In the modest pantheon of team championships in Utah, Real Salt Lake's recent MLS Cup has its place. The question is: Where?

A better question: Why worry about it?

Does the impact of RSL's win exceed the Utah Stars ABA title in 1971? Is it beyond BYU's football national championship in 1984? Utah's NCAA basketball title in the 1940s?

It depends on who you talk to.

A lot of sports fans in Utah might claim that the Utes' two BCS bowl wins -- in the Fiesta and the Sugar -- far outdistanced the reach of what RSL did, just because they affected more people, even though they weren't technically championships.

If you don't believe that, you didn't see the 50,000 crimson-clad fans loaded into the Fiesta Bowl in 2005 or the reaction to the Utes thumping the Crimson Tide last January in New Orleans.

And while we're talking about near-championships, the Jazz's Finals runs in 1997 and 1998 likely impacted more fans in this state than anything that's ever happened here, even though the Jazz got beat.

None of that is meant as a putdown of any kind to RSL.

What they pulled off in Seattle was cool and a kick in the shorts, an example of a bunch of players overcoming the demons that plagued them during the regular season, taking a second opportunity in the postseason and making the most of it.

Think about what happened before and after. When RSL went through those tough weeks in their season, they folded up whenever an opponent scored a goal against them. Over one stretch, they went winless for seven straight games. They took pity on themselves and it showed. They almost never won on the road. If adversity of any kind popped up, they broke apart.

Then, something weird happened.

They learned to fight back. They learned to hang on through the tough times and weather the storm. They learned to win on the road, the true test of a collective competitive spirit.

All of that was evidenced Sunday night, when the L.A. Galaxy scored that first goal in the early going. Real responded with two feet of fury, tying the score and then showing enough resolve to win via penalty kicks.

There was no ducking and covering, just manning up and working hard.

RSL deserves a whole lot of credit for that. And we've given it liberally, some of us. Soccer haters may never do so, and there's still a lot of them out there.

Real's title may not have touched as many people as some of the other sports highlights in football and basketball, but it touched enough not to play it down by ranking it beneath anything that came before.

It's a championship and we'll note it as such.

RSL won the Cup. They're the MLS champions.

They played like champions, and they play in Utah.

That accomplishment speaks for itself.

GORDON MONSON hosts the "Monson and Graham Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 1280 AM The Zone. He can be reached at gmonson@sltrib.com.