MLS Single entity (and all other league structure talk) Part II

AEG wouldn't let Peter Wilt replace his right hand man who was responsible for corporate partnerships. That very next year Peter took on the task along with everything else and was able to increase sponsorship. He was then let go.

If that's the rumor AEG is leaking (or leaked) it's simply not true.

 

They then replaced Peter Wilt with Guppy, who was an abject failure at pretty much everything, save for not flubbing the Blanco signing thanks to AEG's largesse, which led to the Best Buy shirt deal. When you look back at those years, Blanco's signing papered over a club that was starting to crumble.

In any case, there really isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Wilt would return, because the FIRE's moronic owner hates Wilt for some unknown reason. Thus, the next-best option [IMHO] is to push a pile of cash in front of Garth Lagerwey, and beg him to come home to Chicago to un-fvkc this thing.

Sadly, yes. This is entirely true. They then hired the ex-manager of the only other MLS team [San Jose] to have failed to produce a minute played by a HGP.

The only difference between the FIRE and DCU in 2013 was that Robbie Rogers decided that it was better to be a gay player in LA than in Chicago. In turn, the league decided to hand Chicago the league MVP so Rogers could be comfortable.

FFS, the FIRE lost to the worst MLS team in history at home in the US Open Cup last season. [No offense to DCU fans, but 2013 for you guys was 1999 Metrostars bad, and Chicago were right in the team photo for all-time worst before Magee showed up.]

No shit. Its a simple formula that the FIRE's stupid ownership can't fathom for some insane reason:

1. Make your product a good one.
2. Make your customer feel good about buying your product. [i.e. No anti-fan "editorials."]
3. Watch as your customers buy your product, and refer others to do the same.
4. Repeat.

 

Repped.

Maybe Fire fans knew it at the time, but for the rest of us, it's obvious now how true this is.

 

If you go back to 2005 I would probably rate Chicago and DC as the #2 and #3 fan bases in the league (Galaxy #1). Since then they have been passed by Salt Lake and SKC who added new stadiums and have experienced an extended period of strong play. RBNY also passed them IMO with their new stadium and big signings. Additionally, every new team added by the league has surpassed them (Seattle, Toronto, Philly, Vancouver, Portland, Montreal, and Houston). Only San Jose has failed to surpass their fan bases and they aren't really an expansion team.

Now only 3 of the 9 teams around in 2005 have clearly surpassed these two and all 3 got new stadiums and long periods of winning (especially RSL and SKC). Of course DC and Chicago started out in the league with long periods of winning and very good identifiable players (Moreno, Pope, Etcheverry, Nowak, Stoichkov).

I would wager this helped contribute to their strong fan bases. Not to take too much away from the efforts of their front offices in those early periods. Now the strength of the expansion teams entering the league since 2005 has made the decline of DC and Chicago look even worse.

The problem with winning playing a factor in building a fan base is that it is a zero sum game. From a league perspective the obvious solution is to focus on the infrastructure/stadiums etc. And they have done a great job in promoting this for the teams. DC has just not been able to get anything done on this front. I still remember when DC was one of the top teams for MLS to have on TV with their massive supporters section along the sideline . I am confident they can get this back with a stadium deal.

With Chicago, the diagnosis is a little different since they actually have a stadium. I don't know their marketing budget, but from the above posts they seem to have really made mistakes promoting the club. With the club going through a period of indifferent play on the field Chicago could not afford this mismanagement.

It will be interesting to monitor the fan bases for teams like RSL and SKC when they eventually go through a rut in quality of play. Hopefully their front offices are strong enough to withstand this and keep them relevant in their cities.

The good news is, the rise in tide of the league is responsible in part for how bad these organizations look. Their 2013 attendance averages would still have put them ahead of 6 of 12 teams in 2005 (albeit behind their 2005 selves).

 

You sold me!

Just ordered it.

 

Book club! Seriously, I hope you enjoy it. I've read a number of books on the history of the NFL, but I always come back to this one as the best discussion of how the modern NFL was really built.

 

I get what you're trying to say here, but in a league with so many machinations to promote parity, winning being a factor can't really be a zero sum game. More properly stated, MLS gives so many ways to help I/Os make the product on the field watchable. This league has [off the top of my head]:

1. A salary cap
2. Roster size limits
3. A college draft
4. A supplemental college draft
5. Home grown players
6. Re-entry and
7. Waiver drafts, which enable you to get out from under bad contracts you've signed, or to paper over previous player acquisition mistakes.
8. Trades
9. Returning National Team Player allocations
10. DPs, if you want to go buy titles
11. Reserve teams

So, with so many ways to keep the pre-Magee 2013 Chicago Fires and the 2013 DCUs of the world from occurring, losing for so long shouldn't be acceptable. Or at a minimum, there are so many league rules that provide means for teams to not remain irrelevant.

