How big is the English Premier League?

So big that a French telecom is paying the world’s most popular soccer league 100-million euros per season, for this season and the next two, to show all of the Premier League’ games.

In France. Did we make that clear? In France, which has its own soccer league, one generally considered one of the top five or six leagues in Europe.

So, a French telecom, known as SFR, is giving the Premier League about $120 million per year to show, in France and Monaco, games from the Premier League this season and the next two.

Personally, I think it’s a fine business decision.

Why?

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I never mind seeing the San Francisco Giants suffer.

This is a deep-seated frame of mind, going back to my childhood and the annual Wars of Religion between the Giants and my team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Back to when Juan Marichal took a bat to John Roseboro’s head. Back to when the San Francisco groundskeepers turned the area around first base into a swamp, to keep my favorite player, Maury Wills, from stealing second base. Back when the Giants and their frozen fans, stuck in benighted Candlestick Park, really were jerks.

And I have to say, a very nice little schadenfreude moment came when I saw the result of the Dodgers’ game with the Giants on Monday night.

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The LA Galaxy has been around for 21 seasons now, but it struck me today that never in that time had the soccer club had to fight for attention in its hometown with a local National Football League team.

The NFL abandoned the Los Angeles market after the 1994 season, when the Rams and Raiders declared they were moving to St. Louis and Oakland, respectively.

MLS and the Galaxy did not make their debut until 1996, and in terms of “an 11-man territorial game played on a large field” … well the Galaxy was the only professional outfit in town for a generation. (If you don’t count USC and UCLA as professional football.)

It was never like the MLS usurped the NFL anywhere in the U.S. … but in Los Angeles, the local soccer club never had to have its nose rubbed in the dirt in head-to-head competition for hearts and minds with the country’s most successful sports league.

Today, that happened. For the first time, but not the last.

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For 26 seasons, the High Desert Mavericks were a constant in a rapidly evolving region of Southern California.

Much of the Victor Valley portion of the Mojave Desert went from scrub and ranches to affordable housing tracts during the Mavericks’ tenure in the town of Adelanto, best known for a federal prison … and the professional baseball team that played in the California League.

The Mavs played their final game tonight, and they saved some of their best for last, defeating the Visalia Rawhide 7-4 to sweep the final series, allowing the franchise to finish as it started, back in 1991 — as California League champions.

This matters to me because my newspaper covered that team, and one of my favorite colleagues, the late Jim Long, covered many of their games, until his death in 2009.

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Here is my take on the online fantasy sports sites:

People who use them are gamblers, not sports fans.

Real fans do not need the lure of winning money by defeating strangers in daily fantasy competitions sponsored by rapacious, apparently-not-quite-ethical companies.

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The LA Galaxy has concluded a silly but interesting promotion — the LA Galaxy Ridiculous Soccer Challenge.

It involved four “games” pitting two Galaxy players against dozens of children on a training field at the club’s Carson home, the StubHub Center.

The last matchup to be posted: Steven Gerrard and Robbie Keane against 30 eight-year-old kids.

The video makes for some amusing viewing.

And I found it interesting that the Galaxy players went easy on the kids — but not so easy as to allow them to win.

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Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros is the shortest everyday player in Major League Baseball, at 5-foot-6, his “official” height. (Some think he is closer to 5-5.)

But one of the great things about baseball is that you don’t have to be unusually tall or wide to succeed, which Altuve has been demonstrating throughout his career, and especially this season.

The second baseman already was an all-star-caliber player … and then he upped his game almost across the board.

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How hard is it on an NFL team to pick up and move?

I was thinking about this after the Rams, having moved from St. Louis earlier this year, stunk it up in their second debut first as NFL representatives of “Los Angeles”.

I had a memory of the Rams and Raiders having some difficult times after they abandoned greater Los Angeles for St. Louis and Oakland, respectively, ahead of the 1995 season.

The Rams’ most recent move is the seventh by an NFL team since 1982, which followed a span of 22 years of no NFL moves at all.

How did those other six relocating teams fare? Were they good before they left? Did they get better — or worse — on arrival at their new home?

Should fans of a newly arrived team expect hard times?

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For the first time since 1994, the Rams played a game tonight with “Los Angeles” as part of their name.

It went badly. Very badly.

Final, from Santa Clara: San Francisco 49ers 28, Rams 0.

And the scary thing is … the 49ers weren’t any good either, as some NFL writers noted.

The Rams gained only 185 yards, then gave back 110 yards of field position in penalties. They were awful. Unwatchable.

Many thought the 49ers might be one of the worst teams in the NFL. And the Rams just got slapped around by them.

Their top-of-the-draft quarterback, Jared Goff, watched the game from the sidelines while the Rams played career mediocrity Case Keenum at QB.

Keenum averaged 3.7 yards over his 35 passes, two of which were intercepted.

The Rams appear to stink. And why not? They had losing records in their final nine seasons in St. Louis, going 42-101-1. It wasn’t like these are the George Allen Rams, or the Chuck Knox (first time around) Rams.

So what now?

If this team is going to struggle, can it at least be interesting?

And how better to be interesting than to let The California Kid play quarterback?

Starting, like, Sunday in the Coliseum.

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Where were you on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001?

That probably was a common question, the first few years after the terror attacks of 9/11 that led to four hijacked planes crashed, the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York’s World Trade Center and nearly 2,700 dead.

Most Americans over the age of 30 probably have some memory of that day, 15 years ago today. Just as our parents and grandparents probably remembered where they were when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

Most Americans were far away from the 9/11 crash sites and did not know those whose lives ended that day. But the way most of us learned about the collapse of the Twin Towers — by watching on live TV — lent an immediacy and shock factor that stamped itself onto our brains.

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