I was just arriving at Church last Sunday night when I flicked on the radio, I am tuned in 810am by default and the news the the mighty Green Bay Packers where losing to the New York Giants just before the half made me smile, even though the the lead was a paltry three points. I kept listening as I parked and proceeded to gather the trappings of a long day outside into what is known in my home as “Daddy’s man purse”, my DSLR, diapers, phone, wallet, glasses, baby wipes and then it happened. Eli Manning launched a Hail Mary, Hakeem Hicks made the catch, and I sat in my car in Westport cheering a touchdown for the Giants.

I have no love for the New York Giants at all, but I have an ever growing hatred for the Green Bay Packers that is fueled by the actions of one individual, who lives right here in Kansas City. He detests the home town Chiefs and is of course a Packer fan. His belligerent, disrespectful and ungraceful attitude towards the Chiefs has gotten my back up to the point that it has made rooting for the Chiefs a lot easier to handle, and rooting against the Packers second nature. He is simply obnoxious and my dislike for him is now matched equally by my dislike for his team.

His actions have solidified everything I need to know about the Chiefs and my blossoming support for them, and have underscored the dislike I have harbored for the Packers. I doubt I will ever not want them to lose again. This is of course a fairly regular occurrence between sports fans, people will choose to root for a team because of a buddy that did, because their grandpa took them to games there, because a player they enjoyed was on the team. They will choose to vilify a team because they have lost to them a few too many times, because a quarterback is a bit too Christian or because a hateful little prick was a bit to much to handle after a while. It happens every single day, and by and large it is a healthy thing within a sport. A little hatred fuels rivalries and heated games, big crowds and TV coverage.

It got me thinking though, as soccer fans the trash talking between sets of fans is no problem at all, but as advocates of the sport who are looking to help the sport grow within a culture that is hostile to its very existence at times we cannot afford to be both militantly pro-soccer and anti-everything else at the same time. Of course we aren’t all exclusively soccer fans but there is a large element amongst us who if you mention the NFL will groan about it simply being a vehicle for advertising, or start rattling off humdrum statistics about there only being 12 minutes of real action in an hour long game that winds up taking three hours or more.

It is this kind of sentiment that will really make an NFL fan mad, and potentially hostile to soccer and it is the kind of thing some soccer fans will drop in conversation due to their enthusiasm to convert the uninitiated. We are not going to win fans over to the beautiful game but pointing out the flaws in the things they love no matter how glaring they may seem us. It was just a thought – a powerful one which will probably prevent me from crapping all over MISL in the future – I would hate to think that anything I said about MISL caused an Indoor soccer fan to think of Sporting Kansas City or MLS badly. As much as we are fans, we are also representatives of Sporting Kansas City, MLS and soccer and it is worth thinking about that. In a country where we do not have blanket coverage and networks queuing up to make soccer stories prime time news, word of mouth and the image we project of our game is the most prominent outreach tool we have.

That makes us a powerful marketing force … for good or for bad. How we use that power is up to us.