Our colleague and pal Grant Wahl posted an interesting argument this weekend arguing that MLS should sign David Beckham sooner rather than later. It's a solid argument - go read it - and it's one that I'd agree with if the league is intent on signing the former England captain.

But I think signing Beckham in the first place is a mistake.

So many things these days in American soccer are treated as "true" despite little or no evidence. Some examples: The idea that youth soccer players and their parents will support a professional soccer franchise; that Jurgen Klinsmann would be a successful American coach; and that MLS needs a star like a David Beckham to really draw interest toward the league. Not one of the preceding statements is actually verifiable - they're all opinions, not facts - and furthermore, at least one of them (the first) is demonstrably false. Yet all these things are treated by a majority of soccer fans as "truth." That's dangerous, because it obscures other options for the sport that might be more profitable.

Beckham is great example of this. He's a nice guy and got true marketing clout. Based on past "big signings" such as Pele and Freddy Adu, I think it is safe to say signing Beckham to an MLS team would spur some public interest. The question is whether that short-term attention would stick with the sport and MLS for any period of time.

History shows that it won't.

When big name players have been signed to American soccer teams in the past they have often - but not always - generated a flurry of media attention and, in the best cases, some real upticks at the box office to boot. Those sellouts for the Pele-Beckenbauer-Chinaglia era Cosmos were absolutely real. The problem is that when those stars left, attention waned dramatically. This is demonstrable: For many sports editors and media buyers the whole NASL era never existed.

This suggests that the attention gained from signing a star to an American soccer team benefits the star more than the league or the sport. It also highlights the obvious problem that the product surrounding that star isn't enough to sustain fan interest on its own. Pele drew fans; soccer hasn't.

Americans don't love soccer. No matter how many times MLS tosses around questionable figures (my favourite is the suggestion that the sport has 65 million potential fans in the USA) the sad truth is that drawing a consistent 15,000 fans a game to see professional soccer is extremely hard. One of the more depressing examples can be found on the East Coast, an area with arguably the richest and deepest soccer heritage in the USA. Consider that we're in a post-Pele, post-youth soccer boom era, as well as a good 75 years along since the sport became entrenched in New England schools and colleges. A lot of folks play soccer in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York. Have the New England Revolution seen any benefit at all from this? The empty seats at Gillette suggest they haven't.

Other leagues have been burned by the star phenomenon as well, with the NBA being the most glaring example. Twice in the league's history, stars have generated tremendous interest in the game, only to see that interest dramatically fall off when those stars retired. In the 80s, the Los Angeles Lakers-Boston Celtics rivalry captured fans in large part due to fan interest in Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. In the 90s, Michael Jordan became a worldwide household name with the Chicago Bulls. In both cases, when the super-star retired, the NBA took a tremendous hit in terms of popularity. Recognizing this, the NBA in the post-Jordan era is attempting to focus fan interest on teams over individuals. The process has been painful and remains a work in progress.

And soccer doesn't have the financial cushion the NBA has to absorb such lulls. MLS' average paid attendance still lags behind all but the two worst baseball teams and doesn't come close to the NBA or NHL in either average or total attendance (despite the fact that both basketball and hockey arenas are smaller). Let's not even get into the NFL or NASCAR or the true #3 game in this nation, college sports.

But, as Wahl points out, "buzz" is important these days. The question then becomes: is the money spent on a player such as Beckham worth the amount of attention it will bring? Again, history suggests that it isn't.

Oddly enough, the two biggest draws for modern soccer have been Pele (obvious) and Freddy Adu (not so obvious). The cost-to-benefit for those players has actually been pretty good, too - Pele arguably sold the sport in this country and Adu put fans in seats his first year and has remained a "name player" to the general public. Strictly talking about "juice," Adu remains a better buy than Juan Francisco Palencia at Chivas. And at the risk of being a bit too frank, Pele and Adu are not even most recognizable American soccer names. Mia Hamm is, thanks to aggressive marketing by Gatorade and the 1999 Women's World Cup. Note that even with an asset like that, women's soccer couldn't take off.

With Beckham's price tag in the tens of millions of dollars, how much juice would MLS have to get to justify signing him? A lot. Buzz is ephemeral: What keeps folks coming back is the quality of play.

No amount of marketing can disguise the fact that MLS' quality of play still lags far behind what Americans can now see - for far less money per game- on cable TV. What would improve MLS overnight would be spending "Beckham money" on the teams themselves and less on grand gestures. Doubling the salary cap of each team and spending $1 million each on ten good players from Argentina or Brazil would probably have a bigger impact on overall quality than spending $35 million on one man.

MLS has yet to convince sports fans that its games are worth caring about. Adding three quality players to each team would pay immediate dividends: Not only would the quality of play improve, but those players would help make the American players better. The one attribute American players bring to the table is a willingness to compete and to learn. Frankly, MLS has done them a disservice over the years by not surrounding them with first-class talents.

I realize this suggestion lacks buzz. It isn't flashy. But signing a Beckham or a Ronaldo will most likely bring just two years of attention followed by a "been there, done that" reaction from mainstream American sports fans. Soccer fans forget that curious sports fans have come to see MLS games over the past decade, drawn by an Adu or a Donovan. They've found them wanting.

It would be better in the long run for everyone if MLS took their cash and signed some very good young players. That wouldn't make all the papers, but it would build a league.