Is the new Soccernomics turning the English Premier League into the world's most international game or a legitimizing front for notorious world oligarchs?

Yesterday Tom Hicks and George Gillette, the American co-owners of the Liverpool Football Club, turned down an offer from the Dubai-based investment group DIC that would have paid them £200 million each for their respective stakes in England's most historic sporting franchise. The decision to turn down what would have amounted to a £25 million return on a 13-month investment has been criticized by fans and financiers alike and left many wondering why Bush crony and Texas Ranger owner Hicks-who apparently refused the sale on his own-is so intent on keeping his place as one of the EPL's most high-profile foreign owners, considering the company he stands to keep.

Clint Dempsey is newly married, he has scored more goals this season than Wayne Rooney, and if his form holds, he stands to become America's newest soccer millionaire, but for all of his recent success he has not forgotten his humble beginnings.

"I'm just a kid who wanted to make the most of his life and show that no matter where you come from you can do something. Coming from a small town like Nacogdoches to make it where I am now, no one ever would have thought it was possible."

It has taken extra time to conclude my thoughts on our trip to the Lakota Nation Invitational because as soon as I was back I realized the trip, for me, was not about basketball. There is a story to tell about the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation that has not been told clearly enough or loudly enough to date, and I keep looking for ways around the rupture of the post-colonial barricade that separates my own writing voice from telling that story. I guess I thought Ezra's camera could be the vehicle, arrogantly ignoring the fact that Ezra's camera belonged to Ezra, and to his own story of blood, land, and ancestry...

We left in a snowstorm on a Friday morning before the semifinals had even taken place. I felt regret that I had not spent more time with Travis and Clovia, but was pleased with the time I got with the two Lyle Noisy Hawks. I was impatient with Ezra and slightly melancholy when we left, thinking we should have shot much more footage and that the story was there in front of us, even if it had been invisible through the viewfinder.