[Editor's note: SoundersNerd emailed this drunken tirade last night after our own defender, Tyrone Marshall, scored the tying goal ... for D.C. Sigh.]

In preparations for the 2006 World Cup three years ago, KUOW interviewed Seattle PI sports guy Art Thiel. They asked the ubiquitous question: Why doesn't soccer take off in the US?  Art answered with no hint of idiocracy: "Americans really like hand-eye coordination.  There's none of that in soccer, that's why it's failed to take off here".

 I couldn't call Art on his bullshit then, so allow me to do so now.

 There are a lot of stupid theories why soccer remains the passion of suburban moms, "Americans like hard-eye coordination" is about the stupidest one I've heard.

 Allow me to rant three reasonable alternatives:

Corporate America has a good thing going with the big three—baseball, football, and basketball—with their frequent pauses and high ad-per-playtime ratio. They are very effective at their primary objective: Advertising and promoting consumerism.  Soccer, with its straight 45 uninterrupted minutes of game time, presents a difficult challenge to that paradigm, so why bother. Even bowling, golf and billiards are easier to infuse with ads, so lets show more of those.

The big four (I'll include hockey) are complete monopolies. There are 32 teams in the NFL, a tight-knit group that fiercely defends its exclusivity, making it nearly impossible for an expansion team to join. The owners like this. By comparison, there are 41 professional soccer teams in London alone—six in the Premier league, the rest at other levels—and per English law, if someone wants to start a new team, all they have to do is fill out the paperwork.  The professional sports industry in America is right to suspect a challenge to the status-quo, as soccer (especially Sounder FC, damn voting rights socialist fanclub et al) presents.

The Powers that Be are so out of touch, they don't realize that people in the US actually follow soccer and are passionate about it, and thus the honchos at ESPN2 pre-empt a sold-out Sounders game with FUCKING COLLEGE BASEBALL! To add insult to injury—as Murphy Law requires, the baseball game went into 12 innings—the epitome of boring "sport" being favored over a truly exciting match with all the drama, passion and boisterous fans of the best in European games.

 I and untold thousands in Seattle (The George and Dragon said the place was packed with pea green, begging for the fucking college baseball game -COLLEGE!  Between Arkansas and Virginia! Who the fuck cares about a college baseball game between Arkansas and Virginia?!?—to end.) missed the first 60 minutes.  

That doesn't matter, there were only FIVE GOALS SCORED.  The announcers claimed that Fredy Montero "certainly made his mark" and  "had his comeback tonight," as did Alonso, nailing home to equilize in minute 35. And just to rub it in, the only goal we get to watch is Marshall's brilliant header into our net, which botched our lead over D.C. and gave us the frustrating 2-2 tie.  (He's otherwise a phenomenal player—I think I've said that before—and he  looks too much like The Rock for me to criticize him)

So Seattle outshot DC 17 to 10, 9-3 in shots on goal.  The drunken fans at the Loft were going to implore Drew Carey to flex his Hollywood might and make ESPN2 heads roll.  If you build it, we're already there, dumbasses!  We have a professional soccer league and tonight's game was of the highest caliber, so the rest of the US better start paying attention.

Publicola could start by changing the byline from "throwing flags every friday" to something relevant to the soccer.