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You wouldn't have thought it would go to overtime. You would have expected anybody from the birthplace of the gridiron game to waltz into a competition like this and beat down everyone in their path. It appeared the ragtag bunch of college grads that made up Team USA were going to do that, too -- until they reached the final against Japan and needed two overtimes to cap a 23-20 comeback victory to win the American Football World Cup.

A wild string of events led to that win. With the score tied at 10-10 early in the 4th quarter, Japan's 42-yard field goal attempt was blocked by Kenny Chicoine, and Diezeas Calbert picked up the ball and ran with it ... only to fumble it in USA territory and give the ball right back to Japan. Quarterback Yuichi Tomizawa then calmly led Japan 5 plays and 46 yards down the field for a touchdown, giving Japan a 17-10 lead.

Statistically speaking, Tomizawa (14 for 20, 140 yards, 2 TD) appeared to have a much better day than former Arizona quarterback Adam Austin. (12 for 25, 109 yards, 0 TDs, 1 INT) It was the running game, however, that brought the USA back.

How wide is the gap between the USA and the rest of the world in the gridiron game? Well, if the group stage results of American Football World Cup are any indication, it's pretty darn wide.

In its first game on Tuesday, the USA Football squad leveled South Korea, 77-0. The Koreans were held to -31 yards total offense, yet according to USA Football head coach John Mackovic, they actually tried to convince the Americans to keep going instead of taking a knee to run out the last few minutes of the clock.

Of course, USA Football had to save up its energy for Thursday's game against Germany, whom they easily defeated, 33-7. Clearly, the USA players weren't used to playing two big games in three days. Quarterbacks Jeff Ballard and Adam Austin combined to complete only 12 of 32 passes, and Ballard threw an interception interception that Matthias Weil returned 94 yards for a touchdown, Germany's only score.

Austin and Ballard will have to do better than that in the Final on Sunday against Japan, who easily dispatched both France and Sweden by the same final score of 48-0. Japan won the American Football World Cup in 1999 and 2003, but it didn't face an American team in those tournaments. Those wins definitely helped American football's popularity among Japanese sports fans, though. 12,336 people attended the Japan-France tilt at Todoroki Athletics Stadium, and there are some who believe Japan's best gridiron heroes might actually have a shot against this ragtag bunch of Americans.

If Japan does somehow pull off the upset, you can bet that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will pay much more attention to the Japanese market in the next few years. We already know there are a few LaDainian Tomlinson fans over there.

So there's this football league ...

Where have we heard that one before? Many a failed enterprise began with those dangerous words. Those visionaries and entrepreneurs all meant well, but inevitably failed. So what is to make this AAFL thing different and relevant?

Beats me.

Not that I'm biased, but I love college football. And I love people being nice to me. This AAFL thing, its model is loosely based on college football and its local appeal. Argh. Its organizers: well, they send sometimes friendly, sometimes demanding emails asking us bloggers and writers to hype up their league. Requests = good. Demands = not so good. Can you see my grumpy face? Probably not, but it's there.

Can the league succeed? I have no clue, but only three professional football leagues have made it to the present: the NFL, the Canadian Football League, and Arena Football. What I notice is one monster league and two self-contained variants. What makes the Canadian Football League and Arena football successful may just be their willingness to be different from the NFL.

The CFL employs ginormous fields and slightly different rules. It's a more wide-open game. Arena Football plays indoors in way-too-cozy arenas because of its smaller field. The lesson from their survival where others failed is to be different.

It also helps to have some stars. The CFL is famous for playing big-name American players like Doug Flutie and Rocket Ismail and Ricky Williams. The AAFL needs to find itself some stars and no, former Florida Gator Travis McGriff doesn't count. One lucky break is that the NFL recently dismantled its famous export: NFL Europa. There's a lot more freely available talent today than just a few months back, so maybe the AAFL gets lucky here with some seasoned players who aren't just retreads from the last failed domestic football league: the XFL.

Ultimately, I hunch the AAFL's road to success won't be paved with Trojans but rather a willingness to embrace a new way of playing football. If they don't ... well we know how that story goes.

Most people see stories about the collapse of NFL Europa and the language barriers the league faces in China and have a good laugh at what appears to be America's clumsy attempt to spread its brand of football outside its own borders. What most of them may not know, though, is that the NFL is just a small part of a larger grass roots effort to spread the gridiron gospel around the world.

USA Football, which bills itself as "an independent non-profit organization whose purpose is to galvanize, support and promote the sport at all levels," is leading this charge as one of the key members of IFAF, the International Federation of American Football, which meets next week in Kawasaki, Japan, to discuss how to further the gridiron game at the grass roots level.

Oh, and Kawasaki also happens to be the site of the 2007 American Football World Cup, a six-nation international competition that runs from July 7th through 15th. USA Football organized the country's very first national football team, and Scott Hallenbeck, the non-profit's executive director, couldn't be more stoked after seeing this team practice.

"By design, we reached out to all levels of college football, from Division I and II down to the NAIA," Hallenbeck told me in a brief phone interview, "and our coaching staff is comprised of all levels of diversity as well.

"This team has really jelled. They got out here on the 20th June, and I just got out here yesterday, and it's amazing to see how far they've come in such a short time."

If you are a certain type of male in a certain age range from about 24-32, this is the most exciting thing you can possibly conceive of:

7:23: Seriously, Tecmo Bowl? People at the press conference cheer. Mr. Inaga, Vice President of Tecmo Inc, takes the stage. Inada takes the stage and jokes that the title of the game wasn't supposed to ahve been revealed until the end. "Just pretend like you don't know that it says Tecmo Bowl here" (pointing to the logo on the screen) "Instead of telling you about it, we're going to s how you a video that is very memorable."

The video begins. The video shows Tecmo employees (including Inada himself) playing SNES Tecmo Bowl. Jumps to a trailer for the full game. Set for release in 2008. But, no footage of the game itself ... just a logo.

!!! Questions abound. Is this an arcade-y style game? How can the gameplay possibly evoke Tecmo Bowl or Tecmo Super Bowl? Will they have a NFLPA license? Is this going to be a serious Madden/NCAA competitor? And can I play as Christian Okoye? (I skew a bit younger than the upper range of Tecmo devotees and spent most of my time with Tecmo Super Bowl, playing incessantly for an impressionable period of my youth. At one time I had every non-offensive lineman in the game memorized down to the backup tight end for (awful, awful) Tampa. If I was Bill Simmons' age I would probably go on about Tecmo Bo instead of Okoye.)

There's no platform announcement yet, though the aforementioned Mr. Inaga said "it's probably not going to be on the platform you're expecting," which reveals nothing to me. The game is scheduled for sometime next year; I'm already in line.

UPDATE: As long as we're on the retrogaming tip, check out this SI piece on the top five Nintendo sports games. Co-sign, but I do have a lingering fondness for robots-play-baseball BaseWars

National champion Florida was obviously better than a Georgia squad that finished 9-4 on the season, including a 21-14 setback in what has become an annual loss to the Gators in Jacksonville.

Florida had a veteran fifth-year senior at quarterback, while Georgia played a true freshman. An offensive line that was supposed to be a weakness for the Gators turned out to be a strength, while a veteran Bulldog offensive line underachieved most of the season.

The Gators' defense was obviously more fundamentally sound late in games. Florida free safety Reggie Nelson made huge plays while rarely being out of position. Georgia centerfielder Tra Battle made a plethora of great plays but had more snaps when he was mentally out of position.

Finally, UF had much more athleticism at linebacker, which will be evident after both Brandon Siler and Earl Everett are picked in the first two rounds of the NFL Draft this spring.

But yet Georgia had much better talent and production at running back, defensive end and cornerback. So why was UF a much more successful team?

One simple reason: Florida had big-play athletes at receiver who regularly make catches, while Georgia lacked a true vertical threat on the outside and probably led all NCAA Division I-A schools in dropped passes with an average of 4-5 per game.

Carroll Rogers and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has done a superb job of breaking every meaningful story about the recovery of former Georgia great David Pollack from a potentially paralyzing neck injury.

Pollack spoke publicly for the first time since his neck stabilization surgery on Jan. 3 in this article by Rogers.

Pollack's agent had said the surgery went so well that Pollack may be able to return to the Cincinnati Bengals as early as 2007.

But the 24-year-old Pollack exhibited his maturity and comprehension of just how fortunate he is to still walk by telling Rogers that no decision has been made but that he will not rush back into football.

OK, I told myself I'd make one Nick Saban post and then move on. After all, this is Dolphins FanHouse. Not Lets-Bash-Saban FanHouse.

That was until I stumbled on to this. This simply cannot be ignored.

Click here to see little Nicky get absolutely CRUSHED.

Dan LeBatard, senior writer at the Miami Herald, absolutely laid the wood on the Nick Saban "error." LeBatard calls Saban a greasy, slimy loser and a weasel.

The write-up is absolutely worth reading every word. LeBatard smacks Saban harder than any other South Florida media member, and not surprisingly so.

Also, in another not-so-surprising move, the University of Alabama FanHouse ridiculed other writers for displaying their opinion of Saban's manipulative and condescending exodus to the cow town of Tuscaloosa.

Alabama FanHouse told Yours Truly to, "cry him a river" after they read my "He Really Did It. Saban Left" blog.

Although he was robbed by being named just runner-up for the NFL defensive MVP award, Champ Bailey this fall proved that shutdown cornerbacks still exist in the NFL, as the ex-Georgia great and future first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer had a league-high 10 interceptions and a career-high 86 tackles.

Bailey, though, was just one of many former Georgia greats to enjoy success in the NFL this year. Dave McMahon of Dawgpost.com provides a well-researched update on how many former Georgia players fared in the NFL this season.

As I noted early in the NFL season, Georgia has become the third best NFL talent factory behind Miami and Ohio State. The Bulldogs tied Tennessee for the third most former players on NFL opening-day rosters, although Georgia's list of quality players in the NFL is only rivaled by the Canes and Buckeyes.

Early in the fall, I researched and wrote a Pulitzer-type series of articles that exhibited the wealth of UGA talent in the NFL. Included in these must-read blogs were the names and status reports of every offensive and every defensive former UGA squad members playing professional football at some level.

Using that list and the encyclopedic-type knowledge of UGA football I have garnered over the years, I formed a hypothetical 53-man roster of former Georgia players who could compete as a team in the NFL right now. Any of the 32 teams in the NFL would probably trade their defensive roster for the talent and depth on that list of ex-Georgia defensive players.

In what should have come as a shock to most Georgia fans, UGASports.com reported Wednesday that Georgia junior linebacker Brandon Miller is contemplating forgoing his senior season to enter the NFL Draft this spring.

Ultimately, I expect the 6-foot-4, 250-pound linebacker Miller to come to his senses and stay at Georgia. His physical skills could enable Miller to be a late second-day draft pick in April and then potentially make a practice squad for a year.

The problem is that Miller is not a good linebacker and has few football insticts. He rarely makes tackles, never makes big plays, is lost in space, has a better 40-time than football speed and has horrendous lateral movement.

Rivals.com rated Miller as the top prospect in the state coming out of tiny Miller Co. High in Moultrie. He was rated as the top defensive end prospect in the nation by the Inisers.com. Everyone expected Miller to end up at defensive end, but the Georgia coaches have honored his request to play linebacker.