Welcome To Bizarro Continent, Where Canada Owns Our Asses At Sports Management

While Glendale and Gary Bettman flounder about, there's already a deal in place to move the Coyotes to Winnipeg. Meanwhile Montreal has been tapped to join MLS, and, oh look, they've already got a team. Shit, America, get it together.

Just when you thought they couldn't screw up the sale of the Coyotes any worse, they go and announce that Jerry Reinsdorf's bid is dead. The sticking point? He's a good businessman who doesn't want to lose money in a town that can't support a team, so he couldn't promise he wouldn't move the Coyotes.

For Bettman, who has an Ahab-like obsession with the American Southwest, this was anathema. So he's come crawling back to the original bidders, hat in hand. But there's a chance they might not be able to scrape together enough cash, so there's a plan C already in place: sell them to a Canadian billionaire who'll move them back to Winnipeg.

Two questions here. First, if the fallback plan is moving the team, why not just sell it to Reinsdorf in the first place. And, isn't a billionaire in Canadian dollars only, like, a middle class American?

I've never gotten into the idea of desert hockey. Fans in Arizona never really embraced that team, at least until their improbably run this season; and even then, never to the extent that Manitobans did. Winnipeg even went and built a newer, shinier arena than the Jobing.com Arena, and they did it for their AHL team. They're ready for the NHL to return.

But not as ready as Montreal is for MLS. Today the league announced that Montreal will host their 19th team, beginning in 2012. And what do you know, they've already got the team and stadium in place. The Impact, playing in the second tier of North American soccer, will simply move up to MLS. Just like the Vancouver Whitecaps will do next year.

So Canada has its shit together, while our warm-weather franchises hemorrhage money by the day. At this point, the best we can hope for is an agreement where our Super Bowl Champion will receive a spot in the CFL the next season.

Sources: Ice Edge could buy Coyotes [ESPN] "Passionate" Montreal named as 19th MLS city [MLS]