MLS Reserve teams in D2 or D3

You're not making a coherent argument. You're just cutting up my argument and then making snooty comments. I've read a few of your posts and this seems to be your M.O. I'm not even sure what you're trying to say. It just seems like a classic case of confirmation bias. You have an opinion about something that you will not change and you are just looking for anything that confirms what you want to already believe, no matter how irrelevant or flimsy of an argument it may be.

The fact that Argentina does their pro/rel differently than England is completely irrelevant. The good idea is pro/rel. How a league adapts pro/rel (whether it sends down 3 teams or 2 or in what matter) is inconsequential. Compare it to democracy. Democracy is a good idea. Although it has some origins in antiquity, the idea self-governing democracies began with the Enlightenment. These ideas spread quickly and from them a nation was formed based on those ideas. From there the ideas of democracy and self-governance has spread throughout the world. That's because good ideas are copied. But not every democracy is the same. Some are Republics, some are based on the parliamentary system.

Also, saying that America has 4 of the most profitable sports leagues on the globe is also irrelevant when considering whether or not pro/rel is a good idea or not. And the simple reason is, you do not know that if pro/rel were adapted on all those sports if they would be even more profitable, just as profitable, or less profitable. You do not have a control group to base your conclusion on. Not only that, we are talking about pro/rel and soccer not pro/rel and NFL. We can't really say whether or not pro/rel and NFL would be compatible(would they even be able to get players to work at a minor league wage for instance). But we already know that pro/rel and soccer is compatible. This is one thing that is irrefutable.

 

1. Why wouldn't there be? I don't understand the question.

2. BAFL would fail with or without pro/rel. American football is not popular in Britain.

I'd just like to add that i'm not a pro/rel advocate for soccer in America as it currently exists. I said in my previous post that pro/rel would be a good idea if we ever had a D2 that was the equivalent of the English Championship. So, that would be a D2 with 20-24 teams all of which have MLS quality SSS and all of which have fan bases that would support a D1 club. That kind of culture and support is how far away? It's hard to even calculate it...but 20 years would be a low-ball estimate.

 

Because pro/rel is apparently the magic beans that turns straw into gold, etc, etc. If that were true, then the leagues that do not have pro/rel would be among the worst leagues in the world.

Exactly. Soccer isn't popular in the US either, maybe not to the degree that American Football isn't popular in the UK, but pro/rel is supposed to be magic beans. Soccer's popularity in this country is changing, but that is due, at least in part, due to the success of MLS.

Another thing that has never been explained by pro/rel advocates is what makes soccer special that it can only succeed where pro/rel exists? What about soccer makes using a system that has been used by other leagues in this country to be successful impossible?

 

I never said pro/rel is a magic bean. I'm just talking about what we know about good ideas and the social physics of them.

Soccer is just as popular in the US than several countries that do have pro/rel. Japan, South Korea, China for example. And you can't compare an American football league in the UK (which even people from the UK haven't heard of) with MLS. MLS is 1000 times more popular.

Soccer can succeed without pro/rel. I think MLS is succeeding. You can't ignore that a league that has gone from where it was in the mid 90's to where it is now has not been a success. I'm surprised by how successful the league has been actually.

The question is, could it ultimately be more successful and include more people and create a soccer culture with pro/rel than it would without it? If we reach the point where we do have a D2 that is equivalent to the Championship then what is the good argument for not adapting the good idea (pro/rel)? I don't think there is one. Pro/rel takes the league much farther than a closed system. There's a reason its used everywhere.

 

I don't know, but I can think of why it can be more successful, include more people, and create a soccer culture without pro/rel.. In part because it has already done so since it was first found, but also because this country has several examples of closed system leagues that have been quite successful to varying degrees. Some of them highly successful, some moderately.

I can think of several hundred million reasons why MLS wouldn't adopt it.

I don't think you know the reason why its used everywhere. Many of those reasons boil down to "because that's what you do in soccer".

 

Offering a well-researched point-by-point refutation of things I disagree with? Guilty as charged.

Wait, your argument it "It works everywhere else, so we should do it, too" and I'm the one with the conformation bias?

