Fans of the Knicks lost their collective minds this week when Jeremy Lin started a five game win streak and then scored more points than Kobe Bryant (38 pts for Mr. Lincredible) in a victory over the Lakers.  Sports apparel sellers in New York city can’t keep up with the demand for his jerseys and when I go to work on Monday my office will speak more about him than Carmelo and Stoudemire combined.  As proud as New Yorkers are with his new success, our civic pride pales in consideration to the overt adulation and divine joy he’s bringing the NBA marketing department.  Jeremy Lin is yet another chance for David Stern and his staff to bring in more viewers from China (and Taiwan).  Because of that David Stern will haul in GOBS OF CASH FOR THE NBA.

Which brings me to the question ………. could a story like Jeremy’s ever happen for the MLS?

If you aren’t familiar with his story (or are too lazy to Google it) here’s a rundown of his rise to success in the NBA:  His parents are both from Taiwan and gave birth to him after moving to Los Angeles where he lead his high school basketball team to an almost undefeated season (32-1).  No major colleges gave him a scholarship chance and the sole reason he decided to attend Harvard was because it was the only school that would give him playing time.  After graduating with a degree in Economics Jeremy Lin decided to continue basketball even though almost all of the NBA teams didn’t give him the time of day.  He had to play through a NBA summer league and faced massive bench time with the Golden State Warriors where he was later waived and picked up by the Knicks.  New York thought about cutting him after awhile but had to give him a shot because most of their star players such as Carmelo or Stoudemire had their own injuries to handle.  When Lin was given extended minutes he pretty much lit up Madison Square Garden and is the talk of the town.   

If we look down the line for a year or two we see a gold mine taking shape again for the NBA.  Not only is Lin a terrific player and great person, he’s the perfect vehicle for the NBA to promote itself across the world.  Lin grew up in California and is pretty much an All American kid that can appeal to almost any young fan stateside.  Not only that, but if you fly him out to Taiwan for a press conference his command of Mandarin isn’t too bad either.  Promote him here, promote him there, it’s your choice.  Nike had also signed him a couple years back so do you think they’ll mess up their investment down the line?

Which brings us to ………. American soccer?

 To start with, a lot of the league is foreign to begin with (about 40% and growing) yet there aren’t a lot of Chinese out there in MLS (there’s about two).  Brian Ching is a decent player but he’s not full Chinese and the league shipped him off to Montreal.  Another, I mean the other, Chinese is Long Tan who in a mysterious coincidence is also playing in Canada.  So not only are these two not being publicized by MLS that much, they’re not even being playing on American teams.

Here’s my reasoning on why this situation won’t improve until ten or fifteen years down the line:

To be blunt, the billions of people in China don’t care about MLS, therefore, if there was a top Chinese player playing at an elite level here nobody in China would notice.  With Jeremy Lin, he has the benefit of a China already invested in the NBA.  When Yao Ming broke the barrier for a Chinese player nto the league he was followed by over a hundred million young Chinese.  And even after Yao had a busted ankle in recent years he was still voted into the All-Star game because of the sheer numbers of Chinese voting.  Now Jeremy Lin is not only appealing to the Chinese mainland but he’s making inroads into Taiwan (a crowded, populated separate island of its own) for further reach.

Also, keep in mind that the people in China (or Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc) that do follow soccer with a passion only follow the European Leagues.  The NBA is regarded as the top league for basketball talent, but the MLS is a 2nd or 3rd tier league depending on who you ask.  So if a great Asian is marketed by MLS and succeeds, he won’t have the backing of anyone that even lives in Asia.  As it stands a lot of American soccer fans even won’t make a big deal of him unless he scores in the World Cup.

So, to end this, we can speculate that until MLS is the ‘NBA of soccer’ nobody in China will be buying jerseys any time soon.  I’m crossing my fingers that AMERICANS I run into will buy more MLS jerseys in four or five years.

Let’s get this over with.  On this upcoming Sunday afternoon millions of Americans (well over half the country) will gather in front of their televisions for a four hour advertising assault to their senses.  The advertising industry loves to throw out the line that ‘this is the one event that people look forward to watching our commercials!’  and they are right.  It might be a waste of time to compare the Super Bowl’s advertising power to MLS, but let’s go there.  Let’s see what we’re dealing with.  As a quasi-fan of the MLS I see cracks in the NFL’s armor and need to see the full scope of that league’s biggest day. 

To begin with, let’s look at basic advertising rates for the SB:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/11/sportsline/main6082591.shtml

$3 Million dollars per commercial.

I couldn’t find any numbers for the MLS Final, but I did check the NBA Finals advertising rates just to see what the going rate is for another successful sports league: http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2010/05/20100531/This-Weeks-News/Advertising-Sales-Strong-Going-Into-NBA-Finals.aspx

The NBA wasn’t too shabby but is still literally and figuratively out of the NFL’s league.  To advertise on the NBA Finals (in 2010 for the above link) it will cost you on average $400,000 for a 30-second spot. 

UPDATE AFTER ORIGINAL POST!!: Someone pointed out to me that the NBA might have 7 games total played in a series, therefore bringing up an advertisers rate to a possible 2.8 million over the course of the games.  I doubt the NBA Finals commercials are as relevant as the Super Bowl’s, but the point was made that the NBA is getting as wealthy as the NFL over time.  Soccer in America could still never charge that much though ….

