Face it, die hards, the USOC *is* just an exhibition.

The fact of the matter is that Americans will never understand the importance of the US Open Cup. The way that American sports are set up with a meaningless regular season leading up to a play-off cup championship is not going to change, and as long as it’s there, there will never be a meaningful second cup tournament in the US.

Sure, we could run MLS like that. We could eliminate the playoffs and simply have a single table and a separate cup, but as long as MLS strives to be the ‘fifth major,’ it can’t just stroll to the beat of a different drum. The public at large will not accept it, or will not make the effort to understand it.

It would be nice, but I feel as long as both the USL and MLS have a play-off format, the average fan will not value the US Open Cup. The die-hards who watch the foreign leagues and also the US leagues get it, but they are not the majority, and here is the important fact to note: THEY NEVER WILL BE.

When soccer makes it in this country, it won’t be because the average sports fan is watching the English Premier League or Serie A or the Primiera Division. It will be when the average sports fan watches MLS and the World Cup and roots for the USA at the World Cup. When the trips that I make to the local USL team mean dealing with traffic and paying for parking. When a Revolution game means traffic almost as bad as a Patriots game. That’s when

At that point, maybe the USSF could consider making a switch to a ‘pure’ league championship. However the way in which American sports are marketed practically require an ultimate SUPER MEGA ULTRA Bowl where one team wins and another loses. The awarding of a CONCACAF Champions cup place to the MLS regular season champions is a very big step in the right direction, but as long as MLS Cup exists, the US Open cup will remain an afterthought.

And is that really such a bad thing? In reality, the US soccer market is dreadfully fractured. People in different areas work at cross-purposes all the time in ways that delay the growth of the game as a spectator sport. The US Open Cup as it currently stands is a decent tool to bring MLS teams to smaller markets every now and then. It gives an opportunity to gauge the viability of a market in some ways as well.

Beyond that, the US Open Cup will just have to live in continued obscurity until such a point as the underlying format of US Soccer (or even US sports in general) changes. Whether that would ever happen is another question, but certainly one that won’t be answered for a good 20 years.