The best football players -- well, they're all here to begin with. Soccer? The really good players go somewhere else. If Neil Diamond rewrote Coming to America as a sports anthem, soccer would be ruining the chorus. When we see international athletes come to America to earn their fame and fortune, it is a restaging of America's immigrant fable: aspirants from around the world gravitating to the shining city on a hill. First the Pilgrims, now Nowitzki and Ichiro. It all ties together. But look at how David Beckham answers a question about whether he wants to come to MLS: "I want to play at the highest level for a few more years yet. Going to America is one of the ideas that I've thought of in the future." In other words, when he can't cut it in Europe anymore, he'll come to America to increase his star power and pick up some endorsement deals. He'll come here for the money his famous name can generate, but there's no glory to be had.

The players I've enjoyed watching these past weeks -- Portugal's Christian Ronaldo and England's Aaron Lennon and Brazil's Ronaldo -- all play in European leagues, and so those are what I'll continue to watch. Wanting the best is the American way. In soccer, even a novice can see it's not here.

More on West Coast vs. West Point

Last week I wrote about the dominant coaching trees in the NFL, West Coasters and what I called West Pointers (Parcells, Belichick, et al.) A reader from Nashville wrote in to say that a proper West Coast coaching tree should have also included Dennis Green, Dick Jauron and, if I was stretching it out, Tony Dungy, who coached defense under Green. Point taken. But even though the West Coasters have the longer list, it's still the West Pointers who are coming on strong.

This week I like:

• The Ben Wallace signing by the Bulls. Even if Wallace is starting to show age, it's still smart to add a lunchpail veteran to a team that is young and talented. The move may tie them up in regard to the salary cap, but that doesn't matter. They have their guys; it's a matter of getting them to win more.

• The Bucks picking up Charlie Villanueva. Milwaukee's starting lineup -- with Mo Williams, Michael Redd, Bobby Simmons and Andrew Bogut -- has real possibilities.

• The Will Ferrell profile in this month's GQ. Ferrell himself filled in the Mad Lib-style blanks in a generic celebrity profile. At one point he candidly acknowledges his addiction to (filled in blank) "the booger sugar."

• The Magic Numbers song I See You, You See Me. You know who really likes it? My iTunes program, which works it into the "shuffle" with non-random frequency.

This week I don't like:

• The piles and piles of dead mussels washed up at the Jersey shore around Ventnor this past holiday weekend. I have been going to that same beach for more than 30 years, and I had never seen anything like it. They blame the rain. The scene looked -- and smelled -- like a scene from a sequel to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

• The chances of the Miami Vice movie being any good. Looks way too serious. It should be an '80s nostalgia trip; instead it will make its producers nostalgic for the days, about two years ago, when Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx looked like dream casting.

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