Let’s look at a different angle, the fact that major advertisers will spend additional money just to produce those commercials for Super Bowl Sunday.  It’s one thing to break the bank to get your commercial in the line-up, but how much are you willing to spend on the actual advertising clip?  Celebrities like Matthew Broderick can demand serious money to act like Ferris Beuller again after a twenty year hiatus, maybe that costs even more than a 30-second NBA spot.  Oh? And what other celebrities can we expect this year?  Oh yeah, David Beckham is confirmed to make an appearance that might draw in more total viewers than the entire years worth of games with his MLS team. 

Now I digress on that issue and point to a few differences in how athletes approach the game.  For one thing, Tom Brady and Eli Manning aren’t going to spend three months a year playing in a different league.  Landon Donovan feels no shame in playing a few months in England every year and American soccer fans even now consider him a better soccer player because of it.  Donovan’s not alone either, one of the MLS’s best players, Thierry Henry, decided to show up with his old English team just for the fun of it.  This is telling because it shows non-exclusiveness with MLS’s players. 

If you watch the NBA Finals you are telling yourself you are watching the world’s best basketball teams field the best players (Lebron James, D. Wayde, Jason Kidd and Dirk showed up in 2011).  If you watch the Super Bowl you are telling yourself you are watching the toughest, scariest most athletic football players that America breeds and trains; any attempt to duplicate such a game outside of America would not give you such a game.  However, with MLS and even the U.S. Men’s team you can not admit to yourself these are the best players.  As such, in an MLS Final you would be watching some players that would be desperate to play in foreign lands and treat this game as an afterthought. 

Let’s keep going.  To buy a ticket to BE at the Super Bowl this year in the stadium on gameday you’ll be asked to pay at least $2,252.00 for horrific seats where you couldn’t identify anyone not named Tom or Eli.  If you wanted to spend $250 for tickets to the MLS Final you will have had field view very close to the game per the L.A. Galaxy’s website.  If you wanted to spend $2,252.00 for any 2011 MLS Final tickets you might have been sat front and center on a team’s bench and given free beer and an authentic soccer jersey, or deemed insane.  Also if you wanted to get into the NFL’s media day to gawk at players who aren’t even playing yet, you would have shelled out between $100-350$.

I’m going to stop beating the dead horse and focus on a few positives for soccer fans who hope for change.  First is that for all of the over-hype of the current Super Bowl this years ad prices are stagnant this year.  They’re not rising in price like they once did and a lot of the better commercials are already on the internet for viewers to watch now (days before game day).  It doesn’t make much sense to me to spend so much on ads that aren’t kept secret anymore.  Remember that before the internet you could only watch Superbowl Ads on that one sunday and people would talk about it for days afterwards.  Now even Pepsi decided to screw the whole thing and will spend 30 million on something else. 

I also think a younger generation with a fast cell phone and zero short term memory is more adapted to soccer in the long run than the NFL only because soccer is played pretty much all the time, in most of the world, with their own over-hyped ridiculous important games.  If the NFL can’t convince people to keep watching on television the Super Bowl could be a waste of time (the television as we know it might be obsolete in twenty years anyway).  Already most people have over 350 channels, the internet, friends and actual lives in 2012.  They can’t be convinced to sit down and care about a game that doesn’t interest them anymore (ask MLB executives about this issue).

To end this Super introspection I’ll end this post with a Super Bowl commercial that some say changed the advertising industry in 1994:

Almost twenty years later Budweiser was bought out by a group named InBev, a European beer company operated by a group of forward thinking and audacious Brazilians.  In 1994 most Americans would’ve thought that Budweiser getting bought out by a once small European company was like seeing bullfrogs fly to outerspace, but it still happened, by a company that some call ‘the Wal-Mart of Beer Companies’. This same European group is now in charge of all major Budweiser advertising for the 2012 Super Bowl even as they try their best to make it as American as possible. But it makes you wonder … could the whole soccer thing EVER catch on stateside for huge soccer games? 

And when will the MLS Final EVER, EVER, EVER, have some major music act for a half-time show?  EVER?

I started this blog with the intention of taking a tongue-in-cheek look at American soccer development (or the serious lack of it).  At that time (July 13th 2011) the Galaxy hadn’t gone through their title run and I could enjoy labeling the team the Gaylaxy because they weren’t winning and seemed to waste Beckham and Donovan.  I also witnessed the likes of Manchester United and Real Madrid bash some of our American teams in lopsided victories that no American was enthusiastic about.  In short, when this blog first started American soccer wasn’t as good as it is now. 

And it’s about to get a lot better while the advertising gets more annoying.

To begin with, on the Yahoo sports page the main story is about the U.S. Women’s team thrashing the Dominican Republic 14-0.  I’ve never talked to any soccer fan who was adamant about the power of the Dominican Republic so I have doubts about why this is such a big story (right now European soccer is starting to heat up and you would think Yahoo Soccer would focus on Spanish or England league games).  The main story on ESPN’s soccer page is  about the U.S. Venezula SCRIMMAGE, a game tonight that means nothing.  Keep in mind that tomorrow morning Manchester United and Manchester City are playing against some big rivals with league title ramifications.  If ESPN were hyping up NFL football playoffs you think they’d throw a giant story on their site about Canadian football qualifiers instead of a New England / Green Bay match-up?  No, they wouldn’t, but with this year’s London olympics and U.S. soccer now showing signs of emergence both ESPN and Yahoo are going to overhype every U.S. soccer game leading up to this summer.

