In my apparently ongoing responsibilities as MPSB’s resident soccer beat blogger — I would have written beat “reporter,” but come on, me? report? ha! — I’ve noticed a trend: more people are caring about soccer. At the very least, people are more frequently crawling out of their holes to hate on soccer, which is as good an indication as any that the sport is trending upward. (Celizic strikes again, by the way. You know it’s bad when Mike Decourcy, probably the most polite writer of all-time, personally calls you out.)

Anyway, if soccer does become more popular, a lot of that popularity will have to do with ESPN czar John Skipper’s programming decisions. If ESPN gives soccer the same treatment as the NFL — especially during the World Cup in 2010 — you can bet on a sudden, if not prolonged, spike in popularity.

Fortunately for people strangely obsessed with the idea of soccer becoming popular in America, it seems that’s exactly what ESPN is going to do. The network will be doing round the clock World Cup coverage next summer. That includes 32 soft-focus personal interest features on a player from each of the tournament’s 32 teams. It also includes Chris Berman doing SportsCenter live from South Africa. Beyond being, as Spencer Hall points out, prime Chris Berman-lion-attack territory — now THAT would make soccer popular — this presents an essential conundrum: Will ESPN somehow overexpose soccer before most people even know what soccer is? I say yes! And then we’ll be right back where we started, which is actually just fine with me, thanks.