 

@triplet1 in light of the news of Nelson Rodriguez' new job with Chivas, do you want to "revise and extend your remarks" about his departure from headquarters?

 

We talked about this some in the Chivas thread Dave. It may be Grant Wahl is correct and the league planned to put Nelson Rodriguez in charge of Chivas when he suddenly resigned last January. Maybe he did resign and league subsequently reached out to him as Andy suggested. I honestly have no idea. But with his chair at MLS HQ essentially still open, it will be interested to see if he returns after his stint at Chivas USA is done.

 

I agree with your point that the league is structured to prevent teams from being too bad or too good for an extended period. We probably shouldn't get into too much of an argument of semantics here.

But I will point out that DC won 3 of the first 4 MLS Cups and Chicago won MLS Cup their first year in the league. I would wager those early DC teams would be a favorite to win the league even in today's MLS despite the wide perception that the level of play has increased in the league.

Point is that consistent winning and having recognizable players can and does play a role in any teams fan base. DC and Chicago both made the playoffs in 2012, so their player selection can't be that incompetent. They just lack the quality of those earlier teams and thus experienced a dip in 2013. These fluctuations are common in MLS outside of the top 2 or so in each conference.

 

Let's not bury the lead.

Chicago "made the playoffs" in 2012, in that they made the frikkin' Play-In Game, which they promptly lost. So, even if you count that as a post season, it's only ONE post-season in the past 4 seasons. So while you can call a stupid play-in game the "playoffs," it is more appropriately called the "J@ckoffs."

On top of this, in USOC play, the FIRE crapped their pants against the "MIGHTY" Michigan Bucks in 2012. In looking at the FIRE roster, outside of GK Sean Johnson, and Mike Magee, there honestly isn't a player in that roster that would start for another MLS team.

So, let's be intellectually honest: The fact that the FIRE have been one of the biggest piles of sucks that ever sucked since the last trophy in 2006 means that the product has been a fetid pile of shyte. In turn, that crappiness of the product on the field has poisoned the Chicago market. This isn't "a fluctuation," as you inappropriately term it. This is EIGHT FRICKIN' YEARS of suck, with little-to-no chance to win any silver.

Fix the product on the field, and the FIRE will have gone LIGHTYEARS in fixing that market, full stop.

 

Is there any other way to win a one-game play-in match?

Or, more accurately, the 'playoffs'. The Fire were there because they were a better team than most of the East.

Luckily no one cares about the USOC.

Non-rhetorical question: Is there one of these guys in every MLS club's fandom? I mean, a little proto-union of people who believe MLS is 'poisoning' markets. Because, there seems to me to be no evidence that the Fire are any worse off than any of the other 13 'non-championship' caliber teams.

Except as it pertains to their new jerseys.

 

It's intellectually dishonest to gloss over the Blanco years.

Sorry everyone, he spews this "shyte" all over the Fire forum as well.

 

Yes, but TBF it's not just MLS. Folks like this are found in every group, club, team, industry, market, business, etc.

Just the way it is.

 

Not quite half way through and the parallels are amazing. Giving away tickets and exaggerating attendance. Red Grange as David Beckham.

There was a transitional part that I wish he spent more time on. The story so far:

1) Focus on big cities
2) Get rich owners willing to lose money
3) Make the game more popular
4) Lots of cities now want to join the league

(3) is where the action is and I wish he spent more time here. He explains the change by saying that the league changed the rules to make the game more exciting and games with college "all star" teams showed that the pro players were as good as college. Obviously, rule changes are not going to be on the table, but I wonder if our equivalents are Rodriguez's 9's and 10's and CCL play.

 

And they promptly lost, which was predictable if you watched that team.

That was the one measly so-called "post season" in the past 4 seasons. Sorry, but in a league with a cavalcade of means to keep a team out of the gutter, this is not acceptable performance. That's shitty performance.

Actually, getting to the CCL from winning the USOC get your club more allocation money, which enables your front office to put more money into your roster. The additional cash is one machination that enabled the Gals to keep Keane, Donovan, and their other DPs for years.

On top of it, getting to play longer in the USOC enables your younger players to get more first team exposure. In a day and age where the reserve division lacks enough fixtures to be meaningful, the USOC is a great tool to help your young players develop. By extension, getting to the CCL by winning the USOC gives your young players even more first team chances.

But yeah, I guess only the underinformed fans "don't care about the USOC," as it does quite a bit to help your team improve.

Here are two questions for you:
1. Do you think that one so-called "post season" in four years is a good enough level of performance in a league where it is meant to promote parity?

2. Did you read the infamous "editorial" that was written by the FIRE's "Senior Communications Director" Dan Lobring? Do yourself a favor. Educate yourself, and look it up, either here on bigsoccer, or elsewhere. Then come back, and let us know what you think. [Here's a hint: It was universally condemned as being a stupid thing for the FIRE's ownership to do, and is but ONE example of FIRE ownership behaving badly.]