To further emphasize my point let’s take a look at a recent convention in Kansas City for the NSCAA.  This happens every year for the National Soccer Coaches of America Association for American coaches to get together and brainstorm about how to get soccer better here.  I’m going to focus on two things that happened here to show that America is taking soccer serious.  The first is a tirade from Eric Wynalda, a retired American soccer player that played for our World Cup teams and was a major player during MLS’s slow years.  At the convention in Kansas City he made a major scene when he disagreed with a lot of MLS practices and basically sounded off on why he thought the league was still amateur (as the sole writer of Suckyball I would imagine I agree with him, but I’m not interested enough to even focus on his points).  Wynalda also is known to be bitter about not being a coach now and the fact the Galaxy didn’t want him to sign with their team.  Why would his opinions be cause for concern and enough for NSCAA to label it an embarrassment?  …. That brings me to my second point.

http://www.nscaa.com/news/2012/01/soccer-in-the-us-the-next-steps

This year Fox TV and MLS’s commissioner were on location there for a major panel in discussing America’s soccer future.  Could you imagine in 1986 if television executives would show up at a national coaching convention to look for popular opinion and soundbytes?  Could you imagine in 1996 if an American soccer league would be developed enough to wield any power over emerging young players?  Well, welcome to 2012!! This NSCAA convention is little by little becoming an important tool in bringing together American soccer executives.  Could you imagine in five or six years a youth soccer conference that resembles this? http://www.mcdonaldsallamerican.com/2012/

When I was drunk months ago in Manhattan I told my west coast friends that ‘Soccer’s about to blow up, in ten years, this $*&@ will be everywhere, they’ll market it just like baseball or basketball’ I didn’t imagine it would happen in less time!  Fox is about to air more English matches on Sunday mornings and Aaron Rogers walks around with a Manchester City shirt (you can google it).  It will just keep getting crazier as Americans convince themselves that they are a soccer country despite having a limited history and a lack of elite world players.

Two more side stories:

While on vacation this past fall I had the opportunity to check out different parts of Pennsylvania.  I hadn’t expected New York to change me so fast but I couldn’t help but feel like a fish out of water when surrounded by trees, dirt roads and actual farm animals grazing.  Now imagine my surprise when I spotted a giant tent sale next to an Adidas outlet (the tent was selling excess inventory under a makeshift tent at rock bottom prices).  My girlfriend flipped when she realized she could get entire Adidas outfits for twenty dollars and I flipped when  I realized that about half of the Pennsylvanians at the tent sale were wearing European soccer gear.  Is the American economy that bad where kids can only afford old Fernando Torres jerseys and Real Madrid t-shirts for nine dollars?  Was there some bizarre Pennsylvanian fascination with the MLS All-Star game from 2010?  Bottom line, my wild correlation between a sinking economy and the rise of soccer seemed pretty strong when I walked around an Adidas tent sale surrounded by Americans picking up cheap soccer gear from three years ago.  Did the kids in that tent store become more interested in soccer because they liked the Adidas brand (and NOT because Adidas was selling clothing  that wasn’t sold in bigger cities?).  Anyways, it was an eye opener to see so much soccer gear being sold to people that I would’ve thought wouldn’t care.

Second story, the Red Bull Arena just got sued and most news outlets might look the other way.  Read here:

http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2012/01/4790_judge_red_bulls.html 

I’m not a lawyer but it looks like the city wants it’s taxes back after the Red Bulls’ claims of breathing life into the city are now falling short.  As a person who hopes that the team gets some matter of acceptance in a crowded city it doesn’t look too good when ‘the crown jewel of MLS stadiums’ is in a real estate dispute with the city it was supposed to be on good terms with.  That situation sucks doesn’t it?

And did I mention that the American women’s team beat the Dominican Republic? …

As a frequent reader of Grantland.com I’ve come to appreciate when Chuck Klosterman will write three or four pages of content for a one minute youtube video of old rock footage.  The following run down of a Jurgen Klinsmann pep talk is pretty much the same format that Chuck uses.

0:00 – :25 – Jurgen has a nasal, almost dorky, quality to his voice that reminds me of old Landon Donovan interviews.  Although I hate saying that soccer in America is a safehouse for introverted, over cerebral and inarticulate athletes that’s the vibe I’ve been getting from watching more than a few of our athletes and coaches speak in public (but I give Klinsmann credit because English wasn’t his primary language in Europe).  Jurgen also prefaces the remaining talk with ‘We’ve got a hell of a lot of work guys …’ 

0:25 – 1:00 – Coach goes in depth about thinking faster, being aggressive and creating more opportunities off the ball (all vague statements about improving play).  There’s a good chance he was telling the exact same things to his German national team but I’m not going to knock a coach for telling his players to execute better and make chances for themselves.  Then he mentions that it’s not his idea or anyone elses to always think ahead but ‘how the best in the world play’ while he shrugs.

Translation so far: You guys have a hell of a lot work to do if you want to play well against the best in the world (shrug). 

1:01 – 1:24  - Coach mentions what every average soccer fan realizes: Spain’s Barcelona is the big man on campus.  The Spaniards play a more fluid style than us and it didn’t happen overnight for them.  Jurgen says it took them about 20 years.   That means I can keep writing suckyball for two more decades?  