Having pro/rel based on a single year's failures or successes is a drastically different system than deciding based on the aggregation of 3 years. The way teams compete and spend to gain promotion or stave off relegation is fundamentally different because the systems are fundamentally different.

Soccer. Please talk soccer. If there we a BigSocialContractTheory.com, I'd be posting there, too. But this one is for soccer.

I know this, as an objective fact. 4 of the top 5 most successful sports leagues on the planet are organized, more or less, exactly like MLS. They have drafts, franchises, playoffs, and they exist in exactly the same socio-economic system and under the same labor laws and across the same geographic space that MLS is competing in. You can claim that's a coincidence if you want. But the facts are the facts.

This would be a coherent argument if you had a control group and I didn't.

:Sigh: Pro/rel is a solution to the problem of having too many competitive teams. That's why it was created, to solve a problem. Before that problem presented itself, there was no such thing as pro/rel. In the early part of the last century, a rival league was founded that wanted to compete against the established one. Pro/rel was created to find an ultimate champion when it was unreasonable to have all competitive teams in the Football League. The Football Alliance and Football League merged, with pro/rel between them.

Let's try that paragraph again, but with the American sports landscape:
Playoffs and uneven schedules are a solution to the problem of having too many competitive teams. That's why it was created, to solve a problem. Before that problem presented itself, there was no such thing as playoffs or uneven schedules. In the early part of the last century, a rival league was founded that wanted to compete against the established one. Playoffs and uneven schedules were created to find an ultimate champion when it was unreasonable to have all competitive teams in the National League. The American League and National League merged, with different schedules and a playoff between them.

Pro/rel is a solution. It's a means to an end. Not an end to itself. And the American sports landscape already contains in it a solution to the same problem. And one that has made Major League Soccer the Most. Successful. Sports start up League. in the history of the world.

 

How many times have you posted this picture since coming to BigSoccer and how many reps overall has it got you?

 

Too. Damn. Many. Times.

 

Ya, but how many reps has it got you? You almost have 9,000... I swear that 2,000 probably came from that pic alone.

 

Oh yeah? I can't.

The difference between baseball, basketball, and American football is that neither of these sports is global with rival leagues. And fans of these sports aren't calling for pro/rel like they are in soccer. Pro/rel works in soccer around the globe. It won't work in America because American football doesn't have it? That's a very silly argument.

Take the NBA for example. Would it be a more popular league with pro/rel? I think it would. St Louis is a great sports town. They don't have an NBA team. If they had a team in NBA League 2 would they fill the house? Probably. Or how about Seattle in NBA League 2? Definitely. You involve more of the country. The NBA gets pretty crap TV ratings. People only pay attention to the NBA Finals these days.

There's a reason no one is copying the American franchise/closed league model. It's a bad idea. That's actually how we know its a bad idea. No one is copying it. And America stubbornly holds on to bad ideas.

I think American soccer fans who oppose pro/rel oppose it because most pro/rel advocates are jerks.

 

Russian hockey copied it with the pro/rel Superleague changing to the closed KHL.

 

I've seen you reference Korea as a "pro/rel success" several times, which is ludicrous. This season is the first one in which a team promoted from the second division is playing in the first division (and that team was relegated the previous year). Claiming it is a success now is like claiming MLS was a success in 1997 because of the great attendance in 1996.

Also, soccer is the second most popular sport in Korea and is very close to baseball. It is a very poor comparison to the US.

 

I am similar to you ... there could be a time to be an advocate FOR pro/rel. But, unlike you ... why do you continue to say it should be done when it's no where close (and you do admit that it's not close ... I've read your posts).

One BIG reason to argue against pro/rel is looking around the world at the amount of clubs that are bankrupt. What do you define as a successful league? MLS obviously defines it by having a profitable league (top to bottom). That isn't really a consideration in many of the top leagues in the world. Many clubs that are relegated to a lower division end up going bankrupt when their product isn't put on TV. You put out a payroll on a team, spend money on developing a strong acadamy, etc. all based on what your income is going to be like over the next 2-3 years ... and in some cases longer. Get relegated and lose TV revenue, lose ticket revenue (there are reasons MLS is on of the top 10 leagues in attendance in the world in a country that considers it the 4th or 5th best league to follow). The English Championship is the 2nd most followed domestic league followed in that country and doesn't have attendance figures that MLS does.

