This Is American Soccer, US Soccer, MNT, WNT, and MLS - Tackling the subject of Soccer in the US, and worldwide.

It’s a slow week. Searching on-line for Grant Wahl’s return to soccer only takes up so much time. What, the US might be a back up plan for 2010 World Cup? Surprise! Guevara has personal conduct issues? What? When did that story break? Wow, what an original best XI you came up with. It looks like the other 4,000 i saw. What’s that, Beckham is coming? Beckham is coming!

The MLS grind is beginning to take shape, and all the whispers, rumors, and innuendo are slowing as actual soccer takes presadence. Or not. American soccer fans are like New York Yankee fans: discuss amongst yourselves.

Can you tell I’m about to take a tangent? It’s just that I’ve never been that interested in the daily quote-factory that is most sports writing or the college humor that blogs feel is their only schtick. Nothing inherently wrong with it. Sell ads around the idea of guys getting their girlfriends to write a website name across their bare stomachs and then volunteering it up to said ad-sellers for free. Really, I’m not judging – not soccer anyway. any time a writer gets paid to cover soccer, an angel gets its wings. It’s just not me, so sometimes, you got to go where your heart is (at least until the New York Times hires me as their Red Bulls beat writer). Which is why I’d like to highlight an article in the Wall Street Journal from the weekend, which besides a passing mention of Mia Hamm, has nothing to do with soccer. One day, if soccer succeeds in this nation and girls begin scrawling MLS across their bellies, it might have a lot to do with soccer. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This is where typically you’d find a link to the story, but because the WSJ has the harshest online subscription wall I’ve ever seen, there really is no point. If you happen to have a subscription, you should be able to find it through a search for Pro Athlete Charities. And maybe the word ‘fraud’.

“When his foundation opened a playground in the Bronx in 2004,” the article states early on, “New York Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer was on hand for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that was also attended by Caroline Kennedy. In 2005, Mr. Toomer’s foundation, which had end-of-year assets of about $133,000, gave $392 to charity; in July of that year he was invited to ring the opening bell at the Nasdaq Stock Market because of the foundation’s work.”

My Hero. I spend a lot of my time working on environmental subjects, which more often than not have either a NGO (non-governmental organization) or non-profit connection and are raising funds to build some project or take down another. I even donate to some of my favorites, usually in order to get their magazine or journal subscription. But for work, I bet I talk to or trade an e-mail with at least one charity-based organization every day. More often than not, I’m looking to speak to their chief scientist, chief policy maker, communications director or director of something. Those people get paid, and should, but I’m not sure most people stop to think about what percentage of their donation is actually going to a cause and what is going to administration costs, that vague word that often translates to jobs for the families and friends in the case of athlete or celebrity charities. Hey, they need jobs too, and I’m sure they are all qualified in spending someone else’s money. Their friends of the really rich after all.

“The foundation of Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Darrell Jackson,” the WSJ piece reports, “directed 6.7% of its total spending in 2005 to charity.”

There are a few more examples within the article, and not all are criticisms. I did want to point out two of the worst, though, because just as we praise our athletes, let them skirt the law, and pretty much let them do whatever they please, squandering charity dollars might be pushing it. If they want to make it rain with their dollars, so be it, but plenty of people who cant afford to make it rain dip into their pockets to donate to charities. If the charity is run by their childhood hero, even better.

Tiger Woods is one athlete who gets a glowing review. We learn Mia Hamm has a foundation, though her numbers are not reported. There are other do-gooders, and the article makes a point to say that the larger foundations, such as Woods’, are usually better equipped to dull out the 75 percent of income that is the standard for charities, the other 25 percent allowed to go to administration costs.

Besides some the agregious percentages, this is far from cut and dry. Is it just me, though, or does it seem like today’s athletes are increasingly bad citizens (dragging down the good ones who still have some love of the game left)? Somehow the Terrell Owens Foundation doesn’t make it into the WSJ article, and I can’t comment on their finances, but if you click on ‘events’ at the top bar on his foundation’s website, you’re immediately transferred to his on-line store, where you can purchase Terrell’s personal logo – who has a personal logo - on just about anything. There is no mention if those proceeds go to ‘charity,’ and the media room is completely empty. An e-mail query was not returned.

Which is fine. For me, this is much more about the athletes than the charities. It’s beyond obvious, just as with the great majority of post-game remarks and the reporting they produce, that it’s all scripted, set up, and couldn’t be further from honest (or interesting). It’s surficial if not superficial, and it’s not until an article like this one from the WSJ comes out that people – ok, me – stop to think about not only who we are giving money to, but who we are looking up to.

If you want to begin helping, I’ll be accepting donations for the Guevara Foundation’s benefit for the American Psychology Association beginning tonight. They’ve asked not for money, but for photos of your girlfriends. Reach deep people!