What happened in Switzerland today

Today was the Champions League Qualifying draw. I know most people in Minnesota only know the Champions League as the Ian Leonard weather update. There are some people across the world that only think of it as the competition that is played like the World Cup, starting in group stages with 32 teams before playing towards the finals match.
Alas! There is a qualifying trio of rounds. Every association in Europe has a chance to qualify for the main competition, which is great news for Macedonia, Estonia and Andorra in theory, but usually they get smote early. Still, even with the second round, there is guaranteed to be at least 2 teams that will reach the group stages. Last year, those teams where Zilina (from Slovakia) Partizan (from Serbia) and Hapoel Tel Aviv (from Israel). A couple years ago, Rosenborg, my team from Norway made it all the way to the Group Stage. Last year, they were bumped off in the Play-off Round by FC Copenhagen.
Last year, RBK was able to knock off Linfield from Northern Ireland and AIK from Sweden before losing to Copenhagen. They involved a two legged, home-home match up, with goal differential the deciding factor, with away goals the primary tiebreaker.
Well, early, early this morning (6AM, Minnesota time), the 2011-12 draw for the first two rounds was held. The first round only consists of 4 teams, sort of a play-in game to the real qualifying rounds. The second round draw included Rosenborg, who won their league championship in 2010. They were drawn with Icelandic Club Breidablik, and will play their matches in the middle of July. Probably the best time to be playing matches in Iceland.

So.... people still don't care about soccer

If you watched yesterday's Champions League final, you no doubt know who this guy is. That's Ian Leonard, meteorologist for KMSP, the local Fox affiliate. There was a thunderstorm that rolled through the south metro and there were reports of large hail and even a tornado. I can't fault the TV station for having such pervasive coverage of what could have been a serious situation.
That said, last weekend, an NHL playoff game on NBC was interrupted by tornado coverage. The local affiliate provided wall to wall coverage of that. It clearly didn't affect every person in the metro, so as an alternative, the hockey game was moved to another of KARE's networks.
What happened yesterday? The storm, which affected much fewer viewers than the north Minneapolis tornado, was given wall-to-wall coverage. As I said, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that the game was simply placed in a small box at the side of the screen without any audio. What's worse, there were no other options. Despite this being the biggest match in the world, perhaps with more viewers than the Super Bowl worldwide, Minnesotans were not given another option. And if you had a problem with it? Too bad. Instead of an apologetic tone, KMSP anchors were aggressive and rude, scolding  miffed soccer fans, as their match was relegated to second tier, like Wigan Athletic.
The question I have, if this had been an early regular season NFL game, would KMSP have taken the same stance? Of course, if they had, you better believe there would have been other outlets to watch the game.

Now let's test your soccer fanhood

Regardless of whether you like the game of soccer, you have to respect the overall organization and the competition engendered by it's tournament and league structure. There are the national teams that play for continental cups and in perhaps the most widely beloved international athletic competition in the world, the World Cup.
Then there is the club competitions. This is definitely where soccer shows its skill in organizing itself. Well, they do in Europe anyways, because in the States, we have tried to set it up like other sports leagues, and it doesn't quite work out as well. Over in Europe though, it's a complicated weave of thousands of teams, and yet it functions almost seamlessly. Like I said, you have to respect their level of organization.
First you have the relegation and promotion, so the top teams are competing with each other, and there is a legitimate punishment for not putting a competitive team on the pitch. I've covered it many times here, but I still remain impressed that the system remains in place, because in the United States, there is simply too much money invested for this to work. But there is so much money invested in European soccer, and somehow it works over there.
What I am really impressed by, and what inspired this post is their international club team competitions. Imagine, for example, if the winner of the Super Bowl played the winner of Canada's Grey Cup. Well, try to figure that out with the best teams of 54 countries and turning into a year long affair. That's what the Champions League is. I don't care to get into the intricacies of how it is set up, because it's insanely complicated for me to spell out. There are three qualifying rounds, a playoff, a group stage, a knockout phase followed by the championship game. There is a list of all the teams that are involved and where they enter the tournament (it's seeded according to both their team rating and the rating of their league), just to show you that the best teams of the best leagues are all put into this tournament, as well as the champions of lesser leagues. Like I said, very complicated, but if you follow it, you see that it's all very seamless.
Well, the first qualifying round begins tomorrow. Just 4 teams begin in that first round, playing to join 34 other teams. It begins with the first leg of a pairing of FC Santa Coloma in Andorra and Birkirkara from Malta. I obviously won't be digging deep into the Champions League, because I don't understand all the strategy of soccer and we don't receive good coverage of foreign leagues. The fun thing, I think, is just seeing how well such a competition is set up. If only sports in America were as well organized.

Is England like the ACC?

I caught the tail end of the Champions League coverage on ESPN2 today. Of the 8 teams remaining to get soccer's top club prize, four of them hail from England. So I ask, is England to the European soccer world what the ACC is to college basketball?
That is to say, is the entire Premiership hated by those that don't have a team involved, as the ACC is? The Big East doesn't work, because as much as you may hate UCONN, you can't possibly have a deep seated feeling about Depaul. Besides, the conference is always competetive and fun to watch, thanks in large part to the fact that there are 40 teams in the conference.
No, the ACC has a few teams at the cream of the crop, and if you don't have a dog in that race, you pretty much don't like the race as a general rule. It's one thing to hate North Carolina or Duke or Wake Forest who are always at the top of the conference, but also rans like Clemson and Boston College are disdained as well. Is it the same way in England? Arsenal and Man U and Chelsea despised for their success, but are Tottenham, Everton and West Brom hated for the association?
Making matters more interesting, it seems that English teams are the only ones getting any airplay on ESPN. Does anyone know?

(Sorry, I needed to step away from angry Twins related screeds. It's only game 2!)