So ... more English Championship clubs are bankrupt than MLS, they have fewer people paying for tickets ... but pro/rel is "successful"? What do you define this success on?

Keep in mind, I agree, pro/rel MAY be a good option, but not only does D2 in THIS country need 20-24 teams, it also needs to have a minimum requirement on ownership groups (likely higher than the current standard), a decent TV deal (not a $5/month subscription for an internet feed!), and many other things before you can realistically have a situation that would condemn a bad season to sending a team/organization into bankruptcy and call that "successful".

 

So what you are saying is that MLS is not losing 75 million per year


Well it is only losing 75 million when the Player Union asks.

25 million worth I believe is the D2 standards, also a 5K stadium. Only regional TV deals, nothing National.

 

That's a reasonable question. I just don't see any reason to assume that "yes" is the answer.

If that happens--if the American second division gets to be as strong as the English League Championship--MLS will have to be one of the most successful soccer leagues in the world.

In which case, the strongest argument would be, "The current system got us to the point where we're one of the most successful soccer leagues in the world. Why change it?"

The other arguments, of course, have been laid out in many a YBTD thread. The strongest, to my mind, is that promotion and relegation is inherently incompatible with the idea of a salary capped, parity-minded league. Parity is an enormous benefit, if not a necessity, for American team sports; the only league that doesn't enforce some level of parity is MLB, which is losing market share compared to sports that do.

No, actually, it doesn't. And none of the evidence that you think proves it does is actually relevant.

Professional sports have been around for about a hundred years, but modern professional sports are much younger. Modern professional soccer has been around since the 1996-97 season, the first post-Bosman season, and the first full season of European free agency.

Since then, European leagues have seen a growth in revenues, a growth in inequality, and a growth in financial instability and collapse, especially among relegated teams. The last twenty years have been uncharted territory for European soccer. And the reaction has been, consistently, to look to American-style financial regulation.

We are living in the first few decades of what its opponents like to call "modern football." What will work in this new world remains to be seen.

Yes, there is. The reason isn't that it's the best system.

You say it's because it's a good idea, and good ideas spread, so if enough people believe it, it must be true--which is a pollyannaish reading of the work of the MIT Social Media Lab.

Here are some reasons that it is so widespread:

1) It was the first way of organizing soccer leagues.

Promotion and relegation started in England way back when it was legal for field players to catch the ball and passing the ball forward was against the rules. Sports is inherently conservative, and so people who learned the game from England adopted the English way of doing things.

2) It is impossible to get rid of.

And once they started, they were stuck. This is as much of a principle of "social physics" as anything else. New York's taxicab medallion system is broken, counterproductive and fundamentally unfair--but it survives because there are people out there who paid a million dollars for their medallion, and the city can't turn around and start selling new ones for $50 a pop without screwing these people over.

Promotion and relegation has the same problem. Nobody is willing to say to a team, "You happened to be the team that got relegated last year, so you're out of the top league forever." Changing from a closed league to pro/rel is fairly simple logistically--changing back is a nightmare. Even if pro/rel were a drag on the league (and it likely is in some cases), it's easier to keep it than to open that can of worms.

This also eliminates your "social physics" argument. If an idea is sticky, it doesn't get discarded as quickly as it should.

3) It works well for certain types of countries.

The U.S. is fundamentally different from most countries with promotion and relegation systems, because it has 50+ cities with more than a million people in their metropolitan area. There are nine cities in the U.S. with metro areas over 5 million. These number are both about the same as all of Europe put together.

Almost no soccer fan in England lives more than about a two-hour drive from a Premier League team. Given England's population distribution, that will probably be true no matter what happens with promotion and relegation.

