Crew and Columbus: Missed Opportunity?

Well the Crew gave me an excuse to resume blogging and we'll see if few posts fueled by fan exuberance jump starts a wider range of reflection. As a segue, here is one more point on the Crew.

Andrew Miller, at Elephants on Bicycles, expressed what has been haunting the back of my mind: The Crew kind of blew it with the MLS Cup victory celebration.

Why did the Crew only announce the statehouse event on Tuesday? If you are not on the Crew email list, nor a regular reader of Crew.com, you never would have known about the event. As Miller points out, this should have been planned well in advance. The Crew missed out on capitalizing on the game coverage Sunday night and Monday.

Instead of the few hundred that were there could there have been a few thousand? At least there would have been an opportunity for fans to plan to attend. For a sport still struggling to occupy the attention of sports fans in a college football obsessed city, this was a missed opportunity.

Columbus: cosmo or cowtown?

I was interviewed by NBC4 while at the statehouse and asked about the importance of this victory for the City. I'm not sure what I said -- I was caught a bit off guard -- but, as usual, I thought of what I really wanted to say too late:

Yes we love our Buckeyes but I doubt Buckeye highlights are being viewed around the world. The MLS Cup, however, with international players playing an international game, surely is being viewed around the world. And right now Columbus has the best America has to offer in the world's game. Are we going to use that to our advantage, add it to our collective self-image and sell it the world? Or our we going to treat it as an interesting diversion then going back to Ohio State bowl predictions?

Come on Columbus. More than one sport can make our identity.