1:25 – 1:46 – Coach hints that if you don’t like it, move on, period.  I want to state here that Jurgen’s okay in my book because even if the American team isn’t showing any signs of progress it’s not like our team is backsliding into a sea of mediocrity.  We live in mediocrity now anyway.  Soccer Team U.S.A. has never been a world beater, ever, and as long as we’re not getting blown out by Canada I’ll give the German the benefit of the doubt.  In fact, maybe Canada should be our soccer litmus test and we can measure how great we are by how many goals we can score against them (A 5-0 blowout will say something then).  So Jurgen, play around as much with the line-up as you want because no one will give you a final grade until the World Cup and you know it.

Also, notice his interesting backslide on the Barcelona topic. ‘They do this, they do that, they have a system, they have this unique academy …. am I trying to copy them? ………. No, let’s talk about something else’.

1:47  – 2:17 – Jurgen continues to try and motivate his team but I get the feeling he doesn’t believe our players will go anywhere. It’s like Phil Jackson had to coach the Memphis Grizzlies for a season and this was a speech trying to get them focused while he thought about how great Shaq used to be.  So Klinsmann, even if the entire team works 24/7 to get better we have no chance of a good showing in 2014? We’ve got a hell of a lot of work guys.

2:18 – 2:40 – A 25 minute warm up of jogging?  To me that’s a waste of time because these players run all the time anyway (I’ve never been a coach of anything ever by the way).  But I do think exhaustive passing drills would be a step forward.  Also there’s footage of a nice give and go and I wonder if that’s Agudelo giving the nice assist.  Is this quick goal becoming more frequent in practice?.  If that was the ONLY highlight of the day then it doesn’t say much.

2:40 – 3:09 – Klinsmann mentions that if the games ahead are challenging then that’s what we want  (I think that’s a good attitude).  When ex-coach Bradley faced tough teams the game could take on the appearance of a slight disaster even if we were somewhat competitive (I’m talking about the recent Mexico, Brazil and Spain scrimmages over the past few years).  But Klinsmann at least seems more level headed and isn’t going to be humiliated if we lose a game or two, or three.  It’s almost like he wants our players to get handled by European power houses until he finds three or four players to develop.

Let’s wait out this Jurgen character for another three or four months after a few friendlies have gone by.  But so far my thoughts are positive.     

Let’s start here: http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2012/01/wild-card-steep-drop-in-overnights-for-bengalstexans/

I don’t know if the NFL play-off game wasn’t interesting because I’m watching more soccer or because both NFL teams will soon become cannon fodder for the three or four elite teams that have a legitimate chance of winning the Super Bowl.  Either way, most NFL fans would agree that the Bengals and Texans match-up wasn’t going to be a ratings blockbuster and they’re not surprised with the ‘low’ 15.3 rating.  Notice that this rating is a substantial drop that Roger Goodell can’t be proud of (but at least he cashed in those ESPN contract checks from before the season started).

What does that 15.3 rating mean?  It means that 15% of all households with a TV watched that game. 

But what about the MLS Final?  They had all of their pieces together for ESPN:  Beckham made a Finals appearance with the L.A. Galaxy (an overhyped team to begin with) and the ratings had to be higher than from seasons past right?  Please tell us that the ratings were at least higher than the year before.

The ratings were .8, as in 4/5th of 1 percentage.  For all of the bells and whistles during the season the MLS Final drew in about 800,000 people.  That means that 15 times as many Americans care about two middling, ‘happy to be here’ NFL teams than the two top soccer clubs in America.  I’m not comparing the two ratings to disparage MLS any, I just need to illustrate that soccer is maybe at least a decade away from becoming as prevalent as the NFL.  And the ratings weren’t higher than the year before (but that was just for first time viewing in America, there’s a good chance that the Galaxy drew in more viewers on international telecasts).

But there is a silver lining though: the NFL DID put together a weak broadcast while the MLS didn’t fall back any.  Maybe next year soccer could go forward a bit while the NFL is stuck with something like the Browns vs Chiefs?  In my opinion higher ratings can’t be that difficult if the MLS would just SIGN A TOP WORLD PLAYER that would help give the league an extra push in the right direction.  But anyone who has read this site more than five times knows how likely that is to happen (.8% chance?). 

Best of luck though MLS, in five years may you bring in more viewers than NFL preseason games.  That’d be a great start.

In other side stories from 2011 Dempsey is becoming one of Fulham’s best players.  It’s a shame more Americans can’t appreciate what the Texas native is doing for American soccer as he continues to score enough goals to keep his team away from the axe of relegation.  One could argue that Dempsey’s goals in English professional play are more important than the fluke miracle that happened in the World Cup where the goalkeeper couldn’t keep two hands wrapped around the ball.  Not one to be counted out Landon Donovan is parlaying his MLS championship for a chance to be successful with Everton (a well known English team that’s not even close to the top of league play).

Before going into my predictions I’ll give you this link of some players I think would be perfect for MLS play in 2012:

http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/columnist/hirshey_david/id/7389908/premier-league-all-disappointment-team-far

I think Tevez would be a great addition to any American team even if he would talk about transfering to another team after two weeks here.  I haven’t watched much of his play but he strikes me as someone who doesn’t focus on things like passing and finesse as much as barreling over players and edging out goalies with close shots.  Out here he’d be a welcome addition to any MLS team and should injure at least three weak MLS players after five months.  To further confuse Tevez maybe we can send him to Vancouver for a spell?

