click here for Today's Sign of the Apocalypse, Game to Watch, Leading Off gallery and much more!

Calm down, please. Contain yourself. I realize such news will be greeted in most circles by a collective thud of disinterest. But for those of you who prefer Goodison Park to Miller Park or Michael Owen to Owen Wilson, this is huge news, as big as Jared before the Subway diet.

Soccer in America received a major infusion of accessibility this week when Fox Sports World announced it would morph into the Fox Soccer Channel come February. (The formal ceremony will come during a 30-second spot on Fox's Super Bowl pregame show on Feb. 6; the revamped network begins broadcasting at 12:01 a.m. Feb. 7.) With 85 percent of Fox Sports World's programming already soccer-based, the network decided to ditch Aussie Rules Football, darts, rugby and concentrate on the world's most popular sport.

"We wanted to bring the branding and positioning of the network more in line with the actual programming content," says David Sternberg, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Fox Sports International. "We felt that the previous branding wasn't as reflective as it could be for the kind of programming on our network. We wanted to align the network clearly with the tremendous growth of soccer in this country, and one of the things we're focused on is bridging the gap between doers and viewers, getting people who may participate in soccer and bring them into the tent as viewers."

Interest in soccer is growing in the U.S., though the revolution many thought would happen hasn't materialized. It's a niche sport, but one with an incredibly loyal fan base. And in immigrant-rich cities such as New York, L.A. and Chicago, it has deep pockets of support. If the Fox Soccer Channel can tap into that network, it has a shot to make serious inroads. The channel is available to about 20 million households (mostly on digital cable systems) and has exclusive North American rights to the English Premier League, English F.A. Cup and England's home World Cup qualifying matches; it also carries games from the German, Dutch, Argentine, Brazilian, and French Leagues, qualifying matches for Euro 2008, and live coverage of MLS games.

Sternberg says the channel wants to capitalize on the growth of the MLS (attendance was up in '04 thanks to Mr. Freddy Adu) and the success of the men's and women's national teams. It will debut a new weekly program starting in April titled Fox Soccer USA, which will focus on news at all levels of soccer in America. FSC should also think about adding programming that augments its live coverage, whether that's SportsCentury-style programming of soccer immortals, or a show with the same spirit as Fox Football Friday, which is a wacky but winning Wayne's World-ish show hosted by uberfans Steven Cohen and Nick Geber.

Still, the channel's strength is that it's the only place to see European soccer. That's where many of the giants of the sport play and any network that has the top talent in a sport has a chance to succeed. At the moment, Fox Soccer Channel does not show games from Spain's La Liga (featuring Real Madrid's David Beckham and Ronaldo) and Italy's Serie A but Sternberg says the channel will look at those properties when current agreements expire with Gold TV.

"European Leagues remain important and we're always looking for new ones that have the right balance between affordability and interest to the audience," he says.

What could put the Fox Soccer Channel on the map on a larger scale is a stake in the coverage of future World Cups, one of the few soccer events that has the potential to draw the casual sports viewer.

"We definitely want to be a player in the World Cup once the current arrangements [ABC and ESPN are the broadcast home through 2006; Univision holds the Spanish-language TV rights] lapse after the '06 World Cup," says Sternberg. "Whether we do that on our own or in partnership with others is an open question."

What isn't in a question is that television viewers of soccer had a very good week.

Burns is back

Filmmaker Ken Burns returns to PBS this week with Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. The two-part documentary debuts Jan. 17 and 18. After marinating in the life of Johnson for three years, Burns says he found himself greatly admiring his subject: "I liked him more and more as it went along," Burns says.

"And it's not to say he is not his own worst enemy. We all are. And we hold his feet his to the fire for incidents that I think are unacceptable but I'm so drawn to this courageous man. He reminds you of what bravery can do and what an amazing affect it has."

Burns said that he had been reading and researching the story of Johnson for 12 years; the actual film took three years to make. Here are two other choice excerpts from my Q&A with him a couple of weeks ago:

(On when he first encountered the story of Johnson)

Burns: "I'm not much of a boxing fan except when boxing elevates an individual to a kind of symbolic and metaphoric level as it has done significantly twice in its history: The most recent was Muhammad Ali, and the first was Jack Johnson. I remember being aware of the play and movie, The Great White Hope, so I knew the contours of his life. But as it turns out, Jack Johnson is in fact even more dramatic, more complicated and even more interesting than the Jack Johnson of the drama of the play and the movie. He comes across as a more brutish animal there whereas the Jack Johnson that we got to know was an incredibly smart and articulate person for whom the strengths and weaknesses went hand and hand. His heroism was a complicated negotiation between those strengths and those weaknesses.

(On getting film footage of Johnson)

Burns: "A couple of films back I made a film about Mark Twain -- he and Jack Johnson more or less overlap -- and there's like 23 seconds of footage on Mark Twain. But there's hours on Jack Johnson, and there was an accumulative thrill as we got to really know him. I could be brought up to speed with regard to the boxing because I could watch it and see it, and people could describe to me what he was doing. Or narratively, we would read in newspaper accounts of various fights ... There was just a wonderful sense that he didn't seem so far away as so often old photographs and jittery newsreels make you feel. He seemed very modern and very accessible and as we got to know him more, he seemed to be the one historical character I have gotten to know who you could drop into today and he'd be fine. He'd have his bling, his long coats, his entourage, his woman, his fast cars, and he'd be perfectly at home."

Love for Z

If only they were televised: Dr. Z's Seventh Annual TV Commentator Awards would make Pauline Kael proud.

Two sports books worth reading

1. The Boys of Winter, a fresh and fascinating look at the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team by New York Daily News sportswriter Wayne Coffey. It's likely the closest thing you'll get to great hockey drama this winter.

2. Jimmy Connors Saved My Life, a wildly entertaining A Fan's Notes-style examination at the larger-than-life tennis icon by tennis journalist Joel Drucker.