Good point, eventually SS should be replaced by 'Conference Champions' title. The top of two tables from regular season should be honored as Conference Champions. Playoffs produce the two MLS Cup finalists, not the Conference Champions. One becomes MLS Cup Champions, and the other one becomes MLS Cup Runner-up. One step going further. I would eventually award berth to Copa Lib for the the Conference Champions.
And before all is said and done, we could easily go to 3 or even 4 divisions/tables. Should we have 4 "supporters shields" if it comes to that day? On top of that, there's going to be years (like, for example, just last year!) where the 2nd best team in one conference finishes better than the winner of the other conference. Why reward a team for finishing 3rd best in the league, on the arbitrary reason of geography? You're just opening up a whole other pandora's box that the NFL is dealing with, in the case of the Seahawks. Don't mess with the program. You're creating a "necessity" where there is none.
Yeah I wasn't quite going there ..... playoffs are not going anywhere. Merely renaming the Supporters Shield to something that was more descriptive .... I don't think the name lends anything to the prestige it should have.
I'm not all that bright, and it makes enough sense that I can figure it out. The Supporters' Shield is named that for a reason. If you don't know the reason, that doesn't mean it's nonsensical. Pop quiz: do you recognize this man? I'm guessing that even if you can, the average man on the street can't recognize a photograph of Frederick Stanley, Baron of Preston and Earl of Derby. Does that mean calling the NHL playoff winner the "Stanley Cup champion" makes "no sense"? As for the thread subject: the top part of the Supporters' Shield doesn't look all that fragile to me. If the base needs to be replaced, replace the base and add a new tier. If and when MLS goes to a two-conference system with no interconference play, we can worry about the implications then. Hopefully by then there'll be an operating U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame to retire the original trophy to.
Considering he purchased the first Cup and it bore his name it makes perfect sense that the competition bears his name, as does honoring Lamaar Hunt via the USOC and and Lombardi in the NFL. I still don't see the "Supporter Shield" carrying the weight by name or emphasis. Just two cents.
Moving away from trophy design semantics for a moment... why doesn't MLS do a community shield type of game as the first competition of the new season? Supporter's Shield winner vs. MLS Cup winner. They could just make it the first regular season game of the year (unlike EPL which is just an exhibition), but with a little more hype? I feel like they have done this before with the schedule, but perhaps it was unintentional.
No corroboration outside of wikipedia that I can find, but we've been hearing Rapids will be playing Seattle on March 9 for this very purpose, except it will be MLS Cup winner vs Open Cup Winner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Colorado_Rapids_season#Seattle_Sounders_FC_Community_Shield
But, to be fair to the original point, the clash of Cup winners is probably just a happy coincidence. The Rapids were scheduled to play a so-called Charity Shield match at the Dick against Seattle the week before the 2010 season started, before a snowstorm forced the cancellation of the game. That would have been the USOC winner against a non-playoff team. I think its safe to bet that this game, as a return leg the following pre-season, was part of the same agreement. They just get to promote it as a battle of the USOC and MLS Cup winners now.
And the supporters groups designed and paid for the Supporters Shield. Thus the name. The Shield doesn't belong to MLS. It belongs to the supporters. The name should always reflect that. ------RM
What beginnings aren't happy coincidence? If they get enough turn-out, the league could always make it into a regular fixture. In any event, this is slightly off-topic, so I don't want to dwell on it here...but if they were to do such a thing, it'd be nice to try it at the same neutral venue every year. Something out in the warm-weather West, say, Vegas or Arizona, as a counterpoint preseason-thing to the east coast Carolina Challenge Cup.
Someone with an in at majorleaguesoccersoccer dot com should talk with the editor about establishing a dedicated Supporters Shield page. It might include a history of the shield, the list of the dozens of supporters who contributed towards establishing it, pictures of past presentations, etc. Hell, put in Shield trivia ("Did you know... The trophy was almost called 'the Supporters Scudetto'?" Such a reference page might lead to more news coverage of the trophy race and presentation, and possibly a tolerable sponsor.
Would they include a picture of the time a confused Columbus Crew mistakenly awarded it to an old lady? ------RM
It sounds as though you don't know why the Shield was "awarded" to the old lady. She was "chosen at random" to receive the Shield on behalf of the supporters. Truth was that she was quite connected with The Crew financially.
Well I have good news for you. The original Supporters Shield was purchased by the supporters and thus bears their name.
For all the bitching people do on this site for "tradition", this is an honest-to-god one of them. This does not need to change AT ALL, Observationally, the amount of rebranding-kitwhoring that goes on in the MLS forums is waaay to high. Huss should make a fcuking sub-forum named call "MLS: Design, Trophy Sculpting & Kit Craft". The best thing to happen in years has been that MLS Commissioner sub-forum. Half the mouth-breathers here disappeared into that shittehole just from that.
I'm just going by what I read in Bill Archer's blog. It's in a comment on the second page. I trust Bill. He generally always knows what he's talking about. And that doesn't sound like the story of someone "accepting the award on behalf of the supporters". ------RM
To be fair, though, most of the whining about tradition in MLS is very premature. MLS is a new league as we all know, and no sports league (or much of anything, really) can really claim to have anything that feels traditional in less than a generation. Up until that point, it's all about working out the kinks, tossing out stuff you don't like and replacing it with something better, and nothing should be off-limits if we can do better.
Define your terms; otherwise "that point" can mean anything. "Generation" is way too ambiguous, ranging anywhere from 15 to (in the case of Gen Y) 30 years. Also, what needs to be done "better" with the Supporter's Shield? All I've heard here so far are half-baked, subjective criticisms of the trophy design without solutions posed, and poorly thought-through changes to how it's to be awarded. One has yet to define the criteria for "better," and the other creates problems where there's no need for any, as the current awarding system works fine.
All I wanted to say was that if the trophy is getting to old, why not replace it, or fix it (if possible). I would say give the current trophy to who ever wins it 5 times (DC has 4) who will get to keep it, Like Brazil and the first FIFA trophy (which they lost ) and then get a new one, I got 5 bucks on it.
If you must know, I was thinking of a period closer to the 30 year number, so call it 30 years. As to your question, naturally you are going to get a number of different opinions, the varied nature of which can be seen in this thread. One thing that keeps coming up, though, is that the trophy needs an upgrade. I agree with this, and certainly have my own design preferences. However, I expect the only opinion that is going to matter is that of the person or persons who come up with the cash. I'd be happy to put my money where my mouth is and contribute to a new trophy, but only if I get a vote on the design, or at least get to see it before I have to commit the cash.
Trophies do wear out, and when it happens, it makes sense to retire the original to a museum and inaugurate a new trophy. But I would hope the new model would pay homage to the original in some sense rather than just chucking it in favor of a completely new design. In my opinion, one of the marks against the MLS Cup is the fact that they've changed the trophy twice. While I like the new model better than either of the previous two, I really wish they'd come up with something like it in 1996 and stuck with it to build tradition. As it is, you have to wonder if they'll just get bored with this version in five years or so and replace it with yet another version. A lot of things "keep coming up" on BigSoccer. That doesn't mean those things aren't bad ideas. ------RM