So without further ado ….. My Predicitions for 2012 and the chances of them happening!!!

1.  Donovan gets at least four goals for Everton in his remaining play … the chances of this happening I put at 15%.  It would’ve been great if he stuck around for April’s Everton vs Fulham game to go against Clint Dempsey in English league play, but Landon has to fulfill his obligations to the Galaxy and play against teams like D.C. United and the New England Revolution.  

2.  The Americans don’t even sniff Bronze in Olympic soccer play.  I’m expecting a huge advertising build up and American soccer being pushed as a new sport to watch.  No longer will it be a cast off like Olympic Ping Pong or Olympic Badminton.  You’re going to hear about the Women’s and Men’s Team having a fighting chance in this tournament because NBC also has a new deal with MLS to broadcast further games.  The only downside of this newfound Olympic soccer hype will be that the Men’s team is still mediocre and can’t do well against Mexico right now.  I expect them to beat a team or two in the Olympics but finish weak overall (but scoring big with marketing agencies).  I think the chances of our Men’s team not winning any medal is 90%.

3.  Beckham’s gone.  93%.

4.  An MLS Team wins the CONCACAF club Final and plays well against a European team in the Champions League tournament.  If this goes down then the Mayans were right and the end of the world is imminent.  ZERO PERCENT

5.  This blog draws in more than five readers a day and a post of mine surges in twitter’s veins bringing me hundreds and hundreds of more devoted readers.  I think this delusion waits a year or two and has about a 18% chance of happening.

6.  The MLS Final will get more viewers than last year and the NBC deal prods the league forward.  Last year’s Final was a bit of a letdown (even with Beckham) but I’m willing to go out on a limb and support the league’s future for next year.  The chances of the MLS Final drawing in even more viewers is a solid 60-70%.  There’s just too much money being thrown at American soccer now that I don’t think it’ll regress any.

And now, for the coup de grace, a prediction from my girlfriend (someone who has had her family invested in soccer her entire life):

American soccer will still be sucky and nobody will care!!! 100 percent !!!

*America edged out Canada, Guadaloupe and Panama for the right to face Mexico.  The qualifying games were close.

*The trophy presentation was spoken in Spanish, not English, although the tournament and its final was held in America (causing our national team goalie to blow a gasket).  The Mexican fans in Los Angeles wouldn’t have minded if the presentation was in English though, their team had beaten the Americans with a solid performance and they were happy, but they flipped when the Spanish speaking commenced.

Let’s start in 1978.  That was the year Larry Bird was drafted into the NBA after finishing a successful college run and going deep in the NCAA Finals.  In 1979 Magic Johnson was drafted into the NBA as well and sent on his way towards multiple NBA Finals series pitted against Bird (who had even played against Magic in the NCAA Final that was mentioned before).  Many historians considered these Magic/Bird NBA Finals essential to the birth of the modern NBA.  These series paved the way for players like Jordan, Lebron and Kobe to become the world celebrities (ahem, global icons, as Lebron said) they are today.  Without Magic and Bird drawing in high television ratings the NBA could’ve stagnated and been left off television all together (at the time there were only three or four channels TOTAL so it’s not crazy to imagine some executives ignoring NBA games).

So there were Johnson and Bird, giants among dwarves.  Both of them were 6’9 and had been playing basketball their entire lives.  You’d think that two men this tall couldn’t play with any agility but the opposite was true:  Magic was known for his smooth passing and Bird played inside the paint almost as well as Steve Nash could.  To any casual fan in 1984 these two players would give you an entertaining game and keep you watching until the very end.  If Michael Jordan was the NBA’s script for a global success story than Bird and Magic were the early rough drafts.  These two turned a corner in NBA history together and moved it forward … which brings me to ……..

Major League Soccer?

The phrase ‘turning point’ is more than a cable T.V. football show I don’t watch.  It means there was a point where a league or a sport was not only big business, they became big news.  No matter where you live in America you will always have to hear about 32 NFL teams and the Superbowl even if you try as hard as you can to ignore that hype.  The same is true to a certain extent with basketball and baseball.  But MLS isn’t as big yet and depending on who you ask it’s not even be considered ‘news’.  No matter how many times MLS executives congratulate themselves  for an 4% ratings increase they are up against hockey, NASCAR, UFC and even college football for the #4 spot on America’s list of favorite sports.  Even this year the Beckham led Final pulled almost the same ratings as last year’s MLS Final did.  Can they make it better?  I think if we look at the background on the top three leagues we’ll see a pattern develop that can point to an answer. 

Baseball’s turning point: 

Baseball developed well before most Americans had television sets and the sport began some time in the late 1800s.  So when Babe Ruth started obliterating baseballs the commentary came from radio announcers en masse well before television announcers.  Ruth’s first championship came in 1921.  This was a time when Americans were learning about crazy things called ‘cars’ and ‘movies’ so we can’t point to any media influence as a reason baseball was so successful.  What it came down to was a twenty or thirty year period where Americans took baseball as their de facto national game (compared to England’s football and cricket).  If baseball had any turning point it might have been when Ruth and the Yankees steamrolled competition in that early period in the 20th century (but even then, if it wasn’t Ruth then some other Yankee would’ve been celebrated as a baseball Messiah).  To put the frame back even further baseball didn’t need a turning point to begin with due to the deep saturation of baseball at all levels in America.  So ingrained was baseball as the national game by 1930, that by 1950 when American households began to latch onto television sets high-level baseball executives didn’t feel any need to convince the networks to air games.  Why would they?  ABC must’ve invited baseball with open arms.