The only country really comparable to the U.S. that has promotion and relegation is China, and the CSL is not anyone's model for how to run a soccer league. And even with China, you have to consider that:

4) Pro/Rel is being forced on leagues by people like you. There are people at FIFA, and more especially at the AFC, who think like you. They have been, over the last ten to twenty years, attempting to enforce promotion and relegation on leagues who didn't think it was a good idea. That's why Korea has pro/rel now; because they were essentially told by their confederation that if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to play in the Champions League. When a system is being imposed from above, it's disingenuous to pretend that it's spreading purely on merit.

 

1. Could you answer any of the questions I posed to you.
2. The "global game" argument gets thrown around a lot, but no one ever finishes the sentence. "They play soccer in Finland..." Am I the only one who thinks that this needs more words in it to be an argument?
3. The reason the NBA ratings suck is that people don't care about NBA Teams, they care about NBA players. The NBA fills its coffers from the wallets of casual fans. St. Louis isn't getting LeBron or Kobe.

 

I think the LAG2 model is better for development, but the USL-Loan model is better for building lower-division clubs in towns that are, with no offense meant, lower-division towns. The question is, which of those is more important.

 

It's gotta be better. I mean, there aren't going to be any LAG2 fans, just like no one is a fan of Barcelona B. At least in the farm system, there is the potential for Rochester fans to exist.

 

I think dundee has a problem with correlation v. causation.

I can very easily point to what makes pro/rel a less profitable set up. Replace DC, LA, and Red Bull with Des Moines, Edmonton, and Charleston and think about what ESPN and Fox would be willing to pay to air those games. Ask what league sponsors would be willing to pay for a season without direct access to those markets.

 

This has nothing to do with the popularity of the sports you mentioned. Seriously man. Just stop making stuff up.

The percentage of people calling for pro/rel is so small that it isn't even worth mentioning. Yeah, they are vocal, but the lack of pro/rel is not what is holding back MLS. MLS's problems start and stop with the quality on the field. Improve the quality and the fans will come.

It is a silly argument. It is also one that I have not made. My argument is that MLS can succeed in this country without pro/rel and the other leagues in this country prove that.

You do know why St. Louis doesn't have a NBA team, don't you? it isn't because the NBA doesn't want to put a team in St. Louis.

The problems with NBA are far too long to discuss in a forum about soccer and the lack of pro/rel is not even on that list.

This is certainly one of the reasons. The most vocal advocates for pro/rel are definitely a problem and need to be shunned. Seriously... Soccerreform repeatedly claiming that pro/rel is the civil rights issue of our time is deplorable and anyone that takes that guy serious is just as bad.

 

Actually, it's because the NBA doesn't want to put a fourth team in St. Louis, after the first three (including the ABA Spirit) folded and/or relocated.

The NBA also decided against putting a D-league team in St. Louis, although there are teams in Tulsa, Fort Wayne, and Des Moines. So if the NBA went pro/rel, St. Louis still wouldn't have a team eligible for promotion to the NBA.

Overall, it seems less likely that St. Louis is getting screwed by the lack of promotion and relegation and more likely that St. Louis just isn't a great basketball town.

 

More likely that no owner has emerged who made the effort and commitment to get St. Louis back into the NBA. Since St. Louis lost the Hawks in 1968, the NBA has added 16 teams and has had 10 relocations, several times going to cities more podunk than St. Louis. Somewhere in there somebody could have had the opportunity to get St. Louis a team if there had been the desire. I doubt the NBA is deliberately shunning St. Louis based on failures that by now are generations past.

 

Not to get too far off topic, but in at least one case, the failure is actually ongoing. When the NBA and ABA merged, the NBA paid off two teams they didn't want, to get them to fold their teams and go away. One was the Kentucky Colonels; they took $3 million and left because they were too close to Chicago. The other was the Spirits of St. Louis. They took $2 million up front, plus a 1/7 share of all television revenue earned by the Nets, Spurs, Pacers and Nuggets, from 1975 through the end of time. The NBA paid them about $20 million last year, and there was a rumor they were going to buy them out for something close to half a billion dollars in exchange for a reduced (but probably not zero) annual payment.

So while that wasn't my original argument, it's possible there are some at NBA HQ who have not the warmest feelings for the Mound City.