Me? Ahh, you know... it ain't easy bein' me!

You and your friends ever had a stupid inside joke? You know, the kind that goes from funny to annoying then back to funny again? Well, maybe the Boot Room can become something like that in your life.

Because I have not yet even begun to hit you with my hardest '80s hits. This week it's St. Elmo's Fire and the line delivered by Leslie (Ally Sheedy) to Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) and Alec (Judd Nelson): "You were both the miracle of my life, but I need to try life without any miracles for once."

How am I going to relate this to the week in soccer? Maybe I could draw a parallel to the miracle that is Clint Mathis? Nah. Maybe I should just leave it alone and hope the mere thought of troubled saxophonist Rob Lowe and love-troubled Emilio Estevez makes you smile. No, gotta try to link it to something.

How about this: You, the U.S. women's national team, were the miracles in my life. You (according to one book) "changed the world," and taught Americans to love soccer.

But now, after watching you play on club teams that have a difficult time keeping the ball in bounds, much less creating a scoring chance every 90 minutes (I really do wonder what would have been written if there had been nine goals in the first MLS games), maybe it's time I try to watch soccer without the hope that some miracle or defining moment is suddenly going to make the sport part of the fiber of American life.

Maybe now, I just accept that we're moving along, have two leagues that are trying to make progress, and that these things take time.

Maybe I should have just let the art that is SEF stand on its own.

In Tight Space (and a little Pub Talk)

I'm fully expecting the PC Police to freak, but let's be honest here. WUSA right now is just bad soccer, plain and simple, just like MLS was bad soccer in the beginning. Do you all remember that DC-San Jose game back in '96? Doesn't get much worse than that.

The difference seems to be that people who were quick to rip MLS in the beginning (even though it was fair criticism) are reluctant to criticize the women's game. Look, I watched the New York-San Diego game last week on TV. The ball is out of bounds most of the game, teams can't put three passes together and in 90 minutes there is not a single decent attacking play. Whether it's men, women, boys, girls, professionals or pub leaguers, what's wrong with saying it was brutal? It's not like there aren't brutal games in the Italian Serie A every week.

· Clint Mathis signed a contract extension with MLS last year and, according to Deputy Commissioner Ivan Gazidis, "While it's not our policy to give the exact length of the contract, I will say it takes him beyond the 2002 World Cup." We bring this up only because Mathis is certainly hoping to cash in on his rising-star status sooner rather than later, and is saying he'll feel cheated if he doesn't give soccer in Europe a chance in the near future. As MLS has said in the past (see Ben Olsen), it won't stand in anyone's way if they want to go to Europe. At the same time, business is business and they will need to get fair transfer value. Clubs in Spain and Holland are already said to be pursuing Mathis, but Gazidis said, "We hope we can change his mind." Translated: MLS is preparing an offer that might just make Clint the highest-paid American player in the history of the league. Keep in mind that most European contracts are heavily based in incentives and, while Mathis could make much more in Europe, MLS might well be able to "guarantee" him more.

· Another potential European defection to keep an eye on is DaMarcus Beasley. According to agent Dan Segal, the league has already refused a seven-figure transfer from Spanish club Tenerife. Beasley is under contract with MLS through 2005, but that extension was agreed upon mostly to get the young star out of his original Project 40 deal that would have seen him making in the mid $20K range through 2003.

· Not everyone realizes that MLS will not do one-year contracts, which is why, for example, Ante Razov opted to play out his original MLS deal. Had Razov -- who never earned more than $30K in MLS -- accepted the league's offer to double his salary in '99, he would have been locked up, most likely through 2003 and would not have been able to give it a try with Racing de Ferrol in the Spanish second division. The lack of one-year contracts is also why players like Jason Farrell and David Vaudreuil are no longer playing in MLS. They found that combined A-League/Indoor deals made more financial sense than locking into MLS for four more years at low salaries.

· Another one for the "anything but free agency" file: A.J. Wood wants to play in D.C. and is willing to do it for peanuts. D.C. wants to sign A.J. Wood. Easy enough, right? The guy was released by Kansas City earlier this year and has been unemployed for a while, right? Not so fast. Wood will have to go through a waiver draft, which means some team will pick Wood before D.C. and try to steal some draft pick for him. Is this stuff really necessary? It's all to keep ANY player from choosing his team.

· If MLS doesn't re-consider its "roster exempt" rules, it is foolish. Why should a player like 21-year old Trinidadian Kevin Adams be roster exempt and able to work for Columbus for the season while there are young American college players who cannot earn a paycheck in MLS because teams can't afford

to keep them on their rosters? Every team should have the same number of roster-exempt players and there should be a standard criteria like "Under 22" and "Under $25,000 a year."

· Here's what I've learned in the last couple of weeks. A lot of people really like Rush, and a lot of people have no problem with the MLS ads that reference other sports. First of all, Geddy Lee's voice is enough to drive me over the

edge. Secondly, I happen to be a soccer fan who loves baseball, basketball, hockey. I do not like when baseball fans tell me "soccer is boring." I also don't like it when soccer fans tell me "baseball is boring." It's a pet peeve. Imagine how ticked you'd be if, for example, baseball ran an ad with Cal Ripken saying, "As a kid, I loved soccer, but then I decided to play a sport that would pay me millions." Soccer doesn't need to go down that path ... I also understand I wasn't the "target demographic" for those ads.

· Has there ever been a worse-looking uniform in MLS than what Tampa is wearing this year? Were those designed by Kappa or Chess King? They're reminiscent of the unis James Caan's team wore in Rollerball (that's a '70s reference, by the way).

· For all the Clint Mathis worshipers, a word to the wise. You're never as bad as you look during a bad streak, and you're never as good as you look during a hot streak.

·Craig Demmin did not mean to injure Josh Wolff, but that kind of tackle from behind has to be a red card. Demmin not only came in from behind, but he scissored Wolff with his legs. That cannot be tolerated. As we wrote after the Mamadou Diallo-Mike Ammann incident last year, "intent" is irrelevant because the only one who knows what Demmin's "intent" was on the play is Demmin.

· Some e-mailer asked for it, so here it is: Five bands/performers in my music collection that give me guilty pleasure.

1. Guns and Roses
2. John Cougar Mellencamp
3. The B-52s
4. Hootie and the Blowfish
5. Depeche Mode

Jeff Bradley is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail jeff.bradley@espnmag.com.