NHL Soccer 1

Time was a town needed at least two tabloid newspapers to get embroiled in a full blown media war. But these days the weapons of choice are far less expensive and the barriers to entry a whole heck of a lot lower.

Such is the case this past week as Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis hit the blog warpath against SportsTalk 980, the local AM sports talk radio outfit in Washington, D.C. And irony of all ironies, the fight didn't start about hockey, it started over David Beckham's MLS debut in the nation's capital just a little over a week ago.

But make no mistake, this fight isn't just about Soccer. In fact, it has everything to do with the way the mainstream media, sports talk radio included, treats the NHL.

It was last Thursday that Leonsis, on his way to RFK Stadium to see Beckham and the LA Galaxy play hometown D.C. United as a guest of the team's ownership group, tuned to SportsTalk 980 in his car to hear local radio personalities Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin poke fun at the sport and the almost 47,000 fans who would show up mid-week for such an event.

After hearing the hosts spout off a few more platitudes about fans of Soccer and Ice Hockey, Leonsis held his fire before responding in a Sunday post:

Why is it that ESPN -- the godfather of sports coverage -- has embraced soccer and our own SportsTalk 980 hasn't in drive time?

Why weren't the Sports Reporters in the parking lot broadcasting from the game to connect with this large group of fans and building their own brand?

Doesn't SportsTalk 980 want to expand its served universe? Doesn't it know how to cross promote between audiences? I bet soccer fans would like hockey and visa versa.

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As a programmer and someone who has grown up in scaling media businesses, I don't get the fact that the sports leader here in DC would go out of its way to NOT embrace soccer or hockey or any other sport that delivers an audience.

For most folks, that salvo would have been enough. But Leonsis wasn't done yet. Not by a longshot.

I really liked Alexi Lalas better when he looked like he had just stumbled in from a Phish jam, missing one shoe and with his arm around some girl who calls herself Delirium and smells of patchouli and coffee grounds. Look at him now, sitting next to Posh's husband -- as Billy Walsh from "Entourage" might say, "There he is, fresh from the dry cleaners, my one and only favorite suit."

Besides going corporate, now Lalas has gotten on my bad side as a hockey fan. The president of the L.A. Galaxy told the Globe and Mail this weekend that surpassing the NHL in the U.S. is one of his top priorities:

With Beckham's handsome face to market, with a broad participatory base and with an ever-expanding soccer-mad Hispanic community in the United States now roughly equivalent to the population of Canada, soccer has a leg up on at least one other exotic game struggling to gain a foothold in much the American market – a game that once tried dropping its own golden boy into Hollywood for a time.

"I think that we can – and I say this with all due respect for Canada, which may be the only the only place where I'll get a major argument – pick off hockey here, and then we'll move on to the next major-league sport," Lalas said. "We can start picking them off one by one."

If I had a yellow card to pull, I'd thrust it in the air and ask Lalas for a clarification.