New Commissioner Receives a Challenge in Skeptical MLS

Can a one-time NFL senior executive find happiness, success or even tolerance running a football league in America in which the ball is not carried or thrown but actually played with . . . the feet?

New Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber is the current case study--and owner of perhaps the shortest honeymoon period in the history of American sports commissioners. Upon his arrival from the NFL Europe League to the news conference announcing him as Doug Logan’s replacement as head of MLS, Garber was greeted with a media reception that ranged, roughly, from frosty to suspicious to openly hostile.

Before putting in a full day on the job, Garber had been criticized for not having a proper soccer background, for not being a “soccer person,” for not being fluent in Spanish, for not knowing the needs of the American soccer fan, for having spent the last 15 years under the employ of a rival league some within the U.S. soccer establishment view as a mortal enemy.

Nearly two months later, Garber has begun to settle in behind his desk, but the sting from that initial skepticism remains.

“I find it astounding, and I ultimately find it as part of the idiosyncrasy and part of the character of soccer in this country--where it’s hard to be a soccer fan and it’s hard to be an outsider when all your friends and all your co-workers are fans of another sport,” Garber said during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “As a result of that, there’s this insular nature to the industry where outsiders aren’t necessarily welcome.

“There is not another professional sport commissioner in this country that would have been expected to have been ‘from the sport.’ Not Paul Tagliabue, not David Stern, not Gary Bettman. Looking for a commissioner before Bud Selig took over, baseball hadn’t even mentioned a baseball guy. They were talking about the deputy mayor of New York City, my goodness!

“[Tagliabue] never played football and he was the lawyer for the NASL and its law firm for 15 years before he started moving over to the NFL. David Stern was a very, very brilliant attorney. Gary Bettman had spent time in the NBA before going over to hockey.”

Soccer in America is different, Garber believes, because no other sport in this country has had to deal with such long-term abuse from non-fans and adversaries within the media and other sectors of the U.S. sports power structure.

“These guys have been at it for so long,” Garber said of the U.S. soccer community, “and have been outsiders for so long and have been persecuted for so long and have been insecure for so long that they view it as ‘their’ sport. ‘Who is Don Garber to come in and be the commissioner of our sport?’

“I’ve gone into [Internet] chat rooms and read how fans talk about me: ‘He sounds like a smart guy, but how could our sport be run by a guy who doesn’t know soccer?’ ”

Garber is young--he turns 42 this week--and still new to the job, so perhaps he can be excused for the time being. But he will soon learn: For the preservation of one’s stomach lining and mental health, it is recommended that no commissioner of any American sports league enter chat rooms to read what fans are saying about him.

Not surprisingly, Garber bristles at the on-line potshots.

“What do you need to know about soccer?” he asked. “Do I need to know what players to sign? I’ve got a great personnel guy to sign players. Do I need to . . . “

Garber’s eyes flashed to a nearby television monitor showing the end of a live MLS game. Regulation had ended in a 0-0 draw, so both teams were lining up to partake in the scourge of MLS soccer, the dreaded complete-with-orange-traffic-cones shootout.

Garber laughed.

“A soccer guy came up with that goofy [format],” said Garber, considering scrapping the shootout because it is detested by the purists among the MLS fan base. “I’m ‘not a soccer guy,’ but at the end of the day, I’m going to do the right thing as it relates to us moving forward with some of our rules.”

FOR SALE: THE REST OF THE WORLD’S PASSION

So, just for the record: Is Garber a fan of soccer? Did he follow the sport before his appointment as MLS commissioner in early August?

“Yeah, I followed it,” he said. “While I was with NFL Europe, I attended soccer matches in Europe. I’ve coached youth soccer. I live in probably one of the hottest soccer towns in northern New Jersey. I’ve got a friend who has built an indoor soccer dome.

“I’ve been in and around it. You can’t not be in and around it and be a young parent in America today. I went to the World Cup in 1994. I went to no shortage of matches in England and Germany. I went to matches in Barcelona.

“It’s a great game. It’s also a sport that’s for us now --the games are short, there are no commercial breaks, it’s quick, it’s exciting. I wouldn’t say I was a soccer fanatic, but having been in the professional sports world for as long as I have, it’s kind of hard to be a fanatic for any sport. Because you’re spending so much of your time selling it, it really becomes difficult to be a fan.”

Actually, the sales job Garber faces with MLS is strikingly similar to the task he had with NFL Europe. There, he was trying to sell America’s passion to a largely skeptical European audience. Now, he attempts to sell Europe’s passion to an America bloated on its regular diet of football-baseball-basketball.

“I see a lot of similarities,” Garber said. “Frighteningly so. . . . I had to go to places like Europe or Mexico or China and my job was to try to overcome the skepticism that the No. 1 sport in America would ever catch on outside in the rest of the world. I’m facing the same skepticism now with the No. 1 sport in the world and questions as to whether it will catch on in America.

“What we did [with NFL Europe] was go about trying to focus on one step at a time and creating strategic decisions as it relates to how we’re going to grow the business. We created public-private partnerships, we tried to build linkage with the community, we tried to create a game-day environment that, once you got them there, was entertaining and a good experience [even though] half the time they were shaking their heads, not knowing what the heck was going on.

“I think to some extent we’re getting some of that here. We’ve got to grow beyond the core group of people. We’ve got to take people to this game who hear about it and have some understanding of it, but we’ve got to get them to sort of feel that, you know, ‘We’re here, we’re staying here and, gee, it would great for you to support us.’ ”

Garber contends that, given the time, he can help MLS “convert the naysayers and eliminate the skepticism and slowly build a financial model that is more successful than it is now.”

Even if than means braving the slings and arrows aimed at his own office for a while.

“I think all these people--including those who have been very critical about my football heritage as opposed to soccer heritage--once I talk to them and once they see I’m a smart guy and I understand what needs to happen to grow a fan base and react to constituencies, I think they will ultimately buy in,” he said.

With that, a weary smile crosses Garber’s face as the salesman attempts to buy what he just said.

“Or, you go on with life. And try not to read too much.”

CONCACAF? GESUNDHEIT!

For too long, it sounded like a bad comedy routine.

“What zonal soccer federation does the United States belong to?”

“CONCACAF.”

“You know, you really ought to do something about that cough.”

“I didn’t cough. I gave you the answer you wanted. CONCACAF.”

“Better get inside. And take some Nyquil. I’ll ask someone else.”

It was the most unnecessarily unwieldy and redundant title in all of sports: The Confederacion Norte-Centroamericana y del Caribe de Futbol. Or, translated, the Soccer Confederation of North America, Central America and the Caribbean--which is a little like calling the U.S. Soccer Federation the “Soccer Confederation of the United States, California, Alaska and Hawaii.”

Not big students of world geography, CONCACAF officials finally decided to scrap the cumbersome title this week, replacing it with the more succinct--if decidedly more vague--”The Football Confederation.”

“We thought it was time to make a change, to present a more vibrant and modern image to a part of the world which is making such headway in the game,” said the organization’s president, Jack Warner. “Now, instead of an awkward acronym, we have three simple and appropriate words.”

Yes, and no doubt a good deal more confusion for soccer fans around the world.

The Football Confederation of what? Oceania? Albania? The Lesser Antilles?

Free advice to newly renamed confederation: Give it one more try.

Try: The North American Football Federation--NAFF, for short.

Soccer--it really is the simplest game, so long as you give it the chance.