Rachel Bachman did a very good job with this story about the selling of soccer to the hooligans and punks of America. She got the money quote from a former commissioner of the MLS:

Forget the kids. The future of Major League Soccer is in young, scarf-snapping, mostly male rowdies, former commissioner of MLS Doug Logan says.

“Soccer audiences at their best have got to be a little dangerous,” said Logan, now CEO of USA Track and Field. “It’s three guys with a beer cursing at the guy on the field. It’s not a family activity.

“If you want a family activity, go to the circus.”

And then there’s these quotes, too:

“There was always this expectation, which has turned out to be fallacious, that as kids who grew up playing soccer as children, as they grow up, they’re going to be fans to go buy tickets for soccer at a professional level,” said Marc Ganis, president of Chicago-based sports consulting firm Sportscorp Ltd. “It hasn’t worked out that way in huge numbers. It just hasn’t.”

When the MLS launched in 1996, a faction of team owners thought the key to success was to attract the nation’s soccer moms and their kids, said Logan, league commissioner until 1999.

“And nothing could be further from the truth,” Logan said. “Team sports is tribal — and, unfortunately, male. In its finest heyday on ESPN, on ESPN2, the audience (demographic) for the WNBA was 71-72 percent male.

“Women don’t turn television sets on to watch stuff except maybe gymnastics, swimming — you know, on an Olympic year — and skating. You can’t force something there that isn’t there.”

A sport that chooses to market itself to people who want to behave this way is asking for some major trouble.

First, you’re not going to have much of a chance, in this country, of ever gaining mainstream acceptance. Second, at some point somebody is going to get seriously hurt or die and then your whole league is going to end up in a courtroom trying to prove it didn’t encourage the very behaviors that caused the death.

And losing a lawsuit like that, which you would, could shut your whole league down.

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The buzz is that there will be a news conference Friday morning here, announcing that the MLS has officially granted an expansion franchise to Portland.

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This is a pretty funny piece several people have sent to me that you may or may not have seen. It begins this way:

Soccer is running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it. Social critics have long observed that we live in a therapeutic society that treats young people as if they can do no wrong. Every kid is a winner, and nobody is ever left behind, no matter how many times they watch the ball going the other way. Whether the dumbing down of America or soccer came first is hard to say, but soccer is clearly an important means by which American energy, drive, and competitiveness is being undermined to the point of no return.

What other game, to put it bluntly, is so boring to watch? (Bowling and golf come to mind, but the sound of crashing pins and the sight of the well-attired strolling on perfectly kept greens are at least inherently pleasurable activities.) The linear, two-dimensional action of soccer is like the rocking of a boat but without any storm and while the boat has not even left the dock. Think of two posses pursuing their prey in opposite directions without any bullets in their guns. Soccer is the fluoridation of the American sporting scene.

And it ends with this priceless little story:

My daughter is on a traveling team, and she is quite good. I had to sign a form that said, among other things, I would not do anything embarrassing to her or the team during the game. I told the coach I could not sign it. She was perplexed and worried. “Why not,” she asked? “Are you one of those parents who yells at their kids? “Not at all,” I replied, “I read books on the sidelines during the game, and this embarrasses my daughter to no end.” That is my one way of protesting the rise of this pitiful sport. Nonetheless, I must say that my kids and I come home from a soccer game a very happy family. 

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First off, if you want to get the attention of the city fathers, don’t do it in front of City Hall on a Saturday. Uh, people – they aren’t there on Saturdays. Nobody is — that part of the city is pretty deserted on weekends. You’re merely blocking traffic for no good reason.

And most important, try to get a few more people there — you know, to try to make it look like there is a big share of Portland on your side in whatever it is you’re demonstrating for.

In this case, these were Major League Soccer supporters and according to their own website, they had about 200 people demonstrating on behalf of chasing an MLS franchise. Uh, folks, that really doesn’t do the cause any good. It may even hurt because people are going to make fun of you.

Two hundred people? I can gather more than that to demonstrate on behalf of running a new aerial tram directly from the Rose Garden to The Agency, so I can have an easier commute after Blazer home games.

