Customize a template (I like to start with minima) and make it look different or geared towards your niche (football) to make it more interesting. Get yourself a custom header with a cool graphic, sign up with feedburner and put your feed widget on your blog. In your Google account go to Google Co-op and start a Google Custom Search Engine so people can search your blog.
Since you're still pretty new I say watch how many labels you use if you're going to display them in your sidebar. Be more selective in the number of labels you use because that list will get pretty long and gets annoying if you have to scroll for it. Maybe search for a blog by a blogger hacker that show you how to turn your labels into a tag cloud. They look better and take up less space.
If you end up monetizing your blog consider reducing the number of posts that appear on the main page so you get more impressions for your ads.
It depends on what you'll post and how long your post is...i have 3 posts each page of my blog as i post articles on it which is sometimes have thousands of characters...
For me it depends on how long my sidebars are. I try to keep the content and sidebars an equal length to avoid unnecessary scrolling and to try to keep the adsense blocks in view
I'm not going to talk more about the design since i know how annoying it is, to change over to custom themes in Blogger. But I think you could put the adsense block on the right side of the paragraph. You can do it by :
For me it depends on how long my sidebars are. I try to keep the content and sidebars an equal length to avoid unnecessary scrolling and to try to keep the adsense blocks in view
