[CrewStadium227]

Wilbon and guest host Norman Chad (Tony will be back Tuesday) talked about the MLS All Star game today.

They took the oligatory shot at the league for shortening the game to make room for the half-time show.

Then Wilbon closed with some mysterious comments. Something about "The real story here is where are all those people after the World Cup who said that soccer has arrived. Soccer is never going to be as big as those people say it will be."

My first question for Wilbon is "who are you talking about?" I heard cautious optimism from soccer people after the WC. No one said the game was going to take over the world of American sports. MLS people and US Soccer people have consistently said that the WC was an important single step on a very long road.

My second question is what does that have to do with the All Star game? The game drew a good crowd by MLS standards, and most of them stayed through a long delay. It looked to me like fan support is sticking with the league. What about the All Star game would make you ask "where are those people now?"

[CrewDust]

Well, at least they mentioned it. Perhaps only because it was in DC.

[FootyMundo]

PTI is the ultimate sound bite show. And the ultimate sound bite these days is that soccer will never make it. Whatever the hell making it means. Anyway, any publicity for MLS is pretty much good publicity.

[dawgpound2]

Originally posted by FootyMundo
PTI is the ultimate sound bite show. And the ultimate sound bite these days is that soccer will never make it. Whatever the hell making it means. Anyway, any publicity for MLS is pretty much good publicity.

Exactly! The very fact that people talk about whether soccer will "make it" or not means soccer has "made it" already!

You don't ever hear people saying, "Will lacrosse make it as a big-time sport in the US?", etc. (no offense to lacrosse, just using it as a pertinent example).

[Ghost]

Ah, screw all this rationalizing, what the heck is Wilbon's e-mail address?

[Popero]

You can send them an e-mail at PTI@espn.com but I'd be willing to bet that it won't get read.

[falcon6]

I found Wilbon's comments to be kind of strange. He usually gives soccer a fair shake, today he resorted to all the standard media cliches "this sport will never be big in the us" "everyone keeps saying its the next big thing" etc. Excuse me, but there were over 30k there on a bad weather day. These guys just throw out these cliches than never have any data to back it up. It almost seemed like he used the topic to be down on soccer because in the past he was fair towards it. There must be something that drove him to do that.

[fidlerre]

Originally posted by falcon6
I found Wilbon's comments to be kind of strange. He usually gives soccer a fair shake, today he resorted to all the standard media cliches "this sport will never be big in the us" "everyone keeps saying its the next big thing" etc. Excuse me, but there were over 30k there on a bad weather day. These guys just throw out these cliches than never have any data to back it up. It almost seemed like he used the topic to be down on soccer because in the past he was fair towards it. There must be something that drove him to do that.

i was very surprised...

wilbon has always taken the higher road when it comes to soccer. maybe it was b/c tony is coming back tomorrow and he wanted to get on tony's good side by bashing soccer...dont worry, with tony back on the show any talk of soccer will find wilbon on the supporters side while kornheiser will be the basher.

[jbeall]

PTI undoubtedly IS a soundbite show, and one guy normally takes one side and the other will take the contrary position just to do it. Whatever. I'm just glad they're still mentioning soccer at all...

[todda74]

yes any publicity is good publicity.

and I don't really remember hearing soccer people saying that after the WC MLS will explode. I just remember hearing reporters saying that MLS will not get a big jump. Sportscenter made up the whole thing i'm pretty sure. The soccer haters hate soccer so much they had to make up a story to bash soccer. ha ha ha