The only way this could have been more of a kick in the gut is if it happened at Alabama. Which it has, in a way. Legendary Alabama men’s basketball coach Wimp Sanderson was fired after punching a secretary with which he had a 15-year affair. Football coach Mike DuBose was canned after nailing a female staffer in the football building, then going 3-8 (losing beat embarrassment for the Boomhauer from Opp). The short-lived coaching stint of Mike Price came to an end after he let a stripper go crazy with a credit card during a trip to Pensacola. Frankly, DuBose was always a damn fool, but the others were awful.

So, for the past few days the world has been consumed with the escapades of Chelsea (our favorite — favourite? — team) and England captain John Terry. We thought Terry was a stand-up guy. Now he’s turned the season into a fucking version of “Footballers’ Wives.” What was that character’s name again? Bordeaux? Merlot? Oh, Chardonnay. Classy. Like what happened between Terry and former Chelsea teammate, but current England teammate, Wayne Bridge.

If you haven’t been keeping up, here’s the synopsis: Terry is married, and Bridge was in a solid relationship. Terry had an affair with Bridge’s (now) former girlfriend, a lingerie model. She got pregnant. He paid for her abortion. UK tabloids wanted to print it. He sued to stop publication. He was rebuffed. Now he’s, ahem, screwed. So, too, may be Chelsea and England. Not too long ago, Chelsea drew in a match to Hull (that should never happen), after a four-match winning streak.

The England manager may well strip Terry of his captaincy and, while Chelsea leads the table by two points, the rest of the season is up in the air. Compare this to a massive scandal hitting the Yankees or the Red Sox just after the All Star break.

While we have a tendency to want to protect our own from the public and punish them in private, Terry is certainly up Shit Creek. He’ll stay on the team, because he’s that good and England hasn’t won a World Cup in 44 years, but he’s fucked as a leader of a team. So, eh, Frank Lampard, how about it?

Newcastle United, which made its ignominious exit from the Premiership at the end of last season, has done its players, staff, fans and the human eye a serious disservice by rolling out the new away uniforms for the 2009-2010 season. The kit, with a yellow-and-white verticle striped jersey, yellow shorts and yellow-and-white horizontal striped socks, has been heralded as a uniform living up to the level of suck the club achieved on the field.

The headlines in the English press that accompanied the rollout are a tribute to sports headline writing.

The Independent
“Newcastle hit new low with horror away kit”
Daily Mirror
“Newcastle United’s new away kit… and the worst football kits ever”
Daily Telegraph
“Newcastle unveil ‘awful’ yellow away kit”
The Sun
“And you thought relegation was bad!”

Local paper The Evening Chronicle went to the fans, who roundly gave the thumbs-down to the new outfit. Supporter Stephen Buchan nailed it when he said, “It’s awful. It reminds me of a deckchair on Blackpool beach. At a time when NUFC need all the money they can get, they go and release a kit that Mike Ashley would probably struggle to sell at rock bottom price in one of his cheap clothing outlets. It’s not as though we fans have been made to look stupid enough without being asked to fork out good money to wear something as awful as that.”

Buchan’s issue, well beyond thinking about the players looking silly on the pitch, is how the club’s fans will look while tooling around town. Constantly updating uniforms is one of the oldest hustles of soccer clubs, and can end up with such results as pictured above.

Our club, Chelsea, is certainly not left out of that mix. When we were spending a few months in South Kensington, we walked over to Stamford Bridge and went shopping at the Chelsea megastore (hey, it was the middle of summer — no games until late August). Throughout the store were mementos of seasons past, including different jerseys. One, an away jersey from the ’80s, was one of the ugliest things ever to have been seen on a playing surface. The club, which is known by its blue color, with bits of white and yellow, put out a kit composed of hunter’s vest orange and sweatshirt-style heather gray.

Newcastle still has a ways to go to achieve that level of horrible.