Stone Report: FULHAM IS STAYING UP!!!

***WARNING*****This is a thread about soccer*****

Fulham stayed in the league today. The two teams they were competing with to say up, Reading and Birmingham City, had leads early. Fulham didn't score their goal until the 75th minute to go up 1-0 on a tough Portsmouth team. It helped that Pompy didn't have their star defensiveman Sol Campbell and best keeper David James in the game. Both of them are coming off injuries and their manager, Harry Redknapp, wisely decided to save them for next weekend's FA Cup Final against Cardiff City (BTW Cardiff is in Wales and the league below. The FA Cup is an English/Welsh trophy, but I think the last time a team from Wales won the FA cup was 1927. I will be rooting hard for Cardiff).

Fulham won 4 of their last 5 games. They won three of them away from home. That is amazing because they went almost two years without a win away from Craven Cottage.

I've really enjoyed rooting for Fulham this year. There's a pretty tight group of Fulham supporters on the internet like at Fuham USA and the Craven Cottege Newsround. They have several Americans and they are a small team. As I look across my sports landscape, I think they only big team I root for is the Oklahoma Sooners. Even the Sooners could be considered "small market" because they play in Oklahoma. We don't let that stop us from kicking some Longhorn ass ;)
Here's a list of the teams I regularly support:
Baseball -- KC Royals
NFL -- KC Chiefs
NCAA -- TCU first, OU second
Soccer -- Fulham first, Tottenham is a distant second now

I can't honestly say I follow an NHL or an NBA team, although I've been told I love the Spurs. I've also been told that Tim Duncan and David Robinson are NBA demigods and they can do no wrong. For the good of my relationship with the San Antonio side of my family, I totally support the previous statement. Neither of those men can do anything wrong. I'm not even joking.

I figured out why I love the small team, other than I'm a great American, and great Americans love an underdog. The small team plays for glory. If TCU wins 10 games in a season, it's a great season. We don't and can't pin the success of our season on making it to the national championship game. We determine the success of our season on glorious feats like trying to beat big teams like Oklahoma, Texas, LSU (in a few years), Texas Tech (two years ago). It kills me when OU fans are upset with this past season after they won the Big 12, beat Texas and Okie State, then think the season stunk because they lost to West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl. Fans can get so caught up with what the other team has or what the other team achieves, most of the time we don't really appreciate what our team has accomplished. I tell my OU friends, you can't win the National Championship every year. We proved that with the 2004 Orange Bowl and the 2005 Sugar Bowl. I'd go into details of those games, but I don't remember them much. The small team has to appreciate the body of work that encompasses a season. When we achieve great success like making it to a big bowl game or beating a big team, it makes the accomplishment that much sweeter.

Here's to you Fulham. Next season will be your 8th consecutive in the top division. Let's not come down to the last game of the season again. This was a stressful week.

Here's a roundup of emotions after the game:
We're Up, We're Up WE'RE FREAKING STAYING UP -- Craven Cottege Newsround
Fulham Staves Off Relegation With 1-0 Win over Pompey -- Fulham USA
Photos from a guys trip to Portsmouth
This is the last two minutes of the Fulham play-by-play man

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