Actually, the NBA's salary rules are pretty tight, they just turn out not to be very relevant. NBA players make so much money from endorsements that it often makes sense to play for more glamorous teams and/or in bigger markets; typically, for moves like Dwight Howard or LeBron James, the actual salary on offer isn't significantly better at the new team.
http://hoopshype.com/salaries.htm Also, NBA team salaries range ~ 2-to-1 top to bottom (~$100M for LA vs. $48M for Houston). MLS team salaries range from ~ $15M for LA to ~ $2.5M for the Chivas or 6-to-1.
That seems pretty much what you'd expect. In a best of 3 the higher seed plays 2/3 at home and wins 2/3 of the time. In two-leg the higher seed gets slightly more than half at home and wins slightly more than half the time. My vague recollection is that some of the bottom seeds during the best of three era were far less competitive than nowadays, but I have no proof to back that up. It seems obvious best of three would be a greater advantage but it's a format completely foreign to the sport, it would present significant scheduling problems, and I'm not sure fans want to see the same match up three times in a row. I don't remember many great game 3s. In most cases it seemed like fans and players were worn out of seeing the same matchup by the third game.
What does that say about their soccer power? In a discussion about a world league with pro/rel, any two teams could end up in the same division and play each other. After all India and China have over a billion people each. The Netherlands has 17 million (or less than two percent of either of the bigger nations). Which one would be playing in the World Cup while the others play in third or fourth or fifth tiers? Heck, which one plays in the World Cup today while the others don't? (Yes, I know India is a cricketing nation and not a football nation. But of the other major nations whose national sports are not soccer (Canada, USA, Cuba, Wales, Ireland (?), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (?)) only Wales and Cuba, and maybe South Africa, fail to at least seriously compete for a World Cup spot.
Re-read the post I responded to. Someone was suggesting that there was a derby between Mauritania and Mauritius. Mauritania would more likely have a derby against Chad based on geographic locale.
It's about fairness. Now I like the fanbases and the history of both DC and Houston, I would not be unhappy to see either in the final. But now it's looking like we have a situation where Houston may make the final without having to win a road game against higher seeds in two rounds! That's not fair. It's wrong. Purely on numerical standards. This isn't feelings, this is just based on how you reward your teams for earning regular season rankings. The same goes for LA, who I like, should they beat Seattle in the same manner. That's another series where I like both teams. But right is right. It's about this idea that MLS tries to portray that the regular season doesn't matter. Well, the way that you set up your post-season, it doesn't. I hate the San Jose Earthquakes. Not their fans, mind you, I really like them. Just the team. The only thing that redeems LA in their victory is the fact that they beat them in San Jose. It makes me feel better about that series, that and the fact that LA also survived a WildCard round. But Seattle and RSL is different, they were basically equals there. Yes the margin wasn't much in the regular season, but there was a margin which RSL earned. They deserved a true advantage for that, which they did not get. All they have to do is either eliminate the aggregate or go to the Mexican system. Simple as that. No major overhaul necessary if that's truly what they're trying to avoid. I'm not so sure. Home and home aggregate series are great for tournaments and confederation matchups. They're poor for for true playoffs which are supposed to represent, at some level, the accomplishments of the regular season. This is numbers, Nate Silver would approve of this bc it's undeniable.
Well said. I don't like the 2 leg series. In the end the higher seeds get the same amount of home games as the lower seeds. That means there is no difference between finishing 1st and 3rd. If they are going to have a playoff then they need to either have a 3 games series, or single elimination with the higher seed hosting. Either one of these systems would actually make the regular season count and make the playoffs really exciting.
