Joe Lieberman's Favorite Match
Our fifth and final match of our Four-Jerk Football Fantasy Camp took place in Birmingham. Some magazine recently named Birmingham an up-and-coming music scene, but the city seemed more like a place lacking any redeemable qualities whatsoever. Nothin' doin'. Our host for the day: Martin O'Neill's Aston Villa Football Club. The Villans started off the year pretty hot but have been languishing recently as their early luck trails off. If you ask me, I think the poor karma at Villa Park all began when striker Juan Pablo Angel shanked a penalty kick wide and then scored an own goal for Tottenham Hotspur within the span of two minutes back in mid-October. Villa were the first tickets we acquired in our arduous search for ducats in a foreign and generally ridiculous system. Someone in our group had a connection to Randy Lerner, owner of both the Cleveland Browns and Aston Villa, and I'm glad this one worked out for us: On one hand we had the brand new strike force of J...