For those who doubt the chances of football or baseball falling behind soccer in America’s sporting affections, remember boxing. Back in the fifties and sixties, heavyweights traded blows and championship belts, lighting up box offices and firing imaginations worldwide. Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, and Muhammad Ali became enduring household names. But what of boxing now? How many Generation Z kids dream of swaggering into the ring, and how many can name the heavyweight champion of the world?

These days, the top two sports among 12- to 24-year-olds are pro football and soccer, according to a 2014 ESPN article about its annual poll tracking affinity for different sports. Basketball, baseball, college football, and hockey take a back seat. Boxing is out of the big time. The new heroes aren’t Wladimir Klitschko and Floyd Mayweather Jr., but Lionel Messi and Clint Dempsey.

Soccer’s been the sport of the future for a long time in the United States

“Soccer’s been the sport of the future for a long time in the United States,” says Bill Ordower (inset), senior vice president and general counsel at Major League Soccer (MLS). With a growing Hispanic population importing its love of the beautiful game and increasingly bad press for homegrown sports—when star quarterbacks like Brett Favre say they might not let their kids play football, people listen—that future seems a little less distant.

Since 1996, MLS has been soccer’s premier professional destination in North America. When Ordower (CAS’93) joined the organization in its second season, the media commonly referred to the 10-team league as an experiment, highlighting its financial troubles and low attendances. Now, it has 20 teams, many pulling in crowds that outstrip those at some baseball parks—the Seattle Sounders has higher average attendances than all but one Major League Baseball team. In 2014, Ordower helped MLS ink a reported $90-million-a-year TV deal.

Ordower didn’t grow up playing much soccer. “I wasn’t that strong a player,” he says. But he did love sports and, after graduating from law school, took an unpaid internship at a sports agency. When he heard about a job opening at the newly founded MLS, it seemed like a risk. The last serious attempt to bring soccer to the States, the North American Soccer League, crashed and burned in the eighties with huge financial losses.

“When I first got the job,” says Ordower, “I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a long-term position or not.”

But the league’s infancy gave it a start-up mentality that allowed Ordower to sample everything from game-day operations to player negotiations. In MLS, all players are signed to central contracts, and Ordower spent the late 1990s haggling with—and “getting yelled at” by—agents. “You’re as involved with the game as you possibly can be and it’s fun to work with the clubs, to work with the coaches to help them put together their rosters.”

When he switched to the legal department, and then joined the executive team, the deals got bigger. Ordower has helped oversee a major expansion in the league: in the past five years, MLS has added six new teams and three more are in the pipeline. He also tied up that blockbuster TV agreement and 16 jersey sponsorships.

With soccer acquiring new fans at a faster rate than any other sport in the States, Ordower says the league increasingly goes into media and sponsorship negotiations from a position of strength.

“What we’re seeing now is that those people in key decision-making roles grew up playing soccer and loving the sport,” says Ordower. “That to me is the big game changer—when you have those executives at ESPN who are soccer fans, when you have chief marketing officers of major sponsors that grew up playing the game, that’s when it really starts to take off to the next level.”

Still, challenges remain. When Ordower spoke with arts&sciences, he was about to enter into delicate collective bargaining negotiations with the players union. And then there’s the broader issue of whether soccer can really cement itself in the American sporting culture.

“Every other North American sports league is the top league for its sport, and we recognize that we’re not yet at the point where we are the league that has the best players in the world,” says Ordower. But, he counters, “while we are always seeking ways to improve product quality, the quality of play in MLS is quite good.” In the 2014 World Cup, 10 of those on the US roster were MLS players—and that team enthralled the nation as it stood up to, and took down, more established soccer powers. Team owners aren’t just investing in better players, however. A growing trend—a response to those favorable demographics—is for dedicated downtown stadiums and superior youth development programs.

The league has also largely avoided the scandals that have tarnished other sports, from domestic abuse (football) to performance enhancing drugs (just about every sport). In part, that has to do with a substance abuse and behavioral health program created by Ordower that combines education, assistance, and disciplinary measures.

In its early days, MLS tried to shift soccer’s rules to suit perceived local tastes—introducing shootouts to prevent tied games, for instance—but soon realized that part of the sport’s appeal lay in its global feel. Ordower says there’s much to learn from the old American favorites, but that “there’s a certain expectation from our fan base that we’ll be true to the international spirit of the sport.”