Dave’s Football Blog

So on July 1, I went to see a 3rd-round match between my Carolina Railhawks — and yes, I take full credit for starting the “Fire Schweitzer!” chants — and the Kansas City Wizards. Carolina jumped out to a 2-0 lead against a Wizards side largely made up of reserve players, but K.C. put its big strikers into the lineup after an hour and equalized with about 7 minutes left.

After that, I saw something I swear I had never seen at a Railhawks game before. Whenever Carolina got the ball in extra time and started pushing forward, fans all over the stadium were standing up and shouting, imploring them to get a goal. Even after K.C. jumped ahead in extra time, fans kept encouraging the Railhawks to score. It wasn’t just the fanatics hanging with us on the south stand. It was nearly everyone in the stadium.

At that moment, these fans understood. This was knockout football. This was survive and advance. The late Jim Valvano coined that phrase here in 1983 when he coached N.C. State to an improbable NCAA Basketball Championship. We understand survive and advance here in North Carolina, and that night in Cary, I had never seen Railhawks fans wanting to advance more in my life.

That’s why the U.S. Open Cup makes me sad. If U.S. Soccer put just a little effort into getting this competition out in front of people and showing them the glory of knockout football, fans would figure it out and embrace it. We still talk about N.C. State in 1983 and Villanova in 1985 and George Mason in 2006. Why not get into something like that for soccer, with all its upsets and all its glories?

Alas, it would be easier too clear the smog out of Beijing than it would be to convince U.S. Soccer and MLS to give the Open Cup a little heat. Consider that tonight’s semifinal between D.C. United and the New England Revolution won’t even have an online video feed. You can listen to the game online, but you can’t see it live unless you buy a ticket at RFK Stadium. They’ll be lucky to get 5,000 fans in there tonight, too, since a complete lack of promotion means most DCU supporters probably don’t even know this match is happening. The other semifinal between USL First Division clubs the Charleston Battery and the Seattle Sounders takes place tonight at Blackbaud Stadium at 7:30 PM, and USLLive.com is providing free online video for it.

If Seattle wins tonight, they’re guaranteed a home final at Qwest Field. Wouldn’t that be a grand showcase for the future of soccer in that city? Imagine the potential atmosphere of a Cup Final in Seattle, 8 months before the Sounders (and many of their current starters) move from USL-1 to MLS. Doesn’t that seem like something worth promoting? Of course, it does, and that’s all the more reason to expect MLS and U.S. Soccer to drop the ball if it happens. The SuperLiga final was a fun game to watch, but did anyone really try to make us care about it?

I spent the better part of two years trying to get FanHouse readers interested in the U.S. Open Cup. We all have our windmills to tilt, I suppose, and this is mine. Someone should see the value in this tournament, even if MLS and U.S. Soccer don’t.

So I’ll be watching the Battery v. Sounders game tonight, and you should, too, because that’s guaranteed to be a hard-fought contest between two clubs who knocked a combined four MLS clubs out of this competition on their way here. I hope one of those USL clubs lifts the trophy at the end of it. I’d prefer it to be Charleston, because that guarantees that MLS will lose another CONCACAF Champions League bid to a USL club. If Seattle wins, MLS will just finagle a way to get the expansion Sounders FC into the CL. If the Battery wins, I can smile at the schadenfreude of it all.

More Open Cup fun is at Unprofessional Foul.