With so much going on in US Soccer right now between the Under-20 tournament and Copa America, it's hard to keep a serious focus on MLS - throw in a vacation to New Hampshire into the mix and things get a lot tougher.

Suffice it to say that the cable system doesn't have most of the major networks that carry games. Fortunately, broadband has found its way to the Granite State as have Boston TV stations, so I'm not completely cut off from the soccer world either.

Before any discussion of MLS begins, here are a few random observations on the state of the sport here in the good ol' soccer-hatin' US of A.

First, I was heartened to see that the Spanish language telecast of the USA/Mexico Gold Cup final CRUSHED the Stanley Cup Finals (which, while poorly advertised, was on one of the four major broadcast networks, NBC). I take no pleasure in seeing what hockey's overseers have done to it having grown up a die-hard Flyers fan, but it is a measure of the progress that the sport is making.

I'm not sure what sort of ratings Fox Soccer Channel brought in (they are far enough up the dial that they don't get formal ratings), but adding that to the Spanish language ratings, advertisers had better start paying a bit more attention.