HAPPILY GOING THROUGH `TORTURE'.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media

On an otherwise normal yet overcast Wednesday afternoon, it's elbow-to-beer-glass, standing-and-rooting room only at the Fox & Hounds pub in Studio City for those sneaking an extra long lunch break to crowd around the TV monitors.

A Yankees-Red Sox game? Not quite. An early NBA playoff game? Hardly. Try an ESPN international feed of the UEFA Champions League between Chelsea and Liverpool.

Nick Geber, his red Liverpool jersey covered some by a sweat shirt, camps at a barstool, his chin propped up in his hand as he studies the action with occasional bursts of applause. His pal, Steven Cohen, pacing a few feet away in his blue Chelsea shirt, screams at the screen, chomps on his fingernails and pounds the back of innocent bystanders whenever a critical play takes place.

``This isn't fun,'' Cohen admits just before the second half of what would be a 0-0 finish. ``This is torture.''

One man's angst is another audience's entertainment. There's no other place these two transplanted Brits would rather be, getting their ultimate soccer fix and collecting more ammunition to go to battle against each other the next day.

Geber and Cohen have been verbally jousting at a fever pitch for years, but since March, it has been a daily ritual since expanding a weekly soccer radio show into an 8-to-10 a.m. event called ``World Soccer Daily,'' available on Sirius Satellite Radio (Channel 122), 200-plus affiliates on the Sports Byline USA network and on the Internet at their own www.worldsoccerweekly.com.

What started back in 2002 as a weekend early-morning niche soccer show for Southern Californians on AM-1150 and AM-1540 has expanded into a national sounding board on the world's most popular sport. They've also parlayed their act into a ``Fox Football Friday'' show - kind of a cross between ``Wayne's World'' and ``The Best Damn Sports Show Period'' for the Fox Soccer Channel (6-7 p.m.).

The spirited debates are all in good fun, but represent a passion and intensity you otherwise don't get on most sports-talk shows. That's not only a reflection of their personalities, but of a sport that extracts devotion and can convert those who otherwise don't have an opinion into suddenly caring and - egads - bringing this kickball into the mainstream.

``I hear people say, 'I don't know what teams Lee Hamilton or Jim Rome supports' - forget that, we don't want to be impartial,'' said Gerber, whose license plate on his car reads ``LVRPL FN,'' while Cohen's is ``CHELC FN''.

``To do what we do, you can't be an 'objective journalist,' '' Cohen says with some emphasis on the last two words to show disgust.

In the course of a two-hour radio show emanating from a small second-floor studio in an otherwise nondescript office building near LAX, the two will field calls and e-mails from a cab driver in Brooklyn, N.Y., a grandmother in Massachusetts, an interstate trucker - almost the opposite of the expatriates you'd expect to be flooding their phone lines to shout back at them.

``We get people raised on American sports who say they've taken up soccer because they've heard us, we've made them laugh and now they want to see what it's all about,'' said Geber, 40, who lives in Torrance with his wife and four kids.

Maybe it's because, during the course of expounding on the merits of their religious experience, Geber and Cohen - who have lived here more than 20 years and also served in the U.S. military - have a keen way of exposing the oxymoronic existence of today's American sports fan.

``All I can tell you is at an English soccer game, they'll never put the word 'Make Noise' on the scoreboard; that says it all,'' Geber said. ``I'm not cynical of American sports, but take the Clippers, one of the worst run franchises in sports, who will stay in the NBA year after year regardless of their performance, selling tickets to the fans with the same pitch. Imagine if they were relegated to a lower league and forced to win to stay in the NBA (as it is in English soccer).''

Cohen, 42, says those they help convert are mostly ``dissatisfied with the state of American sports. The NBA isn't as popular in L.A. now, baseball has its troubles, and I just love this hockey season.

``I just find American sports to be a TV event, where (advertisements) are sprinkled in with some game. And I married a girl who thought football was a religion.''

This wife he speaks of, Jackie Cohen, is the daughter of the late, great Jack Neumeier, who coached John Elway at Granada Hills High in the late '70s and was one of the most successful prep coaches in the San Fernando Valley.

