I've been riding my bike a lot lately, and over the past couple of weeks I've noticed that I'm not the only one who's developed a recent interest in two-wheeled transportation. Steadily the number of bicycles on the Monon Trail and the canal trail that cuts through the Butler campus has increased, and the cost of their apparel has risen.

I used to see this a lot each July when I was a high school cross country runner. I refer to it as the "Lance Armstrong effect," and after an absence of a couple years, it's back with his un-retirement from racing. Every year during the Tour de France, people dust off their road bikes and their U.S. Postal jerseys and hit the open road. And every year, about a week after the Tour ends, the bikes go back in the garage.

Such is the life span of a fringe sport in these United States. When a particularly forceful personality or story takes hold, people become interested, even obsessive. But after that initial wave of relevance, the sport fades back into the ether. This happens again and again.

The first time I really remember this happening was back in 1999, when the US women's soccer team won the World Cup. This was even before I was aware of Lance Armstrong; in fact, before I really paid a lot of attention to sports. At that point it was basically just the Mets' wild card run. But I remember that for about a month after the women's World Cup, that team was everywhere. It helped that there was a huge (and unnecessary) blow-up over whether it was appropriate for Brandi Chastain to take her shirt off after her game-winning penalty kick (just like hundreds of male footballers before her). The point, though: for a little while, that team was the center of American sports. Quickly, they disappeared, and the women's soccer league that was formed just after that folded.

It happened with soccer in the 1970s when the North American Soccer League formed, and players like Pele came to the US to play. Interest was fairly high initially, but the premier players the league bought were past their prime, and the league's influence fell sharply. It happened again with men's soccer after the US team's unexpected performance in the 2002 World Cup, and again to a much lesser extent when David Beckham joined the LA Galaxy. To an extent, soccer's at a high point right now, especially after the wins over Egypt and Spain and close call against Brazil in the FIFA Confederations Cup. The younger generation (that is, my own) embraces it to a certain degree, but it's still a long way off from being a major sport in this country.

Aside from Armstrong, probably the closest one person has ever come to de-fringing a sport was Michael Phelps last summer. His races were an event like nothing else I can remember; the country ground to a halt when he swam, and his quest for Mark Spitz's record has led to an almost omnipresent Phelps in advertisements and other public media, as well a surge in interest in swimming somewhat akin to the Armstrong effect on cycling. But there have been road blocks. First of all, swimming is an Olympic sport, and though there are world championships yearly, they're mostly just used to prepare for the Olympics. The Tour de France is every year. Though Phelps is always around, he's not always swimming, and even when he is swimming, it's not always relevant. Besides that, there's the marijuana issue. Though I take no issue with Michael Phelps occasionally toking up, a lot of people do, and that hurt his image some.

So is it possible for a sport to fully cross over? Can a fringe sport ever totally join the mainstream? It's likely, but it depends on the sport. NASCAR was almost able to do it, and is actually more popular than some "traditional" sports, but always has the redneck stigma attached to it, which won't allow a lot of people to call themselves fans. The likely criteria are pretty demanding. A ball sport could do it, but it's unlikely that something like swimming or cycling would ever demand year-round interest and attention in the United States. For some reason, unless there's a final score, most American sports fans just aren't interested. Sports that have large followings in other countries also have an advantage, especially ones that have wide appeal. Think soccer, which is popular in almost every country, not something like cricket, which has huge rabid fanbases in India and the former British Empire, but is mostly ignored everywhere else.

Now that the Internet allows people to watch almost anything they want live, it's highly possible that a sport like soccer could take off in the United States. There are hindrances: for example, the biggest games tend to be played in the middle of the afternoon in the Eastern time zone (since they're being played in primetime in England or Spain or Italy). People hate ties, which are pretty common even for very good soccer teams. Soccer's season coincides mostly with the NFL and NBA, which takes away a lot of prospective fans. But fringe sports have come close to the mainstream many times here, and it seems like just a little extra push -- a TV contract here, an American star there -- could do the trick, in the right circumstances.