Billionaire cable TV impresario Rocco Commisso, the owner of the New York Cosmos, says the ruling chiefs of American soccer see him as a big threat. And he says they are probably right.

"I'm one of the only owners in America who owns a professional soccer team that's ever played a game," says Commisso, a top competitor in his college days at Columbia University.

As the founder, chairman, and CEO of Mediacom Communications Corp., the nation's fifth largest cable TV firm, Commisso also has the wherewithal to back up his strong opinions about soccer.

"It's a combination of the money, the knowledge about the game, the local factor, and the fact that I have a big voice and I'm not afraid to use it," he says. "I am a threat to these guys."

Commisso currently has two lawsuits pending against the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF). He has also made a conditional offer to kick in $250 million of his own money to promote the sport in the United States. If the Forbes.com estimate of his wealth at $3.9 billion is anywhere close to accurate, Commisso can afford it.

To understand why Commisso, 68, is willing to invest his personal fortune to shake up U.S. soccer's status quo, you have to begin with his roots.

At age 12, he emigrated with his family from Italy and made his way to New York City, where he grew up as a carpenter's kid living in the Bronx right next to Yankee Stadium.

According to his Forbes profile, he entered a talent competition not long after his arrival and thanks to his skill with the accordion, he won. It was a fateful break that would have a momentous influence on his life.

The talent competition earned him a stint playing his instrument at a Bronx theater. The theater manager wrote a letter on his behalf to a local Catholic school, recommending he be admitted. The school decided to grant Commisso admission despite the fact he had arrived too late to take the entrance exam.

After that, it was up to Commisso to work long hours to earn the school's $300 annual tuition. His efforts paid off when his mentors at Mount Saint Michael Academy told Columbia's soccer coach about the Italian kid with good grades who was a gifted athlete. That led to Commisso receiving a full scholarship playing a game he had learned on cement using a ball made of rags in Italy.

His life was unimaginably more hardscrabble than the typical Ivy League student. One year, for example, he moved out of the dorms to live at home, so he could deliver pizzas and help his family make ends meet. But again the work paid off as Commisso earned an industrial engineering degree and an MBA from Columbia. But even today, despite the Ivy League pedigree and his astounding success at business, he says, "I'm a guy from the streets."

Commisso might be one of the best Columbia players to ever lace up a pair of football boots -- what are known as soccer cleats to Americans. He was a three-time All-Ivy League competitor, and was inducted in 2016 into the university's Athletics Hall of Fame.

Commisso's passion for soccer explains why he purchased in January 2017 the most storied soccer franchise in North America, the New York Cosmos, saving it from likely extinction.

When he was in his 20s Commisso had watched the Cosmos compete at Giants stadium. When the team later fell on hard times, he loved the sport too much to allow it to die.

But just a few months after he bought the Cosmos, the USSF effectively decertified the league it played in. It declared Commisso's North American Soccer League (NASL) had failed to meet minimum "professional league standards" for Division 2, an intermediate level of professional certification in U.S. soccer.

Commisso, who also serves as the chairman of the NASL, says USSF had granted other soccer leagues a grace period of several years to come into compliance with the standards. But no such exception was offered to NASL, he says.

"We're not playing this year because they've essentially put the league out of business," Commisso tells Newsmax.

The USSF did not respond to a Newsmax request for comment.

Commisso and the NASL have filed two lawsuits against USSF. The first is a federal lawsuit under anti-trust laws alleging the USSF displayed favoritism toward Major League Soccer (MLS), thereby disadvantaging the NASL.

The second lawsuit at the state level alleges USSF, which is responsible for nurturing some eight leagues besides the MLS, failed to act according to its "fiduciary duty." That accusation reflects Commisso's view USSF is so "intertwined" with MLS that it has a conflict of interest and is no longer looking out for the best interest for U.S. soccer as a whole.

USSF attorneys have denied those charges, and the NASL lost its fight for a preliminary injunction that would have allowed it to keep its Division II status. A few days after that court ruling, Commisso's league cancelled its entire 2018 season. It now hopes to resume play sometime next year.

Commisso says the timing of the USSF’s move to strip his team of its Division 2 status, which occurred just a few months after he had invested millions of dollars to save the franchise, was "a huge embarrassment to me."

But beyond wounded pride and lost dollars, Commisso voices another concern. He blames the USSF's focus on promoting MLS for what he sees as the lamentable World Cup record of the U.S. national men's team. He frequently describes the United States as a "failed soccer nation."

"I want to see America succeed in the World Cup," Commisso tells Newsmax. "I do not want to see America be the failure that it's been 104 years after we joined FIFA. We joined FIFA in 1914. Brazil and Uruguay have each won seven world cups out of the 20 that have been held. They joined in the 20s, not 1914.

"So what's the excuse?" he asks. "That we're a poorer country than Brazil? That we're a smaller country than a place like Uruguay where they only have three million people? What is the excuse? What has gotten us to this level?"

To make U.S. soccer more competitive, Commisso wants a restructuring that would introduce a system called "promotion and relegation."

"Of the 41 countries whose teams have made it to the World Cup quarter finals in the last 90 years, only one has not introduced promotion relegation – the United States."

Under the promotion and relegation system, the top teams in a given league would be promoted to the next level of competition: Successful Division 2 teams could be elevated to compete in Division 1. But the converse would also hold true: Teams that failed to remain competitive would be "relegated" to a lower league or level of competition: Weak Division 1 teams would be demoted to a lower level of play. Sometimes a playoff system is used to determine where teams ultimately land.

Commisso upped the ante April 13 in his challenge to USSF by offering to spend $500 million, at least half of which would be his own money, to promote professional U.S. soccer. In return, he asked the USSF give him a minimum 10-year grace period to bring his league up to the USSF's professional standards.

He stated his cash infusion "would produce immediate and long-lasting benefits for the game of soccer in this country," adding: "If the USSF is willing work with us . . . my expectation is that we could also complete subsequent rounds of financing that could see the initial funding amount double."

His other conditions include ending the current ban on a single individual owning more than one team, and the USSF's adoption of a strong conflict of interest policy to eliminate any favoritism toward MLS or Soccer United Marketing. SUM is the MLS's for-profit marketing subsidiary that earns close to $100 million a year, according VOX Media's SBNation.com.

So far Commisso's proposal has received a mixed, tentative response – hardly a surprise given the ongoing litigation. League officials say they want to see more details before an actual meeting. League CEO Daniel T. Flynn recently wrote the USSF seeks a dialogue "without pressures of artificial deadlines or suggestions of going to the media."

No one can say for sure who will prevail in the titanic struggle now underway for the future of U.S. soccer. But considering Commisso's extraordinary rise to the pinnacle of business success, anyone hoping he will just take his soccer ball and go home should probably reconsider.

"I'm going to continue fighting," he tells Newsmax. "I'm not going to stop with this thing. That's a message I'm very comfortable saying: I am going to continue."