In the new season, where is the league long-term?

For an inaugural post, I'm not going to predict who will finish where in the MLS table, or which players will break out or fall off, or even write D--id B-ck--m's name in its entirety. Instead, I'm going to make a long-term prediction for the prospects of the league's place in American sport.

The outlook, for lack of better word, is good. Within 15-20 years, MLS should be one of four major sports in the US, more popular and profitable than ice hockey, though never to reach the levels of the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball.

Although the Wall Street Journal has just published the most comprehensively bizarre denigration of soccer that I've ever seen (sample quote: "As a display of nearly death-defying stamina, soccer mimics the paradigmatic feminine experience of childbirth more than the masculine business of destroying your opponent with insurmountable power."), I see no reason that the sport has anywhere to go in our beloved homeland but up.

Here are my five arguments for a special brand of MLS optimism:

First: the financial strategy the league is pursuing can best be described WWNASLND. What would the North American Soccer League Not Do? They are cautious in the extreme. It's a strategy that's been frustrating to fans in the past, but in the midst of a massive recession we're finally starting to see it pay serious dividends. At least a few MLS teams now have shirt sponsorships that, absent a designated player, will actually cover the cost of their rosters. Money problems will not implode this leauge as it did the NASL, even if TV ratings were to completely stagnate.

Second: people want to see MLS games, at least in person. Seattle sold out 15,000 season ticket packages so fast they eventually added 5,000 more, and sold those out, too. Per game, they're going to outdraw 26 NBA teams if no one ever shows up. They'll be joined by the Galaxy, Toronto and probably DC United, at least. These are in stark contrast to some of the less passionate markets, but further expansion, of which a great deal is planned, will only be in markets that vastly outdraw Kansas City and Dallas. Hey, speaking of which...

Third: expansion is turning this into a truly nationwide league, and generating massive excitement wherever it goes. MLS teams are getting people excited about the sport by giving citizens of more cities and their environs a team of their own. After 2011, the league will have expanded from 10 teams to 18 in seven years. Everyone is clamoring for an expansion team. It has become the must-have fashion accessory for today's city-about-town. And to get one, you've basically got to prove to the ultra-cautious Don Garber and his ultra-cautious boys in New York that you can not only build a stadium, but fill that sucker up.

Fourth: the only thing stopping television ratings from matching attendance successes, in my opinion, is the lack of treatment by the sporting press, national and local, of MLS as being an important and popular sport. I swear the head honchos at ESPN will be the last four people in America to figure it out. But as international coverage of the Euro, the World Cup, and the Champions' League sloooooowwwwwwlllllyyyyy heighten interest in the sport, they will raise interest in the league we have playing here at home.

and finally, Fifth: it's tough to undo the popularity of a sport that is this popular around the world. As the world gets smaller, and America absorbs more and more international culture, more of our young people are growing up around the game and becoming fans. Look at how more international cities are getting new franchises: Toronto, San Jose, Seattle, Philadelphia, now most likely Vancouver and Portland. The rest of the country is trending as international as these places already are. The American exceptionalism that holds the game back is on a steep decline.

Bring on one excitin' season.