See, the lack of performance, and the tone deaf interaction of the ownership with their best customers is why Chicago is poisoned as a market.

Agreed. The moronic owner apparently wants the FIRE to wear blue for some moronic reason.

 

The other question is, what does it mean to be big? We generally think about the importance of cities in terms of urban core even though most growth these days is away from a central urban core which biases our perceptions away from the newer cities in the south and west.

Taking the broadest definition of size (combined statistical area) and projecting out to 2022 (when MLS will rule the world) and then dividing by the Columbus population to generate “Columbus Standard Units”

Top 20 cities, italics if not in MLS, somewhat arbitrarily lumped into groups:

NY 9.7
LA 7.9

DC 4.2
CH 4.0
SJ 3.7
DA 3.4
NE 3.3
HO 3.1
MI 2.9
PH 2.9
AT 2.8

DT 2.1
PX 2.0
SE 2.0

MN 1.6
DE 1.5
SD 1.4
OR 1.4

CL 1.3
PO 1.3

Other expansion candidates

TA 1.2
SL 1.1
CT 1.1
SA 1.1
SC 1.1
IN 1.0

(note: Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa are MSAs since they don’t have CSAs and so size may be underestimated)

Two points

-Maybe we should stop thinking of Chicago as the third city and just one of many in the second group
-Most people would probably say we shouldn't expand into Columbus now if we had a do over. Then why would we ever want to expand into St. Louis or Indy?

 

The Fire suck, but to finish in the Top 5 of the conference 1/4 years seems to be a decent standard for the mediocre team.

No, it's not just the underinformed fans. It's the informed fans, the informed coaches, the informed Front Office staff, and the informed players, too

Nope. But it's mediocre. There are 2-3 very good teams in each conference. The mediocre teams fight each other for the other 2-3 slots.

Yes, I did. But please, continue to operate under the assumption that I hadn't

Yeah. I don't see why a team being bad 'poisons the market' (whatever that means). Like, if a new ownership group came in with a mindset to compete, wouldn't the fans be there? And before you answer, ask yourself how many current residents of "Blue Hell" are there who have never worn rainbow sleeves.

Because Quaker Oats cans are blue over red?

 

No. Quaker is not driving the change.

 

Being top 5 in a conference only quadrennially is = to making it to ~10th in a 20 team league. In a salary cap league, that is complete and utter shit performance.

If your favorite club is some middling club in the Prem, or any team outside Real/Barca in La Liga, sure, a 10th place finish every 4 years is dandy. But in a league with so many devices to level the playing field, that level of preformance sucks.

Well, I can't help you if you don't think that getting additional money for your roster is a good thing.

So, in your world, you think that was the right thing to do? Please feel free to elucidate. And show your work in doing so.

A perennially bad team is a bad product. People generally don't like to buy bad products.

Thus, make the product good, and make your best customers feel good about buying it will lead to success as an organization. It ain't rocket science. To do the opposite [as the current ownership has done], well, we've seen the results. Indy XI have more season ticket holders than the FIRE.

Read, and re-read the bolded sentence over and over and over again, and ask yourself:

"Who you crappin'?"

If you don't believe that the lack of FO managerial acumen, and stupidity by the ownership are harming the market in Chicago, I don't know what to tell you.

To summarize what Mr. Warmth said, your statement is "out-of-town stupid."

 

Um, where are you getting your information?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_combined_statistical_areas

In both of these, Chicago is listed as larger than DC. In the MSA list, Chicago is nearly double the size, but under the CSA list, by including Baltimore..... Chicago is still listed as being larger.

In all likelihood, Dallas or Houston will be larger than Chicago within the next decade or so. Regardless, MLS is supposed to be "Major League." Perhaps the league and the I/Os should start acting like it.

Columbus took some vision to get going, but any expansion team has to have both the dollars in the ownership and a large enough local economy to support a team. Regardless of which cities MLS is in now, or will be in the future, poor management hurts the individual team, and hurts the league. A good I/O, with enough money, and a smart front office could certainly make a go of it in St. Louis or Indy.

By the same token, a stupid I/O, with a stupid FO can certainly hurt a market, as in Chicago and DC.

 

The CSA numbers from wikipedia but projecting out to 2022 using the estimated 2-year growth rates given there. It's only ballpark, but I guess that's appropriate.

 

I think they could make a go of it, but I think they are unlikely to be teams that can spend a lot of money down the line. Say that our goal is to beat Mexican teams on a regular basis. That will take money. If we continue with some sort of parity, our quality will be driven as much by the bottom markets as the top. That's why I think we should be very careful about who we let in at the bottom.

 

Don't involve me in the one time in your life you've chosen to be right, you stupid ********** ************************