Don't throw your rabbit ears away just yet, soccer fans. At least not until the CONCACAF Gold Cup is over.

I watched last night's USA/Honduras match in glorious analog, complete with an old-school non-digital antenna hooked up and pointing skyward.

The match was broadcast live from RFK on WMDO-47, an over-the-air Spanish station that is part of the Miami-based Telefutura network, itself a subsidiary of everybody's favorite telenovela source, Univision.

If you've got the lowest tier cable TV, you wouldn't have been able to watch the game, since WMDO (like the Anglo Fox Soccer Channel, which is also showing some Gold Cup games) isn't in every package.

But if you've got no cable, like those of us now forced to live on a budget, you could cheer our boys on.

The supposed drop-dead date for analog TV in the U.S. was June 12, when the federally mandated switch to digital kicked in. Apparently something got lost in translation, because not only is WMDO still clogging up the airwaves with analog signals, but the station doesn't even offer viewers a digital option.

"There shouldn't be any analog stations out there anymore, except for maybe a high school or college station," says "Joanne" of the FCC's Digital TV Hotline out of Niagara Falls. "Everybody's supposed to be transitioned to digital by now. Our map of DC isn't showing any more analogs."

Well, then, City Desk readers, please promise not to spill the beans on WMDO to the Feds! Not for a few more weeks! Because I plan on adjusting the rabbit ears and trying not to poke myself in the eye all over again tomorrow night for the El Salvador/Jamaica game, and again July 23 when my Gold Cup TV schedule tells me WMDO will be broadcasting both Gold Cup semifinal matches.

It'll be just between us!

A source at the Sports and Entertainment Commission tells me that there's not any hint that next week's Gold Cup soccer match between the beautiful losers of the USA national team and the Honduran national team will be affected by what's gone on. It's on.

I've read there's been a coup down south.

Apparently newly ex-President Manuel Zelaya, who was just thrown out of the country by his military, can't go home. Coup leaders say that if he shows up in the capital city of Tegucigalpa he'll be arrested.

The U.S. is in Zelaya's corner in this one. So why not turn this game into something huge? Let the State Department invite the deposed guy to our Nation's Capital to watch his old soccer team play our boys. If Zelaya sucks up to the futbol fans back home, and the Hondurans manage to escape with a win, he could fly back with the team and take his job back.

Can't hurt. Tickets are available, so Zelaya won't be taking up a Barra Brava member's seat.

Think it's silly? Well, the Hondurans have already gone to war once over soccer.

Really.