San Jose? I guess we have a different definition of small town. Didn't you mention small town in Nebraska for you example. San Jose is huge. 10th largest city in US.
if you had pro/rel you would likely have at least 2 clubs each in NY and LA. So the chance of all of them getting relegated is very unlikely. Also..those clubs in 08 and 09 didn't have to worry relegation so you don't know if they would have taken steps to prevent it.
Where did the 2nd NY team come from? FC New York? Brooklyn Italians? Oh, I see.. If we had pro/rel, the NASL would never have dissolved and the original Cosmos would still be kickin ass.
Oddly enough, without the magic of pro/rel ... THERE ARE TWO TEAMS IN LA !!!!!! Man, we did that without pro/rel. We must be on to something. Like what ? Press the "dont suck" button ? They played like ass, that's why they finished there. They simply weren't good. That isn't something that is just undone overnight.
already have red bulls and the cosmos have financial backing. That's two clubs right there. If there was pro/rel with an open pyramid its not too far fetched to think that the city with the biggest media market would have pro clubs of different size in every borough.
Show your work. How, exactly? You've polled them, I guess, then? That's funny, because the bulk of the pro-pro/rel stuff I hear is on these forums. And from the jacknuts on Twitter who froth at the mouth. We're not insecure. It only appears that way to you because you're an idiot. Very, very few of us are against the idea of promotion and relegation, but anytime someone tries to have a rational discussion about it, you morons throw the hissy fit and try proof by assertion and then accuse us of being part of a vast conspiracy and being "MLS homers." Seriously, and I'm only going to say this once: you're an idiot. You're a child. Your ideas are naive and inchoate, and based on the fact that you all want an American system that looks like Europe so you can feel better about yourselves as soccer fans and won't have to be insecure when Euros tell you American soccer isn't any good because it doesn't look like theirs. Your posting history shows your ignorance, your lack of understanding of why this system wouldn't work here at this point in history, and maybe not for a long, long time, if ever. People who have spent millions on first-division clubs aren't going to vote to institute a system that gives them a chance of that investment going south in a hurry because of a bad season on the field, so they can be replaced by someone who bought their second-division franchise for $2 million or less. It's not going to happen. If you support pro/rel, you thought Minnesota with no owner and a substandard stadium and its 2,500 fans per game should have been in MLS in 2012 and Vancouver should not have been. If you support pro/rel, you think Tampa Bay, who plays in a baseball stadium in front of 3,000 people a game on the crap side of the Bay should be in MLS in 2013 and Toronto should not be. The second division is not yet to the point where, infrastructurally, you can swap the best (on-the-field) team in that league for the worst team in MLS. Can't be done. A team can't make that jump, on or off the field, in the limited time between seasons. But proles don't want to reason. They don't want to look at it realistically and honestly. They don't want to look at the reasons why it's different here. They just want to say vague shit that can't be backed up like "there's evidence all over the world that it works!" and "it will help our national team!" and then accuse anybody who does look at it rationally as a homer who's in on the conspiracy. We're going to be sitting here in 10 years and likely 20 years and you people still aren't going to have your precious ********ing pro/rel. It's not going to happen for you.
I hope you know NASL is not "minor" league it's lower division or D2. just beacuse MLS calls itself major doesn't make NASL minor. Minor league is when you have a affiliation with a major league club like in baseball or hockey.
If we install pro/rel today, how many new clubs do you think would be joining the NASL and USL within the next few years? And how would instituting pro/rel change the financial situations for most NASL and USL teams?
Merriam-Webster defines "minor league" as "a league of professional clubs in a sport other than the recognized major league(s)." Major League Soccer is a recognized major league. It is recognized by the USSF and FIFA as a Division 1 league. NASL is not. That means the NASL is a minor league.
Well the Cosmos owners said because of not having pro/rel they will not spend as they would if their was pro/rel. That said, O'Brien cautioned that although the NASL doesn't have a salary cap, it would be "not a very smart business decision" to throw around huge sums of money to sign players for a second-division team (particularly since there's no way of getting promoted to the top flight). But he does want to bring in some recognizable players and a coaching staff that will give his team the best chance to win. Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/grant_wahl/07/13/new-york-cosmos/index.html#ixzz2CczaVYBX
Like a lot of pro/rel advocates, you're mixing up cause and effect. Pro/rel doesn't lead to the creation of more teams. Rather, it is a response to the existence of a large number of teams that need to be sorted among different tiers of a soccer pyramid. Pro/rel is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist in the US.
not having pro/rel is just one missing ingredient. We're trying to make a pie but all we have is the flour. I think the biggest problem we have is not enough teams.Because there is no pro/rel there is less incentive to create lower division clubs. It's a catch-22. We don't have enough lower division clubs because we don't have the incentive of promotion for them. We don't have promotion/relegation because we don't have enough lower division clubs. This will take leadership from the USSF to present a long term plan to address this issue. To be efficient in producing players we need to shorten the distance from player to club. This means we need more lower division teams. It is the local clubs job to be the pipeline into local talent. They find that talent, train it and then receive monetary compensation for doing so. This is how it works everywhere else in the world where soccer is successful. One thing holding us back in this regard is the NCAA amateur rules concerning youth contracts. We also need less barriers to entry for player to club and player to league. The MLS is horrible with this with their single entity, no free agency, and players must enter through drafts approach. A lot of our young players are having to choose between college or starting their careers in Norway or some lower quality European league. There is no pathway for the talented American player to get into the pro-pipeline in this country unless he lives near an MLS club and can get in the academy. In every other soccer league on the planet a player can trial with a club (as long as he's out of contract) and then be offered to join the club. these are just a couple of the ingredients we need to make our pie. I'm done listening to people that tell me pies with just flour taste good.
Of course thanks to the 'shrinking' world there is more money in football / soccer than ever before, but English football has always been about money, Liverpool and Manchester United have always been big spenders historically, there has always been have and have nots. Of course it helps enormously having more money but its ever changing, thirty years ago Wigan were playing in a 'tiny' stadium in front of a few hundred fans now they have a beautiful purpose built stadium and thousands of fans each game (they may well be very small in terms of the Premiership but compared to the other clubs they shared the league with 30 years ago they are a MASSIVE club). You dont get 'overnight' success or failure but over a period of time you could emerge from nowhere or sink to nowhere, thats the beauty of it, thats why relegation can be so painful and promotion is celebrated like a Champions league win, and of course if you get relegated / promoted there will always be another season where your fortunes could change. Of course I can understand if pro/rel wont work in the USA however to people that say clubs will go out of business I say that they have to 'cut their cloth' accordingly like any other business (clubs that are releagated the world over will see a drop in attendances).
What an odd question. That would be like claiming the KHL is minor league hockey because the NHL is the best hockey league in the world. Someone upthread gave you the generally accepted definition of minor-league, and MLS does not meet the definition.
I like your edit of the whole definition. any association of professional sports teams other than the major leagues, especially when the member teams are associated with or controlled by major-league teams, which use them as training and proving teams for promising players. NASL is not according to that definition.