Catching Up With The 21st Century (Soccer Related)

I'll be the first to admit that I'm one of the least technical savvy 23 year olds in America. I didn't get a cell phone until I was 18, an iPod when I was 19, and needed quite a bit of help to set up this blog and photo shop the picture above. I rationalize my 20th century living by saying, "I don't need 'shiny new technology X.' If I did, I'd have it." It's not until I need 'shiny technology X' that I realize I should have gotten it five years ago like everyone else.
This brings me to my next problem. As I wrote in a post about a month ago, I've decided to make the leap from mediocre MLS to the EPL. I somewhat randomly chose to root for Tottenham Hotspur. As you may have guessed, the London based club isn't televised here in Chicago.
A few days ago, on whim, I flipped over to one of the premium Fox Sports Net channels that focuses on soccer. I mean, a soccer channel, all day every day, has to show EPL games, right? It probably does. The problem is, it's not part of the cable package. I got the black screen and white box treatment. The white box asking me to call 1-800-aljdl;a for details about a package that includes this channel. Plan A to watch the Spurs was now dead. I didn't have the foresight to come up with a Plan B.
I'm not exactly in a position to be purchasing extra television channels. Even if I was, I wouldn't. I've walked over five miles home in the cold to save cab money. The point is, I needed to find a way to watch these games because just checking the scores wasn't going to cut it.

I don't know what came over me, but for some reason, I reacted how a technological savvy 23 year old in the 21st century would.

I checked the Internet! I know, what a concept.

I still treat the 2010 Internet like the 1996 Internet. I assume that every website is trying to extract money from me somehow. I also don't trust links or the way a website is advertised. I remember in the early 2000s, a bunch of websites said you could download a movie or album from them, and I never could. So I was extra skeptical about a website that said it was streaming EPL games for free.
Thankfully, over the last ten years, things have changed. Within minutes I was watching a friendly between Manchester City and Valencia. And the next day I watched Manchester United versus Chelsea. The wonderful world of international soccer had been available to me via online stream all this time and I had no idea.
The quality of the video isn't great, but for the price, it's hard to be choosy. It looks like a combination of the original Atari and any pre-2000 soccer video you'd find on YouTube. Surely, this won't help with name and face recognition, but that's what the box scores are for.
When it comes to soccer, I'm officially out of the Dark Ages. I can no longer complain about the lack of televised games, they're all here on the Internet. I feel like a load has been lifted off my shoulders.
Excuse me while I contemplate an upgrade to a flat screen plasma.