If they simply got rid of the aggregate I would be happy. It's not as good as a third game but there's a real home advantage. As it stands, the aggregate is the primary killer of the home advantage. It allows the home team to actually defend their advantage which does not happen now. If MLS either gets rid of the aggregate or goes to the Mexican system, then I'll rest my case for good. That is as good as hand-to-bible as you'll ever get from me. I do have to amend my last statement somewhat and say that Seattle's victory was also mollified by the fact that they clinched the series in Salt Lake and didn't lose at home. So either way, even if you eliminate the aggregate their victory was valid imo. LA's victory, in my estimation of right vs wrong, was more in my doghouse than Seattle's. So that's kinda how I, personally, break on those type of situations. Bottom line, the key here is forcing a team to get a result in the higher seed's house. Now this still isn't perfect since a lower seed can win at home and draw on the road and get the win in a neutral setup, but at least they will have had to have gotten the result on the road, and in the end, is little different from a team in another league like the NHL or NBA that wins 4-2 to eliminate the need for a game 7. Now MLS isn't the only league that has annoyed me lately with their postseason decisions. I detest MLB's one game playoff. If you're going to expand the playoffs, expand them. A three game series would have been at least tolerable. Baseball can be less predictable in single game sets than soccer. Even tonight in the LA-Sounders game it was brought up as an issue. The question of whether or not the high seed is amply rewarded shouldn't be in question. It should be a given. This shouldn't ever be brought up. Ever. It remains an issue bc MLS refuses to fix it and avoids the question when it's asked. E2A: And there you have it. Neither high seed has hosted a game, but both of them are likely already out of it. This is why the aggregate is a stupid way to handle playoffs. I like seeing the rematch between LA and Houston, but it's not the way it should have happened. LA and Houston don't even have to get a result on the road. This is a problem.
I assume you mean then that a team could win a series with a win and a draw or two wins and then they play extra time after the second game if there were two draws or a win apiece? Though in that scenario, I wouldn't have a problem with either team winning at home and drawing on the road to take the series. Or am I missing something? I actually love the new baseball system. Yes, one game playoffs are unfair and rather dumb in baseball. But after what happened to Detroit this year, and what seems to happen to most teams that win their pennant long before their counterparts in the other league, I think there is now a good case to show what happens to a team with a bye in baseball. Detroit's week off while the Giants were still playing was unavoidable--I'm not sure Detroit could have managed to give the Yankees a win in that series to get in an extra day on the field if they wanted to--but if you make the wild card series longer, you will be treating every higher team like that. You'd almost have a point where someone might consider not going so hard to win the division instead of the wild card because they'd be playing instead of sitting the first week of October. Besides, if a team wanted to play in a series it could have just won the division. I remember the commentators saying basically the same thing during NY's last game in Philly--win and finish third to avoid the one and done.
I assume he means something like what I was talking about, which is if you must have exactly two games, you can still do two games on points and still go to OT whenever the points are tied. (And the OT is considered like a game 3). What's different is that Seattle and DC have a better chance of climbing back into their series. They could win their home legs by any score, and it would then go to OT. If they then won the OT as well, they win the series. So Seattle could win the 90-min game 2-1, win the OT 1-0, and it wouldn't matter that they were outscored 4-3, they'd have more points.
I do have to add one more point and that is that basketball also has a higher probability of being dominated by two or three players on a team. Depth doesn't usually help in the NBA as much as it does in other sports.
There is a subset of MLS fans that would prefer to see the league’s championship be determined by a top-of-the-table format like those found in leagues around the world. There’s perhaps an even bigger contingent of American soccer fans who refuse to pay attention to MLS because its refusal to use such a format is just one of the many examples where the league insists on Americanizing the world’s game. This comment from the article is absolutely true. Are you denying that these subsets of fans don't exist? If we had American soccer fans supporting MLS the league would be getting good TV ratings, better money deals for TV and merchandising etc. There's a very large % of soccer fans in this country that don't watch the league. To just dismiss them as eurosnobs (a term that says more about individuals that use it than it does their intended target) is not going to solve the problem.
I just like a coin flip ... don't need no games ... just flip the darn coin ... first to six wins ...
If the MLS format is just way too f*cking confusing of a concept for people like you to comprehend, just think of it like this: There are two leagues, and at the end of the season, the top 5 teams from each league qualify for the big cup tournament that everyone wants to be in. Kinda like how the top 4 in the EPL get to go to the Champions League. It's a knockout tournament, and at the end, there's a final championship match to determine the best team! I know, it's silly that we just copied the Europeans instead of coming up with our own format, but what can I say? We're just dumb Americans.
