Notes on a Sidekick

• It must be hard enough being a fan of a Mountain West Conference team and trying to find your school's games on television, without having your athletic department make it completely impossible. A few months ago CSTV outbid ESPN to get the rights to MWC football and basketball. Then CSTV turned around and partnered with Comcast to create a new channel called "the mtn." Long story short, CSTV and Comcast have been trying to sell "the mtn." channel to other cable companies, DISH Network and DirectTV, and have been asking way too much. So virtually nobody is carrying the channel except certain cable companies in Utah, Colorado and Idaho, leaving more than 85 percent of the MWC fan base in the dark as they tried to watch their teams play last weekend. This whole mess, of course, could have been avoided if the athletic directors in the MWC had thought more about their fans and less about their pocket books.

• England defender Ashley Cole, who was transferred from Arsenal to Chelsea last week, is one of the tougher players in the Premier League when he steps on the field, but he sounded like a crybaby as he talked about his transfer in his new book. (Yeah, apparently the turnaround on biographies is pretty quick across the pond.)

"The club made Thierry [Henry] feel wanted and special, wooing him, wining and dining him, speaking in public about how much they want him to stay, going on a deliberate charm offensive," he wrote. "'But me? I didn't have one dinner, one meeting or one phone call from anyone." He went on to write about his final game with the team. "My worst fears were confirmed when, as Thierry and I sat in the centre circle after the final whistle, his name was sung from the rooftops while my contribution was recognised by a deafening silence. As his chants faded away we waited for mine. And we waited. And there was nothing."

You can almost hear Cole sucking his thumb as you read him whining. Did he actually think he was going to get the same treatment as Thierry Henry, arguably the best soccer player in the world? That's like Rodney Harrison complaining he doesn't get the same love as Tom Brady. I don't know how to put this, Ashley, but you're not that big a deal.

• As I watched Notre Dame High (Sherman Oaks, Calif.) play Canyon last week, I was once again reminded that there's nothing quite like being at a great high school football game on a Friday night. The only reason I was there was because I graduated from Notre Dame (along with Rachel Bilson, Kirsten Dunst and Katherine McPhee) and was going to meet a few old classmates in Canyon Country. The game was really an afterthought, but it soon turned into a classic.

While Canyon, ranked second in the state, came in as the heavy favorite and jumped out to a 17-3 halftime lead, Notre Dame stormed back in the second half and was in position to take the lead in the final minute of the game when quarterback Dayne Crist hit receiver Mike Stanton for a 30-yard touchdown pass to get Notre Dame within a point. Instead of going for the tie, coach Kevin Rooney, entering his 27th season at the school, went for the win and got it when Crist hooked up with Stanton again on a two-point try to complete the comeback victory, 18-17. It was the kind of gutsy playcalling you would only see in video game tournaments these days. After the game a modest Joe McNabb, Notre Dame's defensive coordinator and my former PE teacher, said, "Maybe we're not as bad as people think."

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