Resign? Bob Bradley? NO ... Bradley has not resigned

We get so very much out of it. It fills up our lives. But there’s a mean side, and every now and then it strikes us with great vengeance and menace.

I give you today’s silly and inaccurate round of “Bob Bradley resigns” as Exhibit A.

To catch you up quickly, one very small internet site reported Wednesday that Bradley would no longer be manager of the U.S. side. And, while I didn’t hear it, I understand that one radio report out of England reported something similar.

I won’t mention the U.S. internet site because I don’t want to drive any traffic that way. Now that my own short story is up at SI.com and others have penned short, similar pieces – “knockdown” stories in the journo vernacular – the Google beast will throw the little guy’s little inaccurate report to the bottom of the pile and he’ll safely fade into the background again. I hope.

(FYI, here's a short lesson on what we call SEO, or "search engine optimization." By using the words "Bob Bradley" and "resign" and "resigned" in my headline, I'm ensuring that some of the false reports will fall further. Because my site is a member of the SB Nation family, and because SB Nation sites have massive traffic flowing like rush hour in sunny So Cal, and also because search engines pick up words faster in headlines and photo captions, they will find this piece faster than pieces on less well-visited sites. See how that works? Aren't we a bunch of smart patooties?)

I do blame MSG, however, a big news organization that should know better.

MSG irresponsibly ran with the report on its Wednesday night broadcast of the Red Bulls-Toronto FC match. I was out with friends that night but I watched the game first thing Thursday morning. When I heard the MSG announcers talking about the report of Bradley’s resignation, I nearly spilled by meticulously brewed Italian roast all over the dog. That was a close one for the border collie.

I rushed to the phone to see if I had breathless messages from editors (“We gotta check this out!”) and was shocked when I didn’t. I thought, “Hmmm, maybe the world has gotten smarter about these things. Maybe we’ve tamed the internet beast – just a little anyway.”

Alas, I was wrong. Sometimes it just takes the hornets a little longer to attack once the nest has been kicked, apparently. So it all got to tumbling this morning. The calls came. I had to check and … well … you can read the knockdown story.

Long story short, there’s no change. Bradley remains in charge. For now.

That doesn’t mean that something won’t happen next week. Or next month. But there’s absolutely nothing to these reports. As for Bradley at Aston Villa, I think that’s a bunch of hooey. Sure, Bradley’s agent may make a couple of calls to see if there’s any interest. But I have my doubts about whether there is actual interest from Aston Villa side. Not because Bradley isn’t a good coach, but just because they probably will cast their nets elsewhere – at first, at least.