The whole MLS Cup Playoffs were a strange trip, capped by Colorado’s 2-1 overtime win over FC Dallas last night in Toronto.

First off, having looked at it several hundred times, I’m no longer sure Jair Benitez clipped Conor Casey’s ankle on the controversial non-penalty call. He did kick him (or try to kick him) in the shoulder, perhaps in retaliation for the shot from the grassy knoll that felled Ugo Ihemelu, perhaps just because it was a chippy game that referee Baldomero Toledo had no interest in policing from start to finish.

David Ferreira‘s goal was gorgeous, Casey’s goal was opportunistic, the winning own-goal was unfortunate, and the guy from Volkswagen – flown to Toronto and put up in a hotel to do one thing and one thing only – was a dipshit. That’s pretty much MLS in a nutshell, folks – brief moments of brilliance interspersed with grit, pathos and people who haven’t the slightest idea what they’re doing.
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The front pages of Salt Lake City’s major newspapers this morning, hours after Real Salt Lake became the second #8 seed in history to win MLS Cup:

Was it the greatest game ever? No. Finals rarely are. LA had the better of things early, but Real hung in there again, and Cup MVP Nick Rimando came up huge in the penalty kick shootout (more than you can say for league MVP Landon Donovan).

I don’t even have to look to know that two things are being discussed this morning among the rabble:

• That a playoff system that lets an eighth-place team that finished below .500 in the regular season be crowned “champions” is inherently flawed; and
• That penalties are no way to decide a title.

My responses to these are:

• As soon as the 5th-seeded New York Giants, 13th-best-record-in-the-majors 2006 St. Louis Cardinals and 1938 Chicago Blackhawks give back their Super Bowl, World Series and Stanley Cup titles, respectively, you can have that point. This is how we do things in America. Sorry about your luck. Now shut up.
• As soon as you come up with a workable idea, let us know. Play ’til someone drops? People nearly did last night. You don’t want your title decided on penalties, but you’d like to have it decided because someone just collapsed and made a mistake and that led to a fluky game-winning goal? Okay, then. If there was a better solution, we’d have found it by now. What it basically comes down to is that people (I’m sure it’s not just soccer people) want stuff that they can’t handle emotionally legislated away. This is the game. This is what it is. This is how it works. Los Angeles (and, last week, Chicago) each had 120 minutes to put Salt Lake away, and Supporters Shield winner Columbus had 180 minutes to do it – none of them could. The fact that the MLS champion is decided by who comes out on top in a four-week tournament in October and November rather than the 30-game season from March to October? Well, that’s just the way it is, boys and girls. The rules are the same for everybody. Now shut up.

You know what my reaction to this was? “Good for them.” Then I checked to see if Jason Kreis was going to be insufferable (he was) and then I went to bed.

Really, it’s that simple. Someone won, someone lost. Someone always wins and someone always loses. If you want a 100% guarantee of a happy ending, see a Disney movie. If you want a 100% guarantee of the ending you want, write a book.

Congrats, RSL. You earned it.

Final numbers* show a 0.6 final national rating, 1 share and 660,000 television households.

As you saw here, the only other Cup match (I’m missing last year’s – if you can help, please do) to get that low a final national rating was 2003′s, and this year’s event reached an estimated 42,000 fewer households (blah blah blah Nielsen methodology blah blah blah small sample error blah blah blah).

The fact Columbus (where the game did pretty well, from what I’ve heard) and New York (where the number one market can’t be buggered to care) were in the game had a lot to do with it, I would guess.

I don’t think it’s cause for too much alarm, because we don’t have numbers for the Hispanic audience (at least, they’re not listed there that I can see). The game was carried on TeleFutura as well, and I’m sure they got some audience and siphoned a bit away from the ABC telecast.

If you do have definitive national ratings for the 2007 game and could pass them along, I’d appreciate it, in the interests of completeness. Here’s the updated table for your reference: