Sports leagues, like romantic relationships, can't survive taking a break. Last year AFL owners thought they were different, announcing that while they'd be spending the 2009 season apart, they weren't breaking up.

Again: Just need some space. Just taking some time off from each other before getting back together.

Well, this week, several AFL owners leaked to the press the date that they'll be getting back together: The 12th....OF NEVER!

The AFL is dead.

The disbanding means, alas, Dan Snyder won't ever bring us the AFL team he promised back in 1999.

(AFTER THE JUMP: MMA is the next arena football? How many Redskins blogs are out there? Dan Steinberg marvels at whose muscles? The Washington Times toasts Bruce Smith? Michael Vick is partying where? The Nats are still playing?)

Snyder bought the DC franchise rights for the AFL shortly after taking over the Redskins. He said back then that he was going to name the indoor team the Warriors, and registered trademarks for that name and for an arrow-and-feather logo and helmet design.

Then Snyder never made any move toward putting that team together.

At the time, I figured Snyder only registered the marks because it looked like he could lose federal trademark protections on "Redskins" for being racist, and he wanted a fall-back name ready.

All these years later, I still agree with myself. Guess we'll never know what his real intentions were.

No official announcement of the league's disbanding has yet appeared on the AFL's web site.

However, the league's "Mission Statement" is still prominently placed:

“To serve our community with pride and passion as a quality example of individual and team excellence on the field, in the office, at the arena and within the community by consistently exceeding our customers’ expectations by demonstrating the highest character, appreciation and respect for our game, customers, teammates and partners as a cost-effective and visionary organization providing a total entertainment experience.”

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....Among the few things I can think of more boring than reading the AFL Mission Statement is watching an arena football game.

Columnist Ray Ratto takes the indoor football and runs with it. Ratto links indoor football with Twitter, and says UFC is the next AFL.

I agree.

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In case you missed it: Dan Snyder's SIX Flags lost another $121 million-plus change this spring. Who's to blame? God, government, Mother Nature, Swine Flu, Jesus' death, and minimum wage employees, say Dan Snyder and Six Flags co-captain Mark Shapiro.

And so what if Six Flags is in the toilet? Dan Snyder just wants to win, dammit!

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The Great Dan Steinberg marvels at the big muscles the Redskins have. Thank goodness the NFL has been so out-front in the drug testing realm, so that I and other media types, not to mention all football fans, don't have to waste a single second wondering whether ANY of these behemoths achieved this unnatural looking state through any means other than just eating real good and throwing lots of steel!

Way to keep it clean, NFL! Just say no, kids!

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The Michael Vick Watch goes on off the football field, too. An event called the "Michael Vick Community Celebration" scheduled for this weekend in his hometown of Newport News, Va., was cancelled because, organizers said, Vick had to be in Atlanta for a Humane Society event.

But then no animal rights types in Atlanta would confirm that Vick is supposed to be there, either.

The big questions: What sort of creeps would organize a Vick "celebration" now? Who can even be near the guy and look at him without thinking, "Yucky!"?

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Speaking of troubled Tidewater athletes: Real odd story in the Washington Times with longtime football writer Dave Elfin working mightily to try to rehab Bruce Smith's image just after the Hokie/Bill/Redskin's conviction on a third DUI arrest in 12 years.

The city of Virginia Beach cancelled a party that was going to celebrate Smith's induction to the Hall of Fame because of his drinking and driving problems.

Elfin argues that for a guy with three DUI arrests he's great with kids, and a great businessman, too, for a guy with three DUI arrests.

"If I hadn't done what I did on the football field," Smith  says of his buying things for an old football coach in his hometown, "I wouldn't have been afforded the opportunity to give back in such a fashion."

Well, there's that, Bruce, plus: you'd be in jail now.

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The blog DC Pro Sports Report has a compendium of all the Redskins sites out there. Good god, you won't believe how many there are.

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Nats have a six-run eighth and beat Florida, 6-4. Greatest comeback win of the season! Three-game winning streak!

Uh, oh! This just in: Until further notice, it's still football season! Just as things were getting exciting! Darn!

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Some cancellations to report:

First and worst: Boxer Jimmy Lange's scheduled July 25 fight in Greensboro, N.C., is off. A Lange spokesman told me over the weekend that the cancellation, first reported by the great local boxing clearinghouse boxingaroundthebeltway.com, came "out of the blue" after North Carolina  authorities refused to sanction Lange's opponent, Jimmy LeBlanc. Lange's camp surmises that LeBlanc's record (12–16–4, with 10 of the losses coming in his last 12 fights) had regulators fearing a mismatch with the former cast member of NBC's reality fight show, "The Contender." Lange, from Great Falls, had hoped to use the Greensboro bout, his first outside of Fairfax since gaining TV stardom, to expand his considerable fan base beyond the beltway.

And Bruce Smith's hometown of Virginia Beach has cancelled a festival to honor the former Redskins defensive end. The cancellation comes after Smith was convicted last week of DUI, following his franchise-record-breaking third drunk driving arrest in the last 12 years.

