Excuse me, let me adjust the ice bag ... ouch! ... now just let me re-position my arm a little ... sorry ... okay, now I can type.

What's wrong with me? Thanks for asking. Well, I'm just an American soccer writer feeling a little beat-up this morning. It's nothing I can't handle -- nothing I'm not used to by now.

See, I'm out here in Columbus, Ohio, where tonight there's a really, really, really big soccer match between the U.S. and arch-rival Mexico. Actually, I shouldn't even call it a soccer match because it's much more than a match. It's a World Cup qualifier.

Last night, I went out for a pint of Guinness with some people who travel all over the country to cheer for the U.S. national team. I knew what I was getting into, but I'm battered nonetheless. The questions came fast and furious -- like jabs -- and they stung. And I took them the best I can for the good of the ESPN team ...

Why doesn't SportsCenter care about this game?
Ouch! I don't know.

You writing about this for ESPN The Magazine?
Oooh! No.

I bob and weave a little -- I tell them I traveled to Guatemala last July for a long feature on World Cup qualifying. I tell them The Magazine's going to do an MLS preview for the fourth straight year. But they're not satisfied.

As I write, these people are probably going through the same morning ritual as me. They're watching SportsCenter. They're getting highlights of dog-day NBA and NHL games and pre-March Madness college hoops. They're also getting Inside the Huddle with John Clayton and Up Close with Pedro Martinez. They're getting a prepared statement from Frank Thomas, who talks about his holdout, and a news flash that Omar Vizquel has agreed to a two-year extension with the Indians. If they're watching really closely, they'll notice that at 28 minutes after the hour, there's a 30-second promo that mentions the U.S.-Mexico game tonight on ESPN2 at 7:30. That's it. No mention on the actual program. Back to those Coyotes-Bruins highlights.

So these fans have had it with soccer's standing on the American sports landscape. These guys are skipping work, buying plane tickets and hotel rooms, guessing on lineups and strategy, tossing and turning at night, and then waking up to the reality that the American sports media cares more about Conference USA than Team USA.

On the other hand, Mexican television has been here in Ohio for the better part of two weeks. Fans back home get nightly weather reports on the frigid temps that will help make this a home-field advantage for the Americans. The other reason the game's in Columbus is because the U.S. Soccer Federation stood a better chance of filling the 24,000 seats with, let's just say, fans who are not Mexican. If this game were in the Rose Bowl, we would have been looking at a crowd of more than 90,000. Lotsa money to be made there, but U.S. would have essentially been playing a road game.

So you get the idea. Tonight's game will be the lead story on Univision, Galavision and Telemundo, but on SportsCenter it'll be lucky to get 10 seconds on "Today's Best."

I know the reality. My co-workers at the Worldwide Leader in Sports have very little interest in tonight's game. They don't know this is the final stage of qualifying, that the U.S. has to finish in the top three in its six-team regional tournament to advance to the World Cup, or that the tournament will last nine months.

They certainly don't know the strides soccer has made in the U.S. in the last decade, going from a team of amateurs in the '90 World Cup to a team on the field tonight with players who earn, on average, more than $250,000 a man. These players draw paychecks from teams in England, Germany, Holland, Spain and, perhaps most amazing of all, the United States. These players will feel like stars tonight when they take the field before a packed house of adoring fans in a stadium that was built in the middle of America -- specifically for soccer.

And when we all get back to our hotel rooms tonight, we'll check back into reality.

And I'll tend to my cuts and bruises.

Jeff Bradley is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail jeff.bradley@espnmag.com.