MLS needs its own version of the Winter Classic

by Jamie Trecker

Like most folks in my business, the winter holidays were spent parked in front of the television watching the Boxing Day games, the NCAA Bowl games, the start of InterLiga and a host of other sporting events.

Along the way there have been a fair number of memorable moments, too.

It's always nice to see USC run over other football teams. I followed the second test between Australia and India (that's cricket, by the way) with Indian bowler Harbhajan 'The Turbanator' Singh — great fun to watch. I even made a habit of tuning in to the last minute of every game Derby County plays to see just how they can let in that last-gasp winner this time around.

But the match that sticks out most in my mind was the NHL's "Winter Classic," staged on New Year's Day at Buffalo's Ralph Wilson Stadium. Over 71,000 watched the Penguins take a shootout win over the hometown Sabres in romantically awful winter conditions. The crowd loved every minute of it, and apparently so did viewers at home.

That game pulled the highest ratings for an NHL game in over a decade, and allowed the league to stake a claim early on for best event of the year.

It was ingenious, and it worked.

Why bring this all up? Well, while watching it, one thing kept running through my mind. Why can't MLS pull off something like this?

Well, it can.

What made the NHL's Winter Classic special was the setting — an open-air stadium, filled to capacity with die-hard hockey fans in a city hungry for a spectacle. What made the event transcendent was the networks' presentation of it — CBC did a better job than NBC, but both embraced the weather rather than criticizing it, and rolled with the lengthy timeouts needed to fix the rink and clear the snow. The atmosphere was electric and infectious, camouflaging the fact that the game itself was very average.

Soccer succeeds in this country when it brings that 'big event' feel to its games. The first Champions World tour, the England-USA game at Soldier Field, the 1994 and 1999 World Cups, and the USA-Brazil match in the Gold Cup all stand out in our memories not because they were all great games, but because they had a great atmosphere and expressed everything that is magical about the sport.

Soccer is less successful at the everyday grind. It is hard to get excited about MLS games played in Dallas, Kansas City, Colorado and New England when fans are outnumbered by empty seats. That ennui has a real effect on how MLS is perceived. It's true that no one is talking about the league folding anymore, but few non-soccer boosters are talking about it succeeding, either.

If you think that's unfair, consider the difference in atmospheres between a game at Madison Square Garden and one at Toyota Park. The Knicks are clearly the worst team in the NBA, but people are still showing up, still caring, and are paying their admission to vociferously let the team and its management how the fans really feel. In contrast, in Chicago, aside from the devotees of Section 8, the atmosphere varies little from game to game and doesn't seem to be based on performance.

The fact is, head to head, one game simply seems more important than the other. And, so, that feeling is filtered down by the media to the rest of the country. Fair or not, it reinforces the sports media's feeling that MLS is a minor league.

Changing that means changing the perceptions that surround in-season games. Now, MLS has in the past profited from turning regular season matches into events. It used to do a very good job with its season opener, and it should go back to making the kickoff game a stand-alone special. It does well on July 4th, when teams use promotions and fireworks to get big crowds in. And MLS Cup, despite a still unsatisfactory playoff run-up, is a major date in the American soccer calendar.

But the fact is MLS has not yet been able to claim a date for its own at any point in the season. MLS Cup comes amid the NFL and college football seasons, the playoffs land during the World Series, and every baseball team gloms on to July 4th as well. The reason the NHL's move was so audacious and ingenious is that it went head to head with Bowl games, and made a grand case for January 1st as "hockey's day." MLS can do the same thing, and moreover, it should.

How can this be done?

Simple. Take the lessons the NFL has learned and put MLS on the road. Play a regular season game in Seattle, or Philadelphia, or Montreal. Prime the waters in one of these oft-mentioned expansion markets — St. Louis or Philadelphia — with an unopposed game, in prime time, featuring MLS' most marketable teams and stars. That means using Los Angeles and David Beckham, and Chicago or D.C. United. Play the game in May or June and use it to showcase the form of the league in full-season stride.

MLS should also consider ditching the All-Star Game in favor of an approach like this.

Fact is, where the All-Star break now falls does little but take a day off teams' calendars during high season. While All-Star games have been well-attended, I'm not certain that they generate the attention the league truly deserves for the effort it puts into staging them. Combine that with the fact that the league has been hiring clubs to face off against their players at hefty prices and you start to wonder if that time and money couldn't be better spent.

How great would it be to see a meaningful MLS game get the same treatment that was afforded the meaningless Galaxy-Chelsea friendly last year? How resonant would a game played in front of a full house, in a traditional soccer market, be for the nation as a whole? And what memories could a game like this create?

After watching the NHL pull an event like this off, I'm convinced that MLS not only can do the same, but must.

Contact Jamie at Jamie.trecker@gmail.com . Jamie is assisted by Li Bruno and Jerry Trecker. Please visit Jamie's blog and website at www.jamietrecker.com. Jamie Trecker's new book, "Love and Blood," a story of the 2006 World Cup, was released this past August from Harvest/Harcourt Publishing.