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Andrew French believes a trio of away teams are well worth following across the English leagues this Saturday - if successful, the treble pays a whopping [21.0].

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I know it’s a little too early to talk about Super Bowl XLV already but since there’s really nothing much going on with football season over, we will.

And just in case you didn’t know, Super Bowl XLV will be staged in Jerry Jones’ ridiculously huge Cowboys Stadium. And since this will be huge for Jones’ unbelievable structure, having his Cowboys play will just be perfect.

But can the Dallas Cowboys compete in next season’s Super Bowl? Will they get the chance to play for all the marbles in front of all their fans in Texas?

After a strong finish to the season for the first time in… forever, and a nucleus of talent in its prime, Tony Romo and the rest of the Cowboys are sure poised to be legitimate contenders for the next 4-5 seasons. Their job is to win a title during that time.

Of course, the Cowboys still need to shore up the talent in a few areas like the offensive line, the safety position and their receiver corps. But there’s no reason to think they won’t get enough help in those areas to compete at an even higher level next season.

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The rest of the world will be watching South Africa soon.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is fast approaching and eyes will be set on South Africa with matches held in nine cities across the land. The world’s greatest footballers will be on display too as football fans around the world are eagerly anticipating a month of football bliss.

On that note, here’s an early rundown of the top five countries to watch out for in this year’s World Cup, starting with the country that won the last biggest tournament in football, the Euro 2008 champions Spain.

Though Spain has never won the World Cup, this may be their best chance ever. Their forwards score goals and their midfield is among the best in the world. At goalkeeping, Iker Casillas is equally very impressive, helping them to engineer a 15 game winning streak to set an international record earlier in 2009.

Although the United States‘ victory over Spain late in the year was one of the biggest upsets in a long time, Spain remains the team to beat. They are in Group H along with Switzerland, Honduras and Chile.

Another team to watch out for is Argentina primarily because they have on their roster the best footballer in the world right now in Lionel Messi. Argentina also has the best defensive midfielder in the world, Javier Mascherano along with a number of very talented youngsters, including Sergio Aguero.

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We already know who are the starters, now it’s time to familiarize ourselves with the reserves.

The 2010 NBA All-Star Game is just around the corner as the NBA’s midseason classic will officially shift the attention to hoops with football season officially over. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade lead the East as they take on Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony of the West.

As far as the reserves are concerned, we have a few first-timers. Four first-timers come from the Eastern Conference; Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics, Atlanta Hawks center Al Horford, Charlotte Bobcats forward Gerald Wallace and 2009 Rookie of the Year Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls.

Completing the East reserves are Toronto’s Chris Bosh, Atlanta’s Joe Johnson and Boston’s Paul Pierce.

Rondo is the second All-Star from the Draft class of 2006, joining the Blazers’ Brandon Roy, who earned his third All-Star selection this year. Horford joins the Thunder’s Kevin Durant as the first All-Stars from the Draft class of 2007 while Rose is all alone as the first All-Star from the class of 2008.

Derrick Rose will have a very busy weekend in Dallas. He and his fellow sophomores will take on the rookies in the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge & Youth Jam on All-Star Friday and as the reigning PlayStation Skills Challenge champion, he’ll likely defend his title on All-Star Saturday.

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I occasionally talk here about how impatient I sometimes get with poker-related analogies. For instance, about a year ago I referred to the Poker Shrink noting how he wasn’t “a big fan of the ‘Poker is like Life’ books and articles” because, in his view, most of them end up being “too general to carry any more wisdom than a dribble glass.” I agreed with the Shrink in saying I also didn’t care much for these analogies — most particularly when they end up making one’s meaning more vague rather than helping clarify what it is one is trying to express.

In other words, I ain’t too keen on someone proclaiming “Poker is like life” and leaving it at that, though I do often appreciate the many ways poker presents us with situations that resemble those we face elsewhere, and thus occasionally provides interesting ways to talk about and assess those non-poker situations. And yeah, I, too, will indulge in such making comparisons now and again, as it is both fun and occasionally even useful.

That said, one has to be careful not to introduce unwanted vagueness when making such comparisons. Another danger one faces when choosing to employ poker-related metaphors is to fall into stale, overused phrases and clichés — also not recommended if the goal is to engage an audience.

The abundance of poker terms and phrases in everyday English is testament to the game’s popularity and significance. But this abundance also means many of these terms and phrases have become pretty well worn by now. People everywhere are constantly bluffing each other. Or upping the ante. Or noting when the chips are down. Or passing the buck. Or trying their hand at something. Or singing that he can’t read my, can’t read my, no he can’t read my poker face. Or warning you about that guy being a wild card, with an ace in the hole. Or up his sleeve. Or simply being an ace.

I’m reminded of George Orwell’s still relevant 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” in which he laments the decline of the language in various contexts, but most especially in political speech and writing. Among his many warnings listed there, Orwell advises readers to avoid “dying metaphors” if at all possible. In his list of examples Orwell does include one poker-related one — “playing into the hands of” — and I’d imagine he’d list most of those appearing in the previous paragraph, too, as often introducing an unwanted “loss of vividness” in one’s language.

Last week Tiffany Michelle appeared on Fox News to chat with Neil Cavuto, ostensibly to discuss the current status of President Obama’s efforts to introduce health care reform and all of the legislative tangling — and political fallout — that has occurred in connection to those efforts thus far. Why Michelle? Well, because she’s “a professional black jack and poker player” — i.e., a gambler — and someone thought it would be a good idea for a person who understands risks and rewards to comment.

Bill Rini wrote a bit about the segment last week in a post that also has the embedded video. Then he came back and transcribed the whole sucker. As Rini points out, the conversation between Cavuto and Michelle — coming in at just under five minutes — is more than a little cringe-worthy, primarily because of the not terribly successful attempt to describe everything in terms of poker or gambling metaphors.

It appears that Cavuto (and Fox) mainly wanted to say that Obama has “a bad hand” here and should fold. And perhaps — as Cavuto hastily adds at the end — also to charge that the President isn’t playing with his own money, but with the taxpayers’. So they brought Michelle on to help communicate that message, but Cavuto’s questions were so imprecise those (essentially banal) observations barely came through, if at all.

If you’re curious, check out Rini’s transcript and/or watch the video. I actually wouldn’t fault Michelle too much here — she does pretty well, I think, to try to respond to Cavuto’s garbled clichés, and in fact probably saves the whole segment from becoming utterly inscrutable.

The hosts of The Poker Beat discussed the segment a bit on their show last week, and there tourney reporter B.J. Nemeth did a good job summarizing why it failed — and why I am sometimes impatient with poker-related metaphors that tend to obscure more than clarify. “The whole point of an analogy is to try and make something easier to understand,” said Nemeth, “and I think what they did is took something the [viewers] had some grasp of and made it incomprehensible.”

Then again, as Orwell notes, what Nemeth is describing is often what happens when language is employed for political purposes. Writing in the wake of the second World War, Orwell notes how “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Perhaps the stakes were a bit higher then (to use a dying metaphor). But Orwell’s desire for us to view “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought” is still worth reiterating.

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