``I feel like my mom did in a lot of ways, but it's just a different kind of football,'' Jackie Cohen says of her husband's passion. ``A lot of the obsession is the same. I didn't know Steven was this fanatical about it until he started doing the radio and TV full-time.''

Meaning, she knows exactly where to find her husband next Tuesday afternoon - back at Fox & Hounds, with Geber, glued to TVs again for the second leg of the Chelsea-Liverpool series.

All in the name of work research, of course.

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

--It's still cool to bring a transistor radio into Dodger Stadium to catch Vin Scully's first three innings, right? Of course, but we were thrown for a loop by a blind item in the May issue of Los Angeles magazine. Under the ``Buzzcuts'' section that attempts to monitor trends and rumors around town, it said that portable radios are ``now considered a security threat at Dodger Stadium,'' and team owner Frank McCourt ``wants to issue wireless headsets offering play-by-play not just in English but in Spanish, Japanese and Korean.'' Excusez-moi? The team's response via spokesman John Olguin: ``That's completely incorrect. Radios are allowed in Dodger Stadium unless they are larger than 14 inches.''

--XM Satellite Radio plans to launch a 24-hour Spanish-language sports channel in July, in partnership with Futbol de Primera, which syndicates soccer programming and has famed broadcaster Andres Cantor as its one of its top execs.

--ABC's ``Nightline'' tonight (11:35 p.m.) revisits Arthur Agee and William Gates 10 years after the documentary ``Hoop Dreams'' made the inner-city high school basketball stars famous. Both still live in Chicago; Agee has a clothing line and Gates is a church minister.

--The NFL Network, which may end up with either a Thursday or Saturday game for itself starting in 2006 once the TV contracts are final, will expand into Mexico starting Sunday after agreeing to a deal with Sky Mexico, the country's biggest pay-TV service with one million subscribers.

--Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, in a Q-and-A with the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, disputed rumors that star LeBron James wants to leave after his contract is up next year or that Gilbert had been sending notes to former coach Paul Silas about who should be playing. ``(That) came from short-term thinkers and media entertainers posing as journalists. ... The `ESPN Entertainer' who said it is ... the same guy who made up stories about LeBron's mother not liking the new ownership team. This guy, let's call him John A. Doe, is an entertainer, not a journalist.'' Steven A. Smith, the ``entertainer'' in question, told USA Today he stands by his stories.

WHAT CHOKES

--In a strangely worded press release sent out this week by Fox Sports Radio, 570-AM general manager Don Martin announced that ``The Morning Extravaganza'' show from 5-8 a.m. weekdays featuring Van Earl Wright, Andrew Siciliano and Krystal Fernandez would be replaced by a nonsports entertainment show syndicated out of Chicago and hosted by Mancow Muller starting May 20. The press release started by acknowledging that the ``Extravaganza'' has increased its ratings in Los Angeles by 22 percent since Wright joined last October, replacing Tony Bruno, but Martin continues: ``There are times when a radio station chooses to focus its programming in a new direction.'' Hence, ``Mancow's Morning Madhouse,'' a sort-of Don Imus kind of program, bumps the ``Extravaganza,'' which will continue to air on Fox's Antelope Valley affiliate KAVL-AM (610) and XM Satellite channel 142. Says Wright: ``All of us are proud that we've been able to dramatically improve our ratings, but Don Martin, who strongly encouraged me to make the switch from TV to radio for this job, apparently sees a better opportunity with syndicated `guy talk' that gives zero attention to sports. As our listeners know, we've only had fun with sports but devoted a large part of our national show to the Southern California sports scene.''

--A scheduling mix-up on ESPN2 caused by the NFL Draft coverage running long and overlapping the start of the MLS' Galaxy-Chivas USA game Saturday night caused a little consternation for soccer viewers. ESPN2 originally thought it would join the soccer game in progress live after the end of the draft (which it was contractually obligated to televise in full). But as it dragged on, a decision was made to show the soccer game in full, on tape delay. The only problem by then was the ``bottom line'' ticker was updating viewers with the score - at that point, the Galaxy had a 3-0 lead and, for all intents and purposes, won the game. ``We apologize for the inconvenience, but the intent was to serve both fans,'' ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said. ``As soon as we knew the game was going to be tape delayed, we stopped running the score.

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SOUND BYTES (see text)

BY TOM HOFFARTH