The first half of the quote is obviously true. I'll deny the second half of the quote though. Considering that there's no longer anything MLS does in the competition rules (not talking about the financials, ownership, etc.) that isn't done elsewhere in the world there is no Americanizing going on. If there are fans who refuse to follow MLS because of it they're lying to themselves. The real reason they aren't following MLS is that its not exactly like Europe (read: EPL 90% of the time) and MLs is never going to be the EPL, so there's nothing MLS can do to get those fans to follow it.
Nobody is denying that those fans exist. But even if MLS did go to a single table, no playoff format, those same fans would still refuse to watch the league because it doesn't have Pro/Rel. Or because the calendar doesn't align with Europe. Or because they don't approve of the jersey sponsors. Or because their vaginas have sand in them. So why should the league try to cater to a bunch of self-important euro-poser douchebags who will NEVER support this league ever? Look at the numbers. MLS is the #7 most attended league in the world. Expansion fees have more than quadrupled, and if reports are true, expansion fees will have increased 10 fold when NYC2 joins compared to the Chivas USA/RSL expansion year. New stadiums are opening up every single year practically. This league is growing at a pace that even the top brass in MLS could have imagined in their wildest dreams. And their doing it without having to bow down to a group of fans who will ALWAYS have an excuse as to why they won't support the league.
And quite frankly, I really like the playoff format. There is an extra level of intensity in these games that are often missing in European leagues where the Champion is decided several weeks before the end of the season. Makes things very anti-climactic in a lot of instances.
the kind of fan you are describing i think is a very small % of the soccer fans in this country that do not watch MLS. To varying degrees MLS is still too Americanized for the soccer public in this country. This does not mean every soccer fan in this country refuses to follow the league until it mirrors a European setup. There may be a small % of fans like this but there are some practical soccer fans who just want to see MLS take a pragmatic approach to become more like the rest of the soccer world. Also, I wouldn't assume that the soccer fans who don't watch MLS do so because some aversion to playoffs. I've been called a euro snob but i'm a fan of a post-season tournament. And if you look at the TV ratings, even though they are quite low considering how many soccer fans are in this country, they still get a jump during the playoffs. In my opinion MLS could get a lot of soccer fans who don't support the league to become fans if they just made the regular season more important and something to follow. They need to separate the regular season from the post-season. They already do in a way with the regular season winner getting the supporters shield trophy. But it needs to more linear. The fan needs to be able to pull up the table and see who's on top and who's where in the pecking order. Having conferences makes this confusing. When the league adds the 20th team and can then go to a balanced schedule they should have one league table. And they should separate the league from the cup. The winner of the league should be the league title winner and the winner of the post-season tournament should be the MLS Cup winner. Then, the fans will organically decide which trophy is more important.
You do realize that the use playoffs in Latin America and Europe and Asia and probably Africa? (I don't know much of anything with regards to African club soccer). Of course you don't. Because in your completely small, misguided, warped reality, "the Rest of the World" means England. But even England uses playoffs in the lower tiers to determine who gets promoted. So unless you watched 1 MLS game back in 1996 and have never watched another game ever since, you would realize that there is nothing at all "Americanized" about MLS. If they were "practical" they'd all understand that there is no uniform formula used by the rest of the world to determine their Champions. England is a single table with the highest point winner being crowned champion. Scotland uses a split season, where after a certain point, the top teams only play against each other for the rest of the season. Belgium does something very similar. Holland has a playoff to determine their Europa league entrants. Mexico has a GASP....playoff to determine their champion. And there are two champions crowned in 1 year. When you say stupid ass shit like "MLS should become more like the rest of the world" all you are doing is demonstrating how you don't know jack shit about anything with regards to how various leagues determine their champions. Just say what you really mean...."there is a small percentage of fans, like myself, that want MLS to be exactly like the EPL." F*ck em.
I guess you missed the part where I said i liked a playoff. Other than that you completely mischaracterized my argument. You sound like a petulant child with all the ad hominem attacks. Insulting someone doesn't make you look good. Your rigid "my way or the highway" tact is what you accuse the "eurosnob" of doing. I think I'll save my time for someone who actually wants to have a civil discussion on this. You're on ignore.
After having it pointed out multiple times (by me alone) you still haven't answered the question of what in MLS competition (not finances, budget, ownership, etc.) is Americanized.