Basketball’s turning point:

See the above paragraph.  Basketball had been gaining ground since the late 1950s and was positioned to become very successful based on at least one point: you just need one basketball and your hands to play.  That’s it.  You don’t need a bat, a glove, a catcher’s glove or catcher’s mask if you’re a kid practicing on the street.  Ditto for a new fan watching on television and trying to understand the game.  How easy is it to explain basketball?  You bounce the ball and get it into the basket.  Done.

Basketball’s only hinderence was that it couldn’t draw in the viewers the way baseball did and needed ‘super heroes’ to market (those were David Stern’s words and not mine).  Enter Bird, Johnson, Barkley, Jordan, etc.  These players became sensations and edged out names like Ruth, Cobb, DiMaggio and Mantle in the minds of Americans.  It wasn’t that the NBA was peddling inferior products though because the players not only played well but were genetic freaks.  If you look at Bird and Johnson (and Wilt Chamberlain) you would see towering figures that were built to play amazing basketball built for successful television ratings.  During the early eighties the NBA started connecting the dots, milked Jordan’s success for everything it was worth and started elbowing baseball out of the way.

The NFL’s turning point: 

There was a point in time, decades ago, where NFL players were underpaid and considered mental.  A lot of them had side jobs to make ends meet and played the game for the love of it (or maybe just the joy of being violent).  Back in the 30s college football, not the NFL, was the prestigious game for well heeled young men.  But after that you were supposed to quit and get a real job, not risk brain damage traveling miles away from home for a weak payout.  Those that stuck around for life after college were either gifted star athletes or semi-competent grifters opposed to selling out into adult hood.  Indeed, many NFL teams scraped together paychecks and lived lean just to get from point A to point B.

So what changed for the NFL?  Most would point towards the Giants/Colts Championship game in 1958 but in my opinion it wasn’t a true turning point.  That game may have changed the direction of the NFL but it did nothing to gain ground on baseball.  In my opinion the creation of the AFL/NFL merger and later Superbowl loaded so much possible future cash into the new NFL.  It would be like if Verizon and AT&T (and Sprint) merged into the only cellphone provider you could use.  It was an obvious monopoly and the Superbowl finale was positioned to deliver the highest quality football in America for premium dollars.  If you were a college kid supporting your local school then you had to think twice about which game you would rather see, your decent college team or your favorite NFL team in a playoff game.  When Green Bay started eeking out those early Superbowl wins (followed by the Jets and Chiefs and triumphs) the seeds were planted for an NFL tree of life (or suffocating, ever expanding ivy depending on who you ask).

Which brings us back to MLS:

The league’s been running for a decade and the fans are hell bent on getting everyone and their mom to know about it.  Someone had mentioned an interesting point on twitter: In no league but the MLS are the fans so hyper focused on league growth and attendance numbers as opposed to their actual team.  MLS fans get more bent out of shape about about T.V. ratings and team marketing than they do when their team blows a possible playoff spot.  I consider this a good trend in the long run.  It reminds me of what they say about mormon’s attempts to convert others to their faith.  After knocking on so many doors and trying so hard to convince others about your views, you can’t help but convert yourself.  So goes with MLS.

But in the short run it doesn’t look good.  For one, the MLS’s biggest splash signing might leave the league soon (to France of all places).  The MLS had been counting on Beckham to drive up attendance numbers in non-soccer cities and with him gone it’s another uphill climb.  Who can you sign after David Beckham? The MLS can’t even convince Clint Dempsey to stay here for a good price and he’s just as American as Texas Hold ‘Em.  And if they signed Javier Hernandez a lot of Americans would think he was a Mexican club soccer player, not an international highlight reel. 

What would it take for Americans to watch soccer just as much as basketball or the NFL?  Hmmm ……… here’s one crazy idea: a merger with a second league, similar to what the NFL did with the AFL.  In soccer there exists a 2nd, much smaller American league called the NASL that’s home to about eight or nine different soccer teams.  The NASL teams might not be as good as the MLS, but if ran the right way they could be competitive.  Would MLS ever decide about integrating them into their league?  If not, would they consider a promotion/relegation system and dump two bad MLS teams for a couple better NASL ones?  That would open up about eight or nine extra cities in America that would follow soccer and might even lead to a couple breakout stars to fuel television ratings.  It could be like the NBA/ABA merger where 9 years of ABA play benefited the NBA with more cities involved and better players coming through the system.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why the numbers worked.  If a 20 team league is sustainable and profitable, then it should have better teams than a 10 team league fighting to stay alive.  The MLS would benefit from having that second league around to get more people watching soccer in out of the way places (For example, the NASL has teams in Atlanta, South Carolina and Minnesota – Places where MLS would like to get a toehold).

Wait, that would mean MLS owners might have to lose money if their team gets dumped to NASL/Level 2 ………… well, best of luck MLS!  I’m sure the turning point you’ve been waiting for is just around the corner!!

