Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

One day prior to the USA-England match at the World Cup, the first such meeting since the Korean War, most of the jabber in the national sports media concerned, you guessed it ­– football, the U.S. version.

Superseding the World Cup, the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup playoffs last week came the news that Nebraska was bolting from the Big 12 to the Big Ten, Colorado was shipping from the Big 12 to the Pac-10, and Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech all were threatening to bid adieu to the Big 12.

At the same time, Southern Cal got fanny-whacked by the NCAA, losing 30 scholarships over the next three years and being banned from post-season play for two years. The Trojans also forfeited all 12 victories in 2005 and two from 2004 for the always popular NCAA euphemism, “a lack of institutional control.”

About the only good news for USC is that NCAA didn’t reduce the number of scholarships for the Trojans’ Song Girls, the school’s legendary cheerleading unit.

So, what does this mean?

B: Notre Dame finally beat USC, albeit by a forfeit, in 2005. That makes the Charlie Weiss era only the second biggest football disaster in memory.

C: Make that the third, behind the English goalie (see below).

D: Texas is the southern Notre Dame.

E: Former USC football coach Pete Carroll and former Memphis basketball coach John Calipari should work as spokesmen for Dodge, because they got the heck out of it just in time.

E: The NBA Finals have been terrific (except Game 6). The Pac-10 should go for the Lakers since it lost Texas.

F: The Big Ten now has 12 teams, and the Big 12 has 10. Got that?

G: If it takes the NCAA four years to investigate Reggie Bush’s antics, a target so easy that Buford T. Justice could nail it in about three nanoseconds, about how long would it take those investigators to figure out what happened on the Deepwater Horizon?

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No one knows how English goalie Robert Green muffed that dribble shot in the first half that tied the score at 1 Saturday in the memorable USA-England clash, but on a scale of 1 to 100, it was a 98.5 screw-up. It probably ranks between Charlie Weiss at Notre Dame and any of the previous 17 Pittsburgh Pirates’ baseball seasons among the all-time great sports blunders.

As a U.S. soccer fan, don’t you almost feel guilty about it?

The Brits, after all, invented the game, invest all their emotions into selecting their World Cup team, wait four years for it to play a match, and what happens? They have to settle for a tie against a bunch of troglodytes who call their beloved pastime “soccer” because Green is less efficient than an Osceola County jailer.

Tomorrow, it’s the USA vs. Slovenia. Wouldn’t Slovenia be a great fit for the Pac-10?

By the way, the odds of the USA winning the World Cup: 66-1.

Roughly the same as those of the Pirates winning a National League baseball game.

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The USSSA Pride National Professional Fastpitch softball team is back in Kissimmee this summer, kind of.

The Pride, which reached the NPF championship game last year, trains at Osceola High, where it played its home games last year. But, because of construction at OHS, the Pride is playing its home schedule at the UCF softball complex and at the ESPN Wide World of Sports.

The Pride meets the Canadian National team in an exhibition today at 7:05 p.m. at the Wide World of Sports. See the team’s schedule at usssapride.com.

The Pride and Chicago Bandits played a five-game season-opening series in Lubbock, Texas last week, with Game 4 Saturday televised on ESPN2. The good news: The Pride (2-3) won, 4-3. The bad news: ESPN2 cut off the game before it was over to televise the NCAA baseball tournament.

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Chicago won the Stanley Cup championship last week. Either that, or 2 million people in the Windy City arrived early for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Resident Blackhawks fan Jean Ramirez, our display ad supervisor, left here Thursday morning and made it to the parade Friday. She even got good seats near the viewing platform. But, she failed to bring back any deep-dish pizza. Seems worthy of a two-minute minor, at least.