News: NISL announcement

Did anyone see the comment at the bottom of the Philly article that some assclown made?

You mean this one?

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Posted by Phlyer21 12:23 PM, 09/10/2008
oh boy!! Soccer!! The sport for un-coordinated kids who can't play real sports.
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Well, all I can say is consider the source. They either have never played the sport or were once one of the un-coordinated kids who couldn't play soccer.

Soccer-Man, 3 articles in Baltimore Papers, one in Philly, not exactly taking the world, country, or even a region by storm...

Yea.....that is WAY too good of an idea from this board....

A team in Charlotte would be good for me. Does anybody know anything about who would be behind a Charlotte team?

Give us all a break Soccer-Man. You're talking about a five-team league with two franchises (Rockford and Orlando) that are unlikely to draw. Neither this league or the XSL (four teams with two shaky franchises) is going to a high level at all.

The reason: two rich egomaniacs named Ed Hale and John Hantz who wouldn't put their egos aside and resolve the differences between the two factions.

SHAME

I guess he didn't see the main story in the Baltimore Sun that had a headline something like "Blast to play on downsized league."

Nothing says "national", "phenomenal", "major", or "positive" like downsizing.

Did I post this before? If I did, my apologies.

I think the advent of several small leagues, playing under different rules, will be the death knell of pro indoor soccer in this country. Having both the MISL v.1/CISL/PSA/WISL and AISA/NPSL/MISL2 (with the NASL thrown in for good measure for a few seasons) did it in the first time, and I afraid this will be the final nail in the casket.

Here's my plan:

Standardize the rules (go back to MISL v.1 rules (6'6" x 12' goals), or use FA small-sided rules (not much difference between the two (and still use 6'6" x 12' goals)), get rid of the gimmicks (MPS, garage door-size goals), and have two regional leagues (east and west), with the respective league champions playing for the national title (with maybe a 24-game schedule). Even if it's only 10-12 total teams, it'd be better than having no teams at all. Bring the skill back to the game, and you'll attract better players, and thus eliminate the need for big goals and NBA scoring. Get some owners with the $$$ to stay in for the long haul (clone Ed Hale, maybe? ). And then, leave the game alone (no new rules, gimmicks, etc.). It will get better, the skill will improve, and people will come out.

Or so I hope.

Re: Did I post this before? If I did, my apologies.

sigh....in a perfect world this would be the plan i'd like to see as well....my friends and i always thought that MPS was complete crap (especially when teams were actually winning games when they scored less than the other team...and the larger goals somehow ruined the tension of the game...

and besides (here comes the sour grapes department) if the goals had stayed their original sizes Machel Millwood and the Blast would NOT have scored in overtime 2006 and The Steamers might have won the second indoor soccer championship for the long suffering fans in St. Louis...

sigh

maybe they should have taken off their shirts and had a flex-off (unfortunately the sight of Hale ripping off his shirt to put on a "MISL Champions: Baltimore Blast" t-shirt is still burned into my retinas)

You have to have that wrong...something that only says MISL Champions could never had touched the skin of that Hale dude....It had to have said SUPER DUPER WORLD FANTABULISTIC CHAMPIONS Baltimore Blast.

SHAME

Re: Did I post this before? If I did, my apologies.

and besides (here comes the sour grapes department) if the goals had stayed their original sizes Machel Millwood and the Blast would NOT have scored in overtime 2006 and The Steamers might have won the second indoor soccer championship for the long suffering fans in St. Louis...

The Steamers should have won that 1st game in Baltimore, then they wouldn't have needed the "golden goal" game.

Re: Did I post this before? If I did, my apologies.

that is very true....but even more true is the fact that should not have switched the playoff format just before the playoffs to accomodate ESPN.....it should have stayed a best of three affair with two of the games in St. Louis....TWO REAL GAMES, not some GARBAGE "golden goal" game...

Re: Did I post this before? If I did, my apologies.

Or, he could have put some wicked spin on it and somehow slipped it through anyway .

Just "stirrin' the puddin'" a little .

I still think MPS is crap (and the big goals, and red lines...). End results of soccer games shouldn't look like softball scores.

I forgot to put this in the original post--work out some kind of league-wide cooperative merchandising deal that would benefit all the teams; a blanket deal that would encompass all aspect of merchandising, kind of like minor league baseball has. I read somewhere a few years ago that some minor league teams were able to make their operating budget on merchandising alone. As an aside, I remember seeing an Orlando SolarBears hockey t-shirt in an Austell, Georgia KMart several years ago (Atlanta used to be an IHL town). Soccer, and especially indoor, shouldn't limit themselves just to specialty shops. Sometimes, you have to create your market, like the way Prof. Harold Hill created the "problem" with the pool table in "The Music Man," in order to get the boys into his band. I guess indoor soccer needs some more hucksters.

Yea, that's it. Two people that got rich by having a formula for doing things and doing that thing over and over successfully have found something that works for them. Because neither wants to give up that formula, they must be egomaniacs. Maybe your problem is with the rich part and that neither has the desire to lose money just to make it in the best interest of the league.

Find a way for the owners to make money, and they'll be more owners. Find a way for the owners to make a lot of money and the players will get paid a lot.

But if the LEAGUE is successful and raises its profile each franchise will be worth more.

That's really the only economic allure of owning a professional sports team. Like in the NHL you may lose $5 million a year, but in 15 years you can sell your team for 4 times as much.

Jerry Jones probably bought the Dallas Cowboys for $200 million and they were just valued at $1.6 billion.

The root problem in indoor soccer is there has only been like 1 team sale in 10 years. You own a team and then it folds. There is no value you can transfer to someone else. When was the last time a team even relocated? Owners used to move their teams all the time and they still do in other leagues.

If you can build equity in the LEAGUE then the teams will become worth something. And you will have more people interested in owning additional teams.

That's also why people are suddenly paying $40 million to get into MLS. The teams aren't profitable, but maybe in 5 years you can sell it for $60 million.

Why is it that whenever anyone criticizies a wealthy person, the comeback is always that the person is jealous of their wealth?

And last I checked, I don't think Mr. Hantz has a company called Xtreme Financial Planning. This is a new formula he's trying in a new business. Good luck to him and Mr. Hale.

Re: Did I post this before? If I did, my apologies.

I have to disagree here. Bad ownership and league office personnel will be the death of indoor if it ever happens. In order for all those leagues to have an affect on people the fans would have to know of their existence. I can tell you that most people in Baltimore don't know about the PASL. Heck, they probably didn't even know Syd founded a league in their state. You probably have XSL fans