Sobering soccer solution? Allow U.S. to drink on it

When Doug Logan was the commissioner of Major League Soccer, he said all the right things about the growth of soccer in the U.S. -- youth programs, family entertainment, the kids are the future, blah blah blah. You know, the orthodoxy of 40-odd years of non-growth that included the death of three other leagues.

But now, as the head of U.S. Track and Field, he has seen the light -- well, a light, anyway. The key now, apparently, is gambleholic lager louts.

Drinks aside, Colorado's Rapids draw a nice July 4 crowd for a loss to Chicago. (Getty Images)

"Soccer audiences at their best have got to be a little dangerous," he told Rachel Bachman of the Oregonian the other day. "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."

The next two sounds you hear are a calliope playing LL Cool J and soccer folks howling in outrage.

On the other hand, maybe Logan is onto something here, especially now that the Confederations Cup result has lifted the low-lying profile of the game again. I mean, pandering to the kids hasn't given the sport the springboard its proponents have said for five decades now is right around the corner.

Maybe, in short, the sport has to seek out a new and profoundly overserved segment of the population -- guys who like their beer cold, their language warm and their music atonal. You know, football crowds.

And the soccer moms who never were the future of the sport -- no matter what you heard from MLS, WUSA, NASL, MISL and the rest of the alphabet soup of defunct pro leagues -- either learn close-order singing like you get in the English game, or arrange for designated drivers ahead of time so that everyone else can get good and steaming. The future might be shifting from under-8 leagues to over-21 pubs.

Hey, it wasn't my idea. Go find Logan and let him have it.

And while you're at it, go call the MLS people and get in their kitchens, too. They seem to have decided to stop waiting around for the Audience That Never Was to turn up.

"For those who have always said, 'Geez, wait until the kids get older and grow up with the sport, soccer is going to be the No. 1 sport,' that was a bit of an ambitious statement," Dan Courtemanche, MLS' vice president of marketing and communications, told Bachman.

But it wasn't ambitious. It was nuts. It was unproven and often disproven nonsense that both infuriated the purists who wanted the U.S. to be just like Europe and South America, and made them curse those jackals in the media for deliberately crushing the sport. As a media, let me explain that we never tried to crush anything. We're far lazier than that.

But the truth is, the old strategy didn't work, and maybe the new one won't, either. Even having betting lines on some MLS matches ("Where The Over-Under Number Is Always One-Half Goal") might not.

But it's something other than the tried-and-false method of waiting for the kids to grow up and forget they have hormones, driver's licenses and a desire to play in front of more than just their parents. Soccer has always been the sport you do until you can do something else, and the pro game in the U.S. has been overtaken in popularity in the U.S. by the pro game in Europe, and Mexico, and South America, and even Asia. You can't deny it, unless you like being as wrong as you were when you said the sport will have to become No. 1 because of all the youth leagues.

"I really believe our core is the real soccer fan, the one at the pub watching the Premier League, or the Italian league, or the Argentine league," Gary Wright of the MLS' wildly successful Seattle Sounders told Bachman. "The soccer mom or dad, I don't believe are going to do that. They'll come on special promotions. They'll come when their [youth] team comes. But they're not coming for 18 season-ticket games."

Gary Wright worked for the Seahawks for about 100 years. He might be onto something.

Or not. Soccer might be simply what it is in America, a fringe sport that enjoys bumps at big events like the World Cup but otherwise works under the radar. But we know one thing for sure.

If you live near a stadium, and your rose bushes begin to reek of vomit and empty bottles of Jagermeister rather than popcorn boxes and Skittles, you'll know how your team is being marketed. MLS -- Where Hangovers Happen.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.