At the Wynn sportsbook the employee ignored me and pointed to an area with games pre-printed out.  I didn’t know whether she ignored me because I was asking about soccer or if she ignored everybody.  The good news for soccer gamblers is that the Wynn’s lines were better bets than at Aria: The odds were 1 to 5 of Manchester United winning, better than the 1 to 8 option.

My point is that when I asked for soccer match information the casinos still considered the request strange (College football and the NFL dominated the big screens, although Barca vs Real Madrid did make a couple of appearances).  It seems to me that American soccer fans obsess over soccers imminent growth, your humble author included, but are years (decades?) away from having soccer as popular as the NBA or the NFL.  A friend of mine from Los Angeles expressed this state of  being:

Me: The Galaxy just won the title, did anyone care?

Him: No. No one cares.

Me: Do you even watch soccer?

Him: No (awkward laughter).

The girl he was with: Sorry, nobody cares about soccer (more laughter).

Me: Oh, okay, I watch it every once in a while (friendly laughter as a part of my soul was taken away).

On that note let’s look at an area that glorifies sports as well as marketing them: Film.  If you’re a die hard fan of a certain sport then if you watch a film about it your feelings of attachment are intensified.  The following list is simple: these are sports films that millions of Americans enjoyed and talked about.

Boxing: Rocky (there were a lot of them), Ali (it had a couple of Oscar Nominations), Million Dollar Baby (I didn’t see it, though it did win an Oscar) and Raging Bull.  It’s interesting to note that in researching this there were a boatload of boxing films before 1960, then they trickle down going into the 90s.  Right now not a lot of people follow boxing enough for Hollywood to put out more films.

Basketball: Hoop Dreams (Required watching for any college basketball fan), White Men Can’t Jump (One of Wesley Snipe’s best roles), Hoosiers (Before my time but everyone calls it a classic) … a few others …. and Teen Wolf (I figured no one cared about this mid-80s classic but ESPN.com included it too, and I DID think it was cool when I was six).

Baseball: I just googled “best baseball movies” and a ton popped up like Major League, The Natural, The Bad News Bears, Field of Dreams, The Sand Lot. 

Football: Rudy, Any Given Sunday, Jerry Maguire, Friday Night Lights.  I thought there’d be more NFL related films, perhaps the league discourages Hollywood from making them.

And without further ado ……….. I present …………. GREAT SOCCER FILMS:

Bend It Like Beckham (I didn’t see it.)

Shaolin Soccer (Maybe Steven Chow’s best film, and I only watched it because I had a free DVD.)

Green Street Hooligans (Elijah Wood turns into a violent soccer hooligan and American viewers were oblivious to the film.)

The Cup (Why did I only read about this film five seconds ago? It’s about a group of Himilayan monks who become obsessed with watching the World Cup despite being forbidden by their teacher.  And it’s a true story).

What do all of these films have in common?  Foreign directors, foreign locations and foreign actors.  Although these films have high ratings across the board not a lot of Americans know they exist.  Americans might even know more about kid films like Ladybugs or Kicking and Screaming then they do with actual competent soccer films like the ones above.  When will Americans have a soccer film that can deliver a Hollywood endling like this one?

http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slug=ro-rogers_mls_drogba_financial_health_galaxy_113011

It seems that there’s a giant void left in American soccer after David Beckham expressed doubts about returning to the Galaxy.  Since the league has no idea if Beckham will return or not they are now scouring Europe and Spain for a talented player that is willing and able to give up high standards of play and national fame in exchange for American paychecks in a less grueling league.  Enter Didier Drogba, a player I barely know about and a player 90% of America will see for the first time. 

For a primer watch this video:

WARNING: THE ABOVE VIDEO’S MUSIC WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO PLAY DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION.

In the previous Yahoo article the author kept trying to state that the MLS will be a better league with the Chelsea forward, but it’s tough trying to generate excitement after MLS’s flagship player voyages to France.  Let’s look at the article from Martin Rogers (who I think is a fine journalist) a bit closer:

“Snagging Drogba would be a real coup for MLS, as the league continues to ride a recent wave of positive vibes. The Galaxy’s title win in the final year of Beckham’s contract created plenty of headlines and came just weeks after the release of figures that revealed MLS is now the third-best attended sports league in North America.”

Lies, lies, lies.  Whenever you read about ‘MLS beating other leagues in attendance’ keep in mind that the numbers are for AVERAGE attendance.  The MLS will have less games (with more people in the stands) and then compare numbers against the baseball and the NBA seasons which have LONGER SEASONS.  I give credit for MLS for bringing more crowds but go ahead and compare their championship to the coverage of the NBA Finals when Lebron and Wade battled Dirk. 

Drogba, if you’re reading this blog about bad American soccer from a hotel room in England you need to listen to me!  The MLS isn’t close to the NBA or the NFL!

“Ten years from now we need to have at least 50 Landon Donovan-caliber American players in the league,” MLS executive vice president Dan Courtemanche said. “We also need to have multiple players better than Donovan competing in MLS. With a country of 300 million-plus people, you would hope that could happen. -  MLS executive vice president Dan Courtemanche”

Another twist in logic, because about 40% of MLS players aren’t even Americans!!!  Why bring up 300 million people when you’re shipping in Brazilians and Swedes to fill up roster spots?  And in my opinion you already have players better than Donovan in the league now, they’re just not being over-hyped to death by AEG and Gatorade in marketing campaigns.  I think he means ‘We need more players that generate revenue and American media coverage than this guy does’. 