Also, there will be no Allen Iverson Celebrity Softball or Flag Football games around here this year. The former Georgetown star's events had been held for several years at Prince George's Stadium and attracted an impressive number of big-name sports celebs to our area. Iverson this year moved the party to the Tidewater region of Virginia, the stomping grounds, so to speak, of his youth. Iverson's three-day shindig, now called the CrossOver Celebrity Weekend, was thrown over the weekend.

Tom Sedlacek, a spokesman for Prince George's Stadium, says: "We were open to holding it here again this year, and kept dates open on our calendar, but apparently there was no interest from [Iverson] to do it here."

I wonder if Iverson let Josh Howard sing the National Anthem this year?

AFTER THE JUMP: Asian Bias™ resurfaces at OTHER U.S. Open? Brock Lesnar needs some time to heel? Dan Snyder vintage videotapes? ANOTHER Sean Taylor ode?

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Back to ignoring all that Post-Racial America talk: Turns out it's not just Congressional or the AT&T National that has an Asian Bias™! Yesterday's U.S. Women's Open golf championship had Eun Hee Ji banging home a long putt on the last hole to win by a stroke over Candie Kung. First round leader Na Yeon Choi fell to ninth. Defending champ Inbee Park managed 26th place. Past winners of the three-year-old AT&T National, remember, are KJ Choi, Anthony Kim and Tiger Woods. First rule of Journalism®: Three's a trend!

The LPGA Tour, unlike the men, tried to do something to eliminate its Asian Bias™ last season, in the process revealing a profound Anti-Asian Bias™ among the folks running the tour: Commissioner Carolyn Bivens briefly instituted an "English-only" policy after a meeting with South Korean players a year ago. Really! She did! I swear! It's one of the great sports stories of our time!

Bivens' Linguistic Cleansing™ scheme was scrapped almost as soon as the Liberal Media found out about it, and now as Cheap Seats Daily goes to press, she's about to be fired. Sic Semper Douchebaggius.

***

My ultimate ultimate fighter, Brock Lesnar, retained the UFC heavyweight belt with an artless pounding of Frank Mir on Saturday night. Here's what LA Times' T.J. Simers wrote of the spectacle.

"But what does this say about us, people screaming with glee because blood is running down someone's face and he's still in there punching? What does it say about violence's voyeuristic appeal, the sight of someone being choked into unconsciousness reason for howling approval?

It's hard to believe public executions wouldn't do well. And just think of the reality TV show that's sitting there waiting to be done, instead of the weigh-in, the final meal.

When you watch something like UFC 100, there's really no reason to believe there are limits to what might entertain people."

Well, I would watch a street fight video before any highlight reel from any accepted sport. I'm not proud of that, but damn if it ain't true. But the Lesnar fight was boring until after he was done pounding Mir and told the crowd to fuck off, then told prime sponsor Bud Light to fuck off. Now THAT's entertainment!

Especially after UFC 100, anybody who likes MMA but sneers at pro wrestling is clearly of the douchebaggius genus.

***

The Gazette reports that Rosecroft Raceway's bankrupt owners are proposing selling out to a guy who plans to make the racetrack a gambling center, with poker and other table games and, maybe, a little horse racing. Cheap Seats Daily has just set the odds of all this actually happening at 1,000,000,000-1.

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Hogs Haven posts some interviews with then-new owner Dan Snyder from 10 years ago. Watching them, and knowing how things turned out, is like listening to George Bush talk about the need to disarm Iraq in 2003.

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A fellow named Brooks J. DeGhetto is posting on Skins fan sites about "21 Sean," a song he wrote in tribute to Sean Taylor. The critic in me says the performance is Jim Morrison-meets-"A Mighty Wind" (sample lyric: "21 Sean your spirit carries on inside of me/Wherever you are you'll be a superstar, running free/You're running free for all to see, in burgundy/and gold." Ahem.) And the rest of me says: Enough with the tributes to a guy who had about the same number of good seasons as arrests. But it takes guts to put yourself out there like Mr. DeGhetto has here. Sean would like that.

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Bruce Smith, whose 2000 signing is symbolic of everything wrong with the Washington Redskins in the Snyder Era, was convicted of DUI yesterday in Virginia Beach. Smith failed the field sobriety tests administered by police, but his lawyer had argued in court that his client walked unstably because of old knee injuries from his football days.

That argument didn't fly with the judge, so the defense attorney tried some other Hail Marys. From the AP story:

Smith also had trouble following Womble's hand movements with both eyes, but [Smith's lawyer Larry] Cardon said that could have been caused by his client's multiple concussions or the glare of lights from traffic in the opposite lanes of the interstate.

Cardon also noted that while Womble reported a strong smell of alcohol, the officer testified that Smith's speech was not slurred and that he was cooperative. Cardon said there was insufficient evidence to convict.

But prosecutor Kristin L. Paulding said Smith's problems with the sobriety tests were not just physical — he also had trouble following instructions. For example, Smith was told to walk nine steps and turn around, but he walked 14 and had to be told to stop.

With the May arrest, Smith's now been busted three times in the last 12 years. That is believed to be an all-time record for DUI charges for a Redskins defensive end.

And Pac Man Jones gives the NFL a bad name?

Smith will be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame this summer. Take a cab, Bruce.