Patrick Crawley

World Cup 2010 holds great promise for the United States after Algeria, Slovenia and England were selected in a random drawing held Friday in South Africaas Team USA's competition in the group stage.

England, ranked by ESPN as the third best team in the world, will be a tough opponent. But the United States was lucky to have drawn Algeria and Slovenia as group mates for the opening round. Algeria is ranked 28th in the FIFA world rankings and Slovenia is ranked 33rd, making them two of the less talented teams to enter the tournament.

Historically, Algeria and Slovenia have not fared well in the World Cup. Algeria, which knocked off Egypt in a one-game playoff to qualify for the tournament, has made it to the World Cup just twice in the team's history (in 1982 and 1986). Slovenia has played in the tournament just once (in 2002). Neither team has advanced past the opening round of play.

In the opening round of the World Cup each team in the group plays one another once. Points are awarded for a win or tie. After all teams have played, points are totaled and the top two teams advance to the next round. This creates a terrific opportunity for Team USA to advance, given the relative weakness of Algeria and Slovenia.

After the draw, head coach Bob Bradley was cautiously optimistic about Team USA's ability to advance past the opening round.

"We feel that this is a group that gives us a real fair chance to move on," Bradley said in an interview with ESPN.

Team captain Carlos Bocanegra offered a more enthusiastic analysis.

"American fans are thinking we should advance out of the group, and I like that. I like how they're thinking,'' Bocanegra told reporters, including the Boston Globe. "We feel confident as well that this is a group we can get out of.''

Perhaps the most anticipated game of the tournament for the United States is the group opener against England on June 12. The two teams rarely compete in international play. When they meet this summer, it will be a game that draws great interest from both fans and sponsors; particularly because of the Team USA's upset of England in the 1960 World Cup in Brazil.

"We hope it can happen again," Bradley told ESPN.com. "It didn't come straight into my mind when the draw was being made but it's still talked about in the US. It's a great way to start and a big challenge and will bring interest in the States to an all-time high."

Team captain Landon Donovan, who plays alongside David Beckham in club competition with the Los Angeles Galaxy, couldn't hide his excitement to play England in the opening round.

''I can't think of a better match-up personally," Donovan told reporters, including the Daily Mail.

Despite key injuries to central defender Oguchi Onyewu and striker Charlie Davies, Team USA will be a contender in World Cup play. The United States is currently ranked by FIFA as the 14th-best team in the world on the strength of a shocking upset of Spain, the top-ranked team in the world, at the 2008 Confederations Cup.   

However, many of the team's players look at this World Cup as a time for redemption rather than celebration.

The United States failed to advance past the first round in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and the team is keen on the opportunity to make amends for past disappointments.

"For those of us that were there, this is the opportunity we've been waiting for," Donovan said. "We're lucky we have that opportunity to go back and I certainly want to make up for what happened."  

Darrell "Clipper Darrell" Bailey is not your average Clippers fan. The 41-year-old businessman wears a custom tailored suit (half blue, half red with the Clippers' logo on the back), sports a pair of custom-made red, white and blue sneakers, and drives a pimped-out red, white and blue BMW 7.40i that would make even Xzibit do a double take.

Normally this would seem strange. But the outfit and the car suit Bailey. He's the Clippers' unofficial mascot. And he has the consecutive attendance streak to prove it. 

356 games and counting.

When Bailey enters the Staples Center, everyone lights up like their favorite uncle just walked into the room. Fans greet him by name, asking for pictures and reassurances about the upcoming game. What's up D? We gonna win tonight?

Metropolis! is exactly what you hope to find on a quest for something cool. Located on the corner of La Brea and 1st, Metropolis! is a set designer's Chimay-induced dream: an open lot filled with exotic furniture, antique collectibles and one-of-a-kind props.

From Corona pinatas to Lakers couches to grafitti-covered vans, you can find everything you never knew you were looking for at Metropolis! (Yes, even that VHS collection of 'The Twilight Zone' your aunt has been searching for the last 12 years.)

It's the perfect place to get lost for an hour (or three).

J.E. Skeets, editor of Ball Don't Lie, the most popular basketball blog on the planet, prefers chocolate milk from a carton to chocolate milk from powder.

He also likes the Toronto Raptors, Six Feet Under and the movie Rad. The movie Rad? Yes, the movie Rad. It's an 80s classic; Vision Quest with BMX bikes. 

Like me, Skeets is a long-suffering Bills fan and a hip-hop head. His favorites? The Roots, Kanye West and Jay-Z.

A stubborn Canadian, Skeets started his first blog in January 2005 and blogged for a year straight to win a bet. He later upgraded his blog to a podcast, then a video podcast.

In 2008, Skeets hit the big time, scoring a gig with Yahoo! Sports as editor of Ball Don't Lie. He has been churning out irreverent basketball posts ever since.  

Real recognize real. That's the best way to describe a social networking phenomenon I experienced on Saturday night.

In between nights on the town, trips to the mall and philosophical ruminations about relationships and why they are like cartons of milk, NBA stars turned out en masse on Twitter to discuss one thing and one thing only: the Mayweather-Marquez fight in Las Vegas.

The result was a poorly-detailed, thoroughly-entertaining account of one of the night's biggest news stories. 

From what I understand, it wasn't a particularly good fight. Despite a 21-month separation from boxing, Floyd "Money" Mayweather Jr. easily defeated Juan Manuel Marquez. But the quality of the fight mattered little to players such as Shaquille O'Neal, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade, who peppered the Twitterverse with taunts, boasts and praise for Money May.

Information in the tweets was limited to conjecture and poorly-spelled personal analysis, but I can't imagine a more entertaining way to follow the fight. (Other than seeing it in person, of course.)

For instance, Kevin Durant, an up-and-coming star in the League, tweeted an endorsement for Marquez based on the fact that Marquez "drinks his own pee."

He was wrong, of course. Not about Marquez drinking his own urine -- that's true, though I'll spare you the YouTube clip -- but about the outcome of the fight. Marquez lost in a unanimous decision. Nonetheless, it was an interesting foray into the mind of the budding NBA star.

Durant's zany prediction was hardly the lone entertaining moment of the night.  

Kings forward Donte Greene predicted a knockout in the second round, Raptors rookie DeMar DeRozan compared Mayweather to The Matrix, and Jason Thompson, also of the Kings, played matchmaker, putting Mayweather in a "main event" fight next year against Filipino sensation Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao.

Ultimately, NBA athletes on Twitter proved an unreliable news-reporting tool -- I had to venture to ESPN.com for the particulars of the fight -- but I can see the value of a social networking site that updates constantly and is used by research professionals in numerous different fields.

For example, I learned a lot about recently-deceased NCAA president Myles Brand by searching his name on TweetDeck and following the thread of tweets that were generated.

Coverage of the Brand story ranged from heartfelt condolences to speculation about who will take his place as head of the NCAA, but through each post ran a common thread of informed opinion. Thanks to Twitter, social networkers who cared about Brand were able to separate themselves from the loud, obnoxious din of the Internet-at-large just as NBA players were able to voice their opinions on the Mayweather-Marquez fight.

Again, real recognize real.

It's a simple solution to the largely unresolved problem of filtering knowledge from the noise.

I think I'm going to use Twitter as a news source more often.