I give Dan credit for saying we need better players though, a lot of MLS executives swear that our MLS teams are good enough to beat Barcelona AND the entire 2006 Italian World Cup team.

“ More arrivals like that of Drogba would only help shift the needle further, and even with Beckham’s departure likely, MLS can be said to be enjoying a surge of health.”

zzzzz fdaf zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzlfdk;ajf   

Oh, I apologize.  I fell asleep and hit my head on the keyboard after hearing another line about MLS’s surging health and optimism. 

So let’s talk about Drogba himself.  In the interest of fairness I’ve decided to state some positives and negatives about the impending trade (that might not even happen).

Positives:

- He plays for Chelsea, which is a blue-chip (pun intended) club in England.  Chelsea’s known for trying to stock their squads with elite players and Drogba is liked better than Fernando Torres (whom would be PERFECT for MLS, more on that later).  He also scored more goals than Rooney one year.

- If Drogba plays for the Galaxy then hardcore soccer fans will embrace the change because of his international experience.  Maybe he can teach the younger Galaxy players the same way Henry is teaching the young Red Bulls.

- He scored ten interesting goals in a Youtube video watched by 19,000 people? I’m drawing a blank.

Negatives:

- He’s another top level player in his mid-30s who won’t get very much compensation on his next contract, therefore he’s going to MLS.  American’s won’t have a high level 25 year old signing anytime soon and have to keep scouring youth programs and other soccer countries for diamonds in the rough.  The greatest players in the world won’t go to MLS.  Even Pele went to America AFTER he won the Brazilian world cups and decided that the money New York offered was just too much to turn away from at his age.

- The last MLS Final generated luke warm ratings with the added benefit of Beckham playing for maybe the last time in America.  If Drogba wins two championships in a row will the ratings really improve?  If THIERRY HENRY wins an MLS Championship will more people notice? 

…….. if you’re still reading you must really enjoy soccer.  Although I do hope that Dieder becomes a relevant part of MLS his arrival isn’t earth shattering and a game changer for MLS.  It seems more of the slow and steady growth that fans are accustomed to.  Just one day it’d be great to hear a major news story about a European super star, in his prime, getting bought out by MLS for hundreds of millions of dollars.  But right now those super teams doing major trades are across a very large pond dividing great soccer players from developing ones.

For example, take my experiences with sports as a child growing up in San Diego.  I played soccer and baseball in organized youth leagues.  However, basketball and football were games I practiced outside of organization and with kids around my block almost on a weekly basis.  Later in life I played just basketball for fun and still regret not becoming competitive at a high school level.  I still play basketball with friends once a week despite the attrition of middle age. 

To make this easier let me this together with percentages:

Sports I’ve physically played age 6-12: Soccer 15%, Baseball 60%, Basketball 20%, Football 5% Hockey, Tennis, other 0%. 

Sports I’ve physically played age 12-current: Baseball 30%, Basketball 65%, Football 5%.

Okay, that’s a pretty dramatic jump and it looks like soccer fell off a cliff as far as my participation went (and I didn’t hate soccer as a kid).  Even though I went on to play baseball in highschool I drifted away from that game too right before I went to college.  As far as the one single game that stuck with me as far as exercise and enjoyment, it’s obvious basketball was the game of choice.

Why am I even putting these numbers up?  I’m trying to show how organized sports have almost nothing to do with developing a passion and feel for the game.  The two sports where I was involved in an organization (soccer and baseball) also were two sports I didn’t continue playing into my teens.  I now watch soccer because my girlfriend’s family got me to enjoy the game a bit more, otherwise it’d be basketball and the NFL (and no hockey). 

So if parents drag their kids to tennis practice every week, will that be a guarantee their child will grow up into a raving tennis enthusiast twenty years down the line?  Which sport will strike a chord with a young player?  The one he has to play for mom and dad, or the one that all of his friends are already playing outside?  In my generation that pick-up game of choice was basketball and in my father’s generation it was baseball.  Signs are pointing to soccer becoming the next pick-up game but there are a lot more basketball courts in parks than soccer fields right now. 

To conclude, how do we get these young people to stick it out with soccer?  For one, having the game on television more won’t hurt.  Looking back maybe I would’ve practiced more if I had players to emulate in an actual pro league.  San Diego had a championship arena league soccer team and I didn’t care enough to get to know one player.  These days soccer is shown a bit more on T.V., but no way as much as the NBA, baseball or the NFL.  Also, kids have to enjoy the game in ways that have nothing to do with their parents.  Do they have a favorite soccer team?  Do they stop playing basketball in the parks and choose to practice soccer instead?  This isn’t about dropping your child off for a two hour practice of running around cones and standing in line for goal shots.  This is about eight or nine hours of practice time each week that them and their friends are putting in by themselves.  Since I don’t have kids yet I don’t know very much about the  youth soccer landscape, but I can’t help but wonder if some eminent soccer renaissance will develop here in America in the next fifteen years.  But come Sunday I’ll be working on my jumpshot. 

UPDATE: I tried finding a good Youtube clip of Brazilian street soccer to emphasize what young Americans are up against and I became disillusioned with the whole thing and didn’t want to embarrass our soccer coaches.  Let’s just say some countries are light years ahead of us.