L.A. GALAXY’S LAME CLAIM TO EXPLAIN EMPTY STADIUM: The LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS reports that David Beckham’s L.A. Galaxy has apparently “agreed to limit ticket sales to 12,500“ for the club’s SuperLiga final Wednesday against Mexican club Pachuca in order to avoid “conflict with the first week of fall semester classes” at nearby Cal State Univ.-Dominguez Hills.

The Galaxy’s home stadium, Home Depot Center, seats 27,000 and sits near the campus of the school. Club GM Alexi Lalas: “It’s not ideal, but we have a great relationship here being on the campus and we felt like it was appropriate to recognize their concerns and try to work with them. … A midweek game can be disruptive to the education process.”

We don’t know what’s more pathetic - the Galaxy’s absurd excuse for *limiting* ticket sales or the REAL reason for the move: That ticket sales were so bad that the team had to resort to the aformentioned excuse to explain away an empty stadium. Do you really think that if the Galaxy was expecting a sellout it would knuckle under because of the “education process” at a commuter school?

At least that’s our theory. But harken back to the SbB post last week which revealed the Galaxy reportedy sold only around 9,000 seats for their last home SuperLiga game (which was Beckham’s second home game and featured him scoring a goal). The SuperLiga games aren’t part of the Galaxy’s season ticket package, so they don’t automatically get buys from local season seat-holding saps. Thus, anything that is sold comes from ground zero.

We broadcasted minor league and collegiate non-revenue sports for many years and thought we’d heard every lie excuse when it came to low attendance and slow ticket sales. But this is truly a masterwork by our friends at the MLS home office. Bravo!