Not an original thought, I’m sure, but original to me.

The best way to explain English soccer to somebody back in the U.S., who almost certainly doesn’t really care about the Premier League … is to compare it to college football.

The same sort of tribal, DNA-encoded madness.

Today, we had Liverpool playing Manchester City, and probably no two teams in England have more irrational fans than those two. As an outsider, you find yourself wishing both of them could lose.

Liverpool has been ordinary for a while now, sorta hanging around 4-5-6-7 place, in a 20-team league, not remotely challenging for a championship, but they have millions of fans willing to forgive anyone for anything as long as they wear red. (See: Suarez, Luis)

In this part of the world, everyone is required to have a rooting interest in an English football team, even if it’s your lame fourth-tier hometown team from Hartlepool; not to care at all is considered deeply weird. Even among Emiratis. (OK, a handful of the English, in what I take to be a class-based vanity, would have you believe soccer is too declasse, and only rugby is of interest.)

The most popular team in The National newsroom remains Liverpool. I can think of a half-dozen Liverpool fans, and none of them are rational about their attachment. Like fans of Alabama or Auburn. Michigan or Ohio State.

Manchester United fans have reached the same place of shocking irrationality. (Think: Texas fans.)

So good for so long, and with so many fellow-travelers on the bandwagon, that one otherwise fairly sane person I know seems unable to get his head around the concept that United could finish, oh, seventh some day. Just like Liverpool has.

Can’t happen. Won’t happen. Oh, no.

“But every team in every sport eventually has a down period.”

“United are too big to fail.”

Like a USC fan still in denial over the Pac-12’s takeover by Oregon and Stanford. Five years ago, a Trojan would have said that was impossible.

So, Liverpool defeated United 1-0, and is off to a 3-0-0 start. Not that Liverpool is all that impressive (three 1-0 victories), but Liverpool is decent, and three weeks in, nobody in English soccer looks great.

The real news is Manchester United, who brought in a coach, David Moyes, whose highest level of experience had been with Everton, coaching gutty little overachievers.

Think, oh, Northwestern. Maybe Cal. Vanderbilt. “Not bad” some of the time, but no one ever thinks they are going to win something important. That was Moyes at Everton, and now he’s supposed to be ready to run the biggest team (at the moment) in England? A guy who has never won a game at Liverpool — not to mention at Old Trafford?

Moyes taking over for Alex Ferguson was like Lane Kiffin taking over for Pete Carroll at USC or, more apt for those whose memory goes back this far, Ray Perkins (and I had to look him up) for Bear Bryant at Alabama.

The other game today that had people acting weird was Tottenham at Arsenal. Two of the three big London clubs. And the loathing by one set of London fans for another is pretty profound. Like, friendship-ending profound.

More realistic? A Spurs fan would never become friendly with an Arsenal or a Chelsea fan in the first place … and all of them would consider Fulham a joke and West Ham barely worthy of their contempt and someone’s preference for Crystal Palace or Queens Park Rangers some really perverse life choice that brings into doubt everything that person says or does. (I mean, why not just go “Millwall” and be done with it?)

Like USC and UCLA fans; both in Los Angeles; each wishes eternal ill for the other. Same thing.

So, it’s intense. This English soccer thing. Everyone in the U.S. can watch it, now, on NBC, and if you think of it as England’s version of college football … you will grasp the whole of it much more quickly.