Clueless in Connecticut: how ESPN is standing on MLS’s neck

What drew me to this league just a few short years ago was to hear and read its games and teams discussed as they are in any other sport. Reading the MLS power rankings for the first time was a revelation. I knew almost none of the names, but seeing them as I might see, I dunno, Chase Utley mentioned, started to alter my brain chemistry to store MLS alongside the NBA, NFL and MLB as American sports leagues roughly equivalent to each other. The league will succeed on a wide level only when that mental attitude starts becoming the norm among American sports fans.

This is why I am so mind-bogglingly frustrated that ESPN is still doing everything they possibly can to reinforce the mental notions of soccer as something inherently foreign, inscrutable, and above all different from other sports.

Now, let’s get one thing clear before I continue. As much as I would love to see MLS all over the ESPN family of networks every week, I understand that broadcasting more MLS games than they do now would be a bad business decision for ESPN. One look at the ratings and the advertising dollars commanded by MLS versus their competition for coverage is all even the most diehard fan needs to know that the league is not in that class yet, not by a long shot. So while ESPN’s lack of broadcast coverage frustrates me, I can’t hold it against them just yet.

But I can bemoan the condescending, ham-handed way they cover the league in their highlight shows and elsewhere. To see Scott Van Pelt (I think it was) so genuinely baffled at the size and craziness of the crowd at the opener at Seattle – and then to openly express that bafflement to the audience – made me nauseous. This is to say nothing of his having to guess why one of the players was spot-shadowed during the highlight and getting it wrong. Just picture that for a moment. Could no one have prepped him for ten seconds on what was coming and what to say? What the hell is wrong with these people?

I’m going to take a moment to say that SVP is a top, top guy. I’m sure he doesn’t think he’s any better prepared to narrate MLS highlights than he actually is. But his bosses have obviously assured him that if he messes up on something like the spot-shadow thing, very few people will know or care, and the truth is they’re right.

I also acknowledge that their walling off of the so-called “ESPNSoccernet” site from the rest of ESPN.com is no longer quite so blindingly obvious. But assigning it a different name is geared toward sending the message that soccer fans and sports fans are two different things in ESPN’s eyes.

And speaking of which, hey, here’s an idea, let’s use a slate of foreign commentators for ESPN’s biggest games, just to make absolutely sure that anyone who tunes in sees immediately that the only people who watch this game are foreigners.

It pains me to say that, because Derek Rae and Tommy Smyth are absolutely as good as it gets, but they simply cannot be the faces and voices of ESPN’s soccer coverage any longer. They are emblematic of a paternalistic attitude at ESPN that basically assumes that every single person who watches a soccer game on the network immediately changes the channel as soon as it’s over, because, hey, those people don’t watch real sports. And this is evident in every single mention of the sport on ESPN, anywhere. It's always foreign. Quirky. Quaint. “Them.”

The real problem is that ESPN obviously thinks that the reaction of non-fans who see real MLS highlights and analysis on Sportscenter will be “I don’t care about soccer, stop wasting my time or I'll stop watching your network.” This is known as “doubting your audience of sports fans in their ability to like sports.” In reality, while that will undoubtedly be the reaction of a small percentage, the much more common reaction will be something along the lines of,

“I don’t know what the hell these people are talking about, but it sounds like I'd think it was interesting if I did. Hey, is one of those teams in my city or something? Are they, like, good this year? Y'know, I hope they are, even if I wouldn't really understand why. I guess that would count for something, given how much the [other hometown team] suck right now. Hey, my kids play soccer. Maybe they'd be interested to know that there are professional players nearby. After all, they have [basketball player] posters in their rooms. Stands to reason, right?”

The people who follow MLS are not soccer fans. We are sports fans. But ESPN doesn't know that. The execs are as drooling-dumb over the massed, screaming Seattle throng on the teevee as their anchors are. The league, as so ably demonstrated by Scott "Look at all those people!" Van Pelt and everyone else at ESPN, is making progress by leaps and bounds that the network doesn't have a clue about. Every day that goes by convinces me that ESPN will be the absolute last people in America to figure it out.

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.