Get your act together, Timber supporters! Honestly, I’m not messing with you here, I’m trying to help. If you really want this thing to happen you have got to do better. This is seriously your big chance and, so far, you’re blowing it.

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This city is getting ready to make a run at a Major League Soccer franchise and booting baseball out of PGE Park. That would mean building a new baseball-only stadium somewhere else. You know all about that, by now.

But I doubt a lot of folks in this sleepy little burg — Soccer City USA, you know — are paying much attention to the sad state of the MLS. ESPN has pulled the plug on the Thursday night MLS game of the week, preferring now to attempt to move the games to different times of the week, hoping better lead-ins will aid ratings.

The ratings are embarrassingly bad. And getting worse. This league, in spite of all the high hopes, is being ignored in record numbers. Last season, the TV ratings for these games were 0.2, with an estimated 253,000 people – yikes! — watching the games nationally each week. Those “Snuggy” infomercials would get better numbers. Even worse, many of the games featured shots of vast patches of empty seats in the MLS stadiums.

Is this an investment this city wants to make?

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. . . and it always will be.

Don’t talk to me about all those kids out there playing it. They’ve been playing it now for three decades and nothing much has changed in the world of spectator sports.

Look, I’d love it for Portland to get an MLS franchise. I really would. Just don’t ask me to invest in it. Man, $40 million for a franchise in that league? In this economy? The Arena Football League just suspended operations and that league had an NBC contract and was pretty well funded.

That fee is just to buy in — before you start spending money on players, coaches and promotion. I think it’s going to be a real tough go here — or anywhere else.

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City Commissioner Randy Leonard is just back from New York and a visit with the commissioner of Major League Soccer. What are the chances of Portland being granted an expansion franchise by the league?

Leonard says it’s in the bag if all goes well with PGE Park. “It’s clear to me that it’s ours to lose,” Leonard said Wednesday.

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My friend Bean blogs about soccer today – something he knows a lot about  – as well as Merritt Paulson and some of the things I wrote recently. Basically, he says that MLS is just a developmental league for Europe. It’s good stuff and the only thing I disagree with him about is that Paulson is going to let the soccer thing slide once he gets his new ballpark for the Beavers.

I can’t see that. Not if he spends $40 million for the franchise. What he might do, though, is get the franchise up and running and then pawn it off on some unsuspecting locals who buy into all that Soccer City bullspit.

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I will say this one more time: I do not have anything against Major League Soccer coming to Portland. But what I do not care for are misrepresentations about what we’d be getting.

This story in The Oregonian bothered me right from the headline on through to the end. The headline characterizing the MLS as “big-time soccer” was laughable. I mean, seriously — MLS is probably the seventh- or eighth-best league in the world, right? It’s not big time in any real sense of the word, from TV ratings to attendance.

You aren’t big time when you average fewer than 17,000 fans per game and get television ratings of 0.2. That’s zero point two??? This story said MLS ratings are “roughly on a par with the WNBA.” Yikes! And that’s big time? Come on, folks — that’s flat-out awful. WNBA franchises cost $10 million, if you can find someone to buy them. For the most part, it’s a league being run as a loss leader by the NBA for no apparent reason. And the MLS wants $40 million for a franchise that gets the same 0.2 TV rating as the WNBA?

Ultimately, big-time leagues in this country support themselves through television revenue. This league is miles away from doing that so it will never be able to pay the huge salaries needed to bring enough great players into the league to make it competitive with other leagues around the world.

The Oregonian also breathlessly reports, “MLS is also reaping new revenue by selling ad space on the front of team jerseys.” Wow, now there’s something that gives the league a touch of class. Selling ads on the uniforms — like your local Little League. Soccer teams have been doing this for years, by the way, usually finding beer companies — totally appropriate when it comes to soccer and its fans — to purchase space somewhere on the uniforms.

Again, bring MLS to Portland. I think it would be great. But please, let’s not confuse it with bringing real major-league sports to the area.

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