Real Salt Lake spoiled ESPN's wish for L.A. win

If you missed ESPN's coverage of the MLS Cup final on Sunday, let me recap it for you:

David Beckham. David Beckham. Landon Donovan. David Beckham. Landon Donovan. David Beckham. David Beckham. Landon Donovan. David Beckham. Landon Donovan. David Beckham. David Beckham. David Beckham. Landon Donovan. David Beckham. David Beckham. Landon Donovan. David Beckam. Victoria Beckham. David Beckham. Landon Donovan. David Beckham. David Beckham. Landon Donovan. David Beckham. David Beckham.

And, oh yeah, Real Salt Lake.

It's only a slight exaggeration. Really.

Remember, what ESPN really wanted was to see the World's Biggest Soccer Star celebrating a Galaxy win.

"If the script were to play out, you get your money shot of David Beckham holding an MLS Cup," Alexi Lalas told the Deseret News in a phone interview before the game.

There are those who believe that the MLS Powers That Be wanted to see that shot, too. But we won't go there.

UM, RIVALRIES? Our friends at The mtn. are promoting the final weekend of Mountain West Conference football with ads promoting, "It's rivalry week on The mtn."

Yeah, well, they're half right.

On Friday, the channel has the Colorado State-Wyoming game, and those two are certainly rivals. On Saturday, one of the three games on The mtn. is BYU-Utah, and we all know that that is definitely a rivalry.

But Saturday's other two games are San Diego State-UNLV and New Mexico-TCU. Not exactly traditional rivals.

DON'T FORGET: The BYU-Utah game isn't exclusive to The mtn. this year. It's being simulcast on CBS College Sports (aka CBS C).

That adds about 32 million homes to the number that will be able to see the game.

If you add The mtn.'s distribution, that could total as much as maybe 33 or 34 million.

FULL CIRCLE: The local college football regular season will end as it began — with James Bates and Todd Christensen in the broadcast booth.

Sigh.

You may recall that this deadly duo made the Utah-Utah State game all but unwatchable way back on Sept. 3. And they've continued to make games all but unwatchable with frightening regularity.

During one game, Christensen made Three Stooges noises when he was talking about TCU's Jeremy Kerley.

Really. I couldn't make up something that dumb if I tried.

And now they're going to be in Provo for the state's biggest game of the year.

Sigh.

e-mail: pierce@desnews.com