Is Anybody Going to Watch 2014 MLS Cup?

It is almost as if Major League Soccer wants me to ignore 2014 MLS Cup. Challenge accepted.

The 2014 Major League Soccer title game, MLS Cup, brings with it a variety of interesting story lines. New England Revolution, the hottest team in all of MLS over the past couple of months, will take on an LA Galaxy side that has been the league’s top overall franchise since 2011. While the players and staffs are different, the Revolution will be looking to avenge a MLS Cup defeat to LA that occurred in 2005.

United States Men’s National Team members Lee Nguyen and Jermaine Jones will take the pitch wearing New England colors, while MLS Most Valuable Player Robbie Keane and US Soccer icon Landon Donovan will suit up for the Galaxy. Donovan will be playing the final 90+ minutes of his professional career before he rides off into the sunset, potentially doing so as a champion.

Once again, however, MLS has been set up to go largely ignored by the majority of American sports fans.

Nov 29, 2014; Foxborough, MA, USA; New England Revolution forward Charlie Davies (9) celebrates his goal against the against the New York Red Bulls during the first half of the Eastern Conference Championship at Gillette Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports

MLS Cup will be in direct competition with Week 14 of the 2014 National Football League on Sunday. LA vs. New England is scheduled to kick off around 3:00 pm ET, right as the 1:00 pm ET NFL games are beginning the fourth quarters of those contests. MLS Cup going up against the heart of any NFL schedule is always a terrible idea, and it is especially aggravating for those of us who follow both leagues and who have no dog in the MLS Cup fight this time around.

12, count ’em, 12 of the 16 teams in the AFC are realistically in the playoff hunt at the start of September, and plenty of them will be in-action as the Galaxy and Revolution kick off. The game involving the Indianapolis Colts and Cleveland Browns, both contenders to win division titles, has been flexed to national television, in part because the NFL and FOX are hoping that rookie phenom quarterback Johnny Manziel will play for the Browns at some point. Plenty of eyes will be on the Pittsburgh Steelers at Cincinnati Bengals contest, and not just because the Steelers are one of the more-popular sports entities in the country. Both teams are in the AFC North championship race, with the Bengals atop of the division standings with four games left to play.

Exactly how many NFL viewers would have considered flipping the channel over to MLS Cup had the match been scheduled for another day is unknown, but the amount of those individual abandoning this country’s version of football for the North American top-flight is roughly 0.0 percent. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t mess with Texas, you don’t keep a guy who ties the MLS single-season scoring record off of the MVP ballot, and you don’t compete with NFL Sundays for attention when you are a legitimate American professional sports organization if doing so can at all be avoided.

To be fair to MLS, nobody in the league’s front office is expecting MLS Cup to outdraw a single NFL regular season contest. Those individuals are not in denial. MLS is at the mercy of a television contract that has US club soccer as filler-content and not much more. ESPN doesn’t possess the rights to any interesting college basketball games to plug into the schedule on the afternoon of December 7? Might as well throw MLS Cup into the 3 pm time slot because, hey, why not?

This is not to suggest that MLS is blameless for the league title game being a television afterthought. By beginning the regular season when the league has chosen to do so and in expanding the playoff format to include 10 total teams (12 beginning next season), MLS has put itself in a hopeless scenario that includes MLS Cup taking place on NCAA College Football Championship Saturday or during the middle of a NFL Sunday. It’s a no-win situation for MLS that could be remedied by fixing a playoff system that is absurd.

That said, it wouldn’t have hurt ESPN to do MLS a solid and schedule the Final for Monday night. ESPN has a single Monday Night Football game involving the Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers, ESPN2 has a live high school basketball game scheduled, and ESPNU will be showing college basketball. Certainly, something could have been moved around, perhaps even to ESPNews, to help MLS out in this situation. Yes, MLS would still be competing with NFL, but going up against one football game is a better option than MLS Cup taking place as 13 football games are airing across multiple stations.

We have learned over the years that the amount of MLS fans who will not abandon the league in favor of other sports is a tiny fraction of the number of people who watch the NFL 17 Sundays a year. While I am in a unique position in that I am a MLS supporter who is also a member of the Pro Football Writers of America and thus will have only NFL airing on multiple screens this Sunday, I am hardly the only person who would be happy to pick MLS Cup over a Monday Night Football contest that means little to me. There are all kinds of sports fans from a variety of age groups who grew up on the NFL and are now starting to embrace soccer; from mothers and fathers in their 60s, to the 30-year old who watched his first ever MLS Playoff game last month, to the teenager from the midwest who doesn’t live in a MLS city but has nevertheless chosen a club to follow.

MLS desperately needs a TV deal that does not alienate those potential viewers.

There are some who believe that MLS needs to do better to cater to diehard soccer followers. The league needs to run away from that mentality and never look back. Sports fans who watch each of the big four — the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL — have space in their hearts for MLS. I’ve witnessed it among friends who I never thought would spend more than 30 seconds watching a soccer match that didn’t involve the USMNT. Competing with the NFL is no way to make those individuals MLS customers.

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