I jinxed myself with the story I’m writing. Yesterday I only got 425 words in, most of them taking the story sideways. Try, try again.

I’m severely annoyed about the lack of U.S. Nat’l team coverage right now. The U.S. is competing in the Gold Cup, which is the championship for North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. In the big picture, it’s small potatoes. There are always a few odd-ball teams thrown in just to make sure it’s not the U.S. versus Mexico in the final year after year. This time around it’s South Africa and Colombia.

The Gold Cup is a great opportunity for teams to try out new players in a competitive environment to see how they blend with the bunch of regulars. The goal for the U.S. is, of course, to win the tourney every time of asking, but when you’re playing the likes of Cuba and Canada you can afford a bit of experimentation. And it’s fun for a relative die-hard like me to watch and make my own assessments of talent.

But not this year, because Univision owns the broadcasting rights. We get Univision here in Madison, but we don’t get their other two stations TeleFutura and Galavision. Any guesses which station the U.S. games have been on?

Look, I understand that 8 of the 12 nations in the Gold Cup have Spanish as their primary language and likewise I understand that games like Costa Rica vs. Cuba won’t break ratings records for ESPN. I’m just saying I want to watch the friggin’ U.S. National Team and there’s currently no way for me to do that and it’s annoying.

Then again, the U.S. labored to post wins over Cuba and Canada, so maybe it’s good for my blood pressure that it’s not on.