And I, for one, am fucking psyched about it. I know that there are those out there who have their issues with Bill Simmons, but I feel like he’s as observant, and certainly as funny, as sports fans come. And he’ll only be slightly newer to the EPL than me, so in a way, we’ll be doing this together. From his mailbag column last Friday…

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed suggestions for my new English Premier League soccer team that I haven’t picked yet. Out of any challenge that I’ve ever thrown out to the readers, I can’t remember getting a more passionate, entertaining and informative batch of e-mails. If anything, I’m even more dedicated to making the leap now. And this isn’t going to be a half-assed thing, either. I’ll be buying the merchandise, TiVo-ing the games, traveling to see a couple home games, throwing myself into the team … I’m going all out. Obviously I’m not a huge soccer fan, but I’m a huge sports fan and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that I missed the boat with the English Premier League and UEFA. Better late than never.

Couldn’t agree more… I still maintain my belief that more people could/would be soccer fans if they give it a legitimate chance (which involves more than watching one or two games), and I’m somewhat regretful that I didn’t do it sooner. But I’m glad that Simmons is hopping on the bandwagon.

And I’m sort of in the same boat as he is, on the favorite team issue. It’ll be interesting to see where he goes. I watched a season of EPL last year, and I still don’t have a favorite club. I don’t even know if that’s the sort of thing you can choose, or something you just have to wait and let happen on its own. I was kind of leaning towards Manchester City, because that’s where Claudio Reyna played, and because I like their uniforms.

But that’s the problem with the EPL… there are only a handful of teams who can win the thing, and if I started cheering for Manchester United or Chelsea, I’d feel like a front-running prick. Liverpool’s also right there, with Arsenal and Tottenham not far behind. But after that (and I’ll admit that I don’t have the greatest understanding of this yet, so feel free to correct me) I don’t think there are too many teams that can hope to finish in the Top 4. Newcastle has kind of a high profile, I think. But after that, no one else is a real threat to compete for a league title. It’s like there’s a handful of teams, and then the NFC North.

So I could root for Man City, but really, the best I can hope for is an upset or two of Man United, and perhaps a UEFA Cup qualification. So I don’t know what to do. It’s not like the NFL, where there’s hope that sometime in the near future, they could rise up and be good. And I’m not saying that I can’t ever root for a bad team, because I have plenty of experience with that, but… it would be nice if they at least had a chance to compete at some point in the reasonably near future.

So I dunno what to do. I think teams like Tottenham (another team I’m leaning towards), Liverpool, and Newcastle are still in play. I’m ruling out Manchester United and Chelsea, because they’re too powerful, and I kind of hate them anyway. Manchester City and Tottenham are my leaders in the clubhouse. And I think West Ham’s got an outside shot, because of the movie “Green Street Hooligans” (a very underrated film that I really loved, except for the first and last five minutes of it) and the “Forever Blowing Bubbles” song, which is awesome.