Nico, OTS, and I would like to wish all of our readers, fellow bloggers, and, of course, the team and coaching staff who will be spending their Christmas Night practicing for the Independence Bowl in Shreveport a Merry Christmas. Thanks for making this fun for us, and also for making us not feel quite so bad about being ridiculously obsessed about college football. See you tomorrow.

Pardon the off topic nature of the post, but it's for a good cause.

Early in March, the town of Enterprise, Alabama was devastated by tornadoes that tragically caused  both loss of life and massive property damage. Shortly after the tornadoes, we put up a post about ways you could help the people of Enterprise. If you didn't take the opportunity to help then, but still want to, come out to the Artists Roundtable at Bottletree tonight at 7 p.m. because they still need your help.

Admission is free and there is some quality local talent on the bill (for instance, Wild Sweet Orange's music was on Grey's Anatomy recently.) Donations will be collected while the performances are going on.

The lineup includes:

• Taylor Shaw (Wild Sweet Orange)
  
• Pete Szelenbaum (Ferocious Bubbles)
  
• Bo Butler (The Saturdays)
  
• Stewart Vann (The Triceratops)
  
• Mark Carmichael (Sunny So Brite)
  
• Duquette Johnston

So, I'm headed to the Independence Bowl. While it won't be the first bowl game I've ever been to (I've also been to the Capital One Bowl and the now defunct All American Bowl), it will be the first time I've ever seen Bama in a bowl game. I was living in the city of the other two bowls I've been to, so this is my first travelling to a bowl game experience.

I was expecting a bit of price hike on the hotel rooms, but what in the name of Zeus is going on in Shreveport? This must be the only weekend people ever come to that town. The lowest quote I've found so far is $180 a night! That wouldn't be bad split four ways, but two of the people originally planning on going have bailed and now there's just two of us. I wasn't planning on dropping around $300 for my share of the room.

So, where are you all staying? Please leave hotel names and phone numbers in the comments section.

Additionally, it looks like we have two extra tickets now for the game. They're good seats. They are in Section 203 and were purchased through the Alabama ticket office. Face value is $40. Click here for a stadium map to see where the seats are.

Maegan Bailey, one half of the "Bama twins" was kind enough to answer a few questions for RBR via email recently. She talks to us about being recognized in public, meeting famous people and about their parents being Auburn fans.

The injury bug appears to have migrated west from T Town.

In case you were wondering what DuBose thinks about the current state of affairs at the Capstone...

Looks like JP will play on Saturday.  Hopefully he'll get to take a breather after the 1st half again, but something tells me he won't.

The M Zone is getting into the Halloween spirit and giving us a preview of what different coaches will be wearing tonight.  Looks like Shula wasn't invited to the party, but if you had his wife at home and the cash to buy all the saucy french maid and naughty nurse costumes in the state like he does, would you be mad?

Dawg Sports has chosen tonight's match up between the UAB Blazers and SMU as a national game of interest. Two thoughts: 1) Apparently the loss to Florida has driven the UGA fanbase insane, and 2) hopefully Watson will go dressed up as a coach that knows what the crap he's doing.

The mask is so life like...

The World Cup, the world's most popular sporting event, is approximately 12 hours from kicking off the first game between host nation Germany and underdog Costa Rica (11 a.m. central time.) I figured the eve of this most wonderful spectacle was an opportune time to ponder why Alabama and most other SEC schools don't have men's soccer teams.

South Carolina and Kentucky are the only SEC schools that have men's soccer programs and they compete in Conference USA. Seven Big 10 schools have teams, 16 Big East schools have teams, nine ACC schools have teams and six PAC-10 schools have teams. Only the Big 12 joins the SEC as a soccer wasteland amongst the BCS football conferences. South Carolina and Kentucky border the soccer hotbeds of the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest respectively, so it makes sense that they have teams.  

The lack of men's soccer in the SEC can probably be chalked up to three main factors:

1. Title IX. I'm a big supporter of Title IX, though I do dislike the fallout from it (the fact that many men's sports programs were scrapped to comply with it instead of simply adding more women's programs.)
   
2. The Deep South is one of the last areas where soccer put down roots in this country. Very few MLS players and even fewer US national team players have come from the Deep South.
   
3. The SEC ADs probably don't want to exert any energy on a men's sport in the fall besides football.

I understand the difficulty the schools would face in taking on men's soccer. It would make them have to add another women's sport, have more facilities, etc. for a program that would be lucky to break even financially. However, in 2005, 21 men's soccer programs averaged attendance of over 1,000 spectators per game. I would imagine that is way more than attend golf, tennis, cross country, etc. I've been to men's soccer games at UAB where attendance was 2,000-3,000.

The NCAA soccer team with the highest average attendance would've been the 11th ranked baseball team, so it isn't like people aren't coming out to watch (the top ranked baseball team averaged over 7,000 fans per game.) Soccer also isn't a terribly expensive sport as far as equipment and facilities go so that's a plus for establishing men's teams in the SEC. Additionally, men play on the same size field as women do so those facilities could be shared.

While many soccer players turn pro straight out of high school (or even during high school), many still play collegiately before plying their trade professionally. The US World Cup team has former players from Clemson, Furman, South Carolina, NC State, Portland, North Carolina, Virginia, UCLA, St. Louis, and many others. I for one, love the thought of a World Cup player having once played for the Crimson Tide. That would make me beam with pride.

For the universities, the pros just don't stack up to the cons as far as men's soccer is concerned. In the end, I doubt the SEC will ever get on board with the world's most popular sport, but I can hope.

Until then...enjoy the World Cup.