Most of us didn't have a clue.

Major League Soccer is a new deal around here, and we were sizing up the whole thing on the run. We saw our 7-year-olds play bunch ball in the morning, and we took in the country's best pros in the afternoon.

If we were going to disingenuously wonder about RSL coach John Ellinger's strategy against Colorado's tightly packed defense, we would just be posing. A lot of us aren't that far up-and-down the learning curve. We wanted to know more basic information.

Did they serve up a tray of Otter Pops at halftime?

What exactly were those claret red and cobalt blue and real gold flags being waved in the stands? Is RSL a soccer club or a breakaway republic?

When was the last time any of us attended a big league sporting event at which fans danced in the aisles to incessant banging of drums and random horn blowing and phonetically challenged chanting that sounded approximately like: "Ooooh-lay-ooooh-lay-ooooh-lay-ooooh-ooooh-ooooh"?

Beats me.

Had any of us been to a game to watch and/or root for a guy named "Dipsy" Selolwane from Botswana doing his darnedest to win for the home team? Or a player with a gelled-up Mohawk flailing around, passing the ball, making things happen, assisting on a score? OK, on that one, maybe we had. But had we paid close attention to a sport where, if a player got hurt, they hauled him over to the sidelines and kept playing, down a man, facing misfortune without so much as a flinch, or a timeout for a substitution?

We could maybe get to like a sport like this.

More important than anything else, that's what we really wanted to find out - whether any of us liked the rather foreign idea of paying money to watch men in shorts kick a ball hither and thither, and hither and thither, again, sometimes weathering adversity and enduring drudgery, until - bang! - a magical moment swelled up and over us for the margin of victory.

That's what happened Saturday, and ultimately, the 25,287 on hand seemed to answer in the affirmative when Real Salt Lake won its home opener over the Rapids, 1-0.

As a matter of full disclosure, I must admit, I did not see the goal, scored by RSL defender Brian Dunseth, as it happened. I focused for nearly every moment of the 90-minute match, but two seconds before Clint Mathis ripped a kick toward Dunseth, who headed it into the net in the 81st minute, I looked and reached down to scratch an itch and, next thing, the goal was over. I settled for 10 replays on the JumboTron.

That's one thing about soccer: Don't look away, no matter how bad it itches.

Here's another thing: It's a lot like real life. The action is fast and furious at times, and at others, it slows. There's a tangible ebb and flow to its rhythm. And, in stretches, its futility can be excruciating. But even that excruciation can be exciting.

What self-respecting, uninitiated American sports fan would have known that?

All told, Real Salt Lake fired off 14 shots, Colorado nine. And, even though 22 were either off-target or stopped, most of what happened in between was at least mildly entertaining. In a general sense, the crowd was pleased.

It even joined in with the flag-waving, chanting, rumbaing and sambaing flavor of soccer's traditions.

RSL goalkeeper D.J. Countess had a few nice saves, young midfielder Luke Kreamalmeyer showed flashes of awkward inexperience and nimble brilliance, Dipsy doodled, and Mathis, the man with the head full of Dippity-Doo, distributed and assisted on the game-winner.

Cool enough.

"We want to show people that soccer isn't a boring game," said Dunseth. "Hopefully, today, the average fan saw some flare, some attitude, some personality, some skill. I think we put on a nice show. There wasn't a lot of scoring, but everyone was on the edge of their seats. I know I was on the edge of my cleats. Learning this game is fun. The fans have to start somewhere.

"Maybe they can relate to us. We're not making $80 million a year. We just work hard and have fun."

One last thing: RSL players do not slurp down Otter Pops at the half. "We evaluate our performance," Countess said. "We talk about what we can do better with the ball. We go over everything we can do to win."

That, in the throes of a major league soccer lesson, we saw firsthand Saturday.