Ed - Good stuff, front paged!

via sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net Photo from Tibs2007 in ClassVI

A few of my thoughts and observations on what I liked for the 'Pids season opening match against Columbus! Let's hear your thoughts below in the comments section!

1. "Man of the Match"- Kosuke Kimura

Kimura had both assists on goals for the match, and looked impressive the entire match. Kimura was able to create opportunities in the near the goal. Kimura had a perfect cross into the box after Columbus had cleared a corner kick, and found a leaping Drew Moor who headed in the first goal. Kimura also drove the ball downfield many times on runs down the right side, but occasionally had trouble getting it passed the Columbus defenders. Overall, Kimura is in my mind the "Man of the Match" for the assists he had and the other potential opportunities on goal he created. Plus, we all loved that Burgundy hair.

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I have been a fan of all Colorado sports for 3 decades, but it took nearly that long for me to discover soccer and the Rapids. Having spent my formative adult years in Portland I became a fan of the Timbers, attending a couple of their games pre-MLS, and occasionally following the team. Then I moved back home to Colorado and forgot about soccer for a while. Until last year when the Timbers had their inaugural MLS game in Colorado. All my friends back in Oregon were going crazy about the move to MLS. I started reading Timbers media and getting excited too. I decided their inaugural game in Colorado was an event I could not miss...but I had a dilemma: to support for the Timbers or my home town team the Rapids.

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I recently got an e-mail from Jason, who is the content director with a website called 'English, Baby!'. The site features entertainers and athletes that have learned English as a second language in order to help other people learn to speak English. Recently they featured our own right back and Japanese legend (OK so maybe not) Kosuke Kimura, talking about the English phrase 'come from behind' in regards to the Rapids 2010 MLS Cup victory.

Check it out here, it's a quite cool thing.

via a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net

Fellow Denver sports blogger Andrew Feinstein of Denver Stiffs here. THIS Tuesday night (9/27), I'm going to be hosting the biggest ping pong party in the country with SMASH! at the EXDO Event Center, located at 35th and Walnut just a mile-and-a-half northeast of Coors Field. This Tuesday's event will kick off our new Tuesday ping pong night at EXDO. Read more about it below the jump and I hope my friends from Burgundy Wave can join us...

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Supposedly, I should be proud. Proud of how the United States Woman's National Team performed in this world cup final, which was lost 3-2 on penalty kicks to Japan. Sounds like fluff to me, though.

This was a missed opportunity. A show of how fragile the psyche of the US Woman's National team is. They broke down but didn't snap after allowing that first goal to Japan to equalize and it was a concern. A good team would have recovered and scored on another one of those 27 (!) shots that they lashed terribly toward the Japanese goal, with a pathetic 5 of them on target all game long.

This was a chance to make the entire US finally have something to embrace in the footballing world since 2007, which is about the time when the real footballing revolution seems to have started to hit the US leading up to the amazing crowds and ratings for the 2010 World Cup. This was a brilliant chance to unite the country and they choked it away, more fodder for the football-haters of the country to feast on as they forced it into the much-lambasted Penalty Kicks and failed to score on their first three shots after sending two of their worst players in the match to shoot first.

The game was fantastic to watch and the drama was unending to the matches advantage, but when asked about the US team, I see no reason to be proud.

via thetotalfootballer.com

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Alright, so I am a diehard Nuggets fan, moderate Broncos fan, moderate Rockies fan and recently decided to give soccer/footy a shot. I was talking with a buddy of mine who is a HUGE Liverpool fan this morning and he convinced me to get into the game. I found that he is 10 times more passionate about the sport than most American sports fans, so it sounded like a lot of fun.  So, here are my thoughts:

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Free hats for everyone who posts within!*

Seriously, I never get any comments around here so I figured a stupid lolz fest like this would do the trick. Or more likely, it will get 4 comments, two of them posted by me asking where all the other comments are. I'm on to you people!

*Free hats will probably be made of newspaper or some similar material, maybe I'll just give you a cardboard shoe box and call it a hat. Actually just about anything can be worn on the head, so what constitutes a hat? Maybe I'll give out all those 300 hats that are lying in my closet that I owned as a child, like that Reds hat that I got from little league when they named all of the teams after actual MLB teams and I got stuck on the Reds but the stupid Red Sox got the really big kid who I'm pretty sure was on steroids at age 6 and wound up winning whatever the hell the championship we had in that age was and we found it really funny since when I was 6 the Red Sox still really sucked and weren't sweeping the Rockies in the world series, but that's another story. Also free hat probably not included because I don't know where any of you people live.

Given the frustrated tone of my other fanpost on this site, I wanted to follow up after the Eastern Conference final with an acknowledgement post.  I watched the game on FSC and was very impressed with the near-capacity 17,729 that showed up in sub-20-degree weather to watch their team's victory and then to send them off to the MLS Cup final.  The crowd took about 15 minutes to fill in after the game had started, but fill in it did.  It really came to life on the Cummings Kimura goal and from then on you could easily hear the crescendo over the FSC broadcast every time Colorado threatened to score again (which happend a number of times in the second half).  Entire sections of the stadium near midfield could be seen standing for the entire second half.

During the regular season, Colorado averaged 13,328.  Tonight they exceeded that average by 33%.  Everyone in attendance was rewarded by getting to watch their club earn a trip to the final.  I wish you luck in the final, but also luck in retaining as many of the fans in attendance tonight as season ticket holders for next season.

Bravo Rapids, bravo.  The game was a success both on and off the field.

Disclaimer: I live in Seattle and I'm a Sounders FC fan.

I read a lot of blogs and ever since the MLS showed up in Seattle I've been both a Sounders FC fan and an overall MLS supporter.  I'll be one of many fans accross the nation watching this Saturday when your Colorado Rapids take on San Jose in the Eastern Conference final (I'll spare you from reading further criticism on the rediculousness of the Eastern/Western Conference playoff system).  The TV raitings will probably not be that great, but I'll be doing my part as I know many Sounders fans will be (and fans of other teams).

It pained me to read this morning how the Rapids front office is marketing this playoff game (or rather not marketing). 

After selling more than 11k tickets in their playoff opener with less than five days notice, the Rapids face the challenge of again selling tickets on a short turn around.  Interestingly, the team is not aggressively pushing any promotional offerings in advance of the game, but through their website, there are two deals being offered to attract fans... To locate these deals, a fan must click through the website to the ticket page.  The front page of the website contains no reference to the offers. 

I've heard a number of pleas from other fans of other teams that they want to "export" the success that Seattle is having to their own teams.  Fans of teams that are not Toronto, LA, Seattle, or Philly get very defensive when their teams are ridiculed for low attendance.  I don't blame them.  They want to know what can be done to make their own clubs successful off the pitch like these other teams.

Well, Rapids fans, here is your chance right now.  Call your front office out on this one.  Why aren't they aggressively marketing this one?  Do they even want people to know that their club is two wins away from a championship and that Denver residents have a chance to see one of those wins on Saturday?

If you're looking to take ques from Seattle in order to export success, take a que on this one.  From the moment that Seattle made the playoffs, tickets were on sale and links were provided off of the front page to buy tickets.  Season ticket holders had the ability to buy speculative tickets to all rounds of the playoffs about a week before Seattle had even clinched a playoff berth.  The marketing of playoff matches was agressive to say the least.

I intend to watch the playoff game in Commerce City on Saturday [Ed. To be clear, I'll be watching on TV, I'm not traveling to Colorado for the game] and will probably be rooting for the Rapids.  However, what a shame it will be to have the stands less than half full again.  Marketing matters and the lack of marketing speaks volumes about the Rapids front office. 

Colorado Rapid fans unite and let it be known that the front office needs to (nay, must) care as much about their team making the playoffs as you do.  Don't accept excuses.  They owe you results in the form of TV adds, newspaper adds, online adds, creative special promotions, giveaways at the gates, and most importantly, butts in seats.

Follow-up: If you've read this far, keep reading the comments.  Things are not as bad as the footiebusiness.com editor (or I) make them out to be.  It appears quite a bit is being done to promote the game.  Hopefully it will result in a big turnout.