Near the end of today's BS Report podcast, Bill Simmons and Dave Jacoby spoke very highly of the Timbers and their fans.

(starting at 1 hour, 10 minutes into the podcast - last two minutes):

Jacoby: ESPN, I was so excited about soccer, ESPN tricked me into watching the MLS game of the week, that was after the Women’s World Cup -

Simmons: Portland/Seattle!

Jacoby: Yeah, that was – AWESOME! I want to go to Portland and watch a game.

Simmons: Yeah, they’re doing it right.

Jacoby: They’ve got an awesome logo, they do these big flags, they’ve got an AXE for a logo, I am IN on that.

Simmons: Yeah, it’s good. And, you know, that’s where we need to start thinking about having all of our qualifiers, in Portland and Seattle for sure. Like, what happened with the Copa Americana was a disgrace. It was a road game for us, in Los Angeles. Like, they… it’s much harder for people to get up to Portland, I would think, in general, it’s in the Pacific Northwest, hard to get there, not really near anything.

Jacoby: Should they have it in Anchorage next year?

Simmons: Anchorage would be interesting, that would be an interesting move (laughter). Hawaii would be interesting.

Jacoby: I’m going to a Portland Timbers game, and I’m bringing a chain saw. We need a real live chain saw.

Simmons: Well I like that that’s a rivalry now, because that used to be an awesome basketball rivalry. And now, they’ve had to transfer it to soccer until Seattle gets a team again, which hopefully will happen.

I agree 100%. Even on TV, the atmosphere at Jeld-Wen is absolutely electric. I haven't seen the ratings yet but my guess is they got a nice bump from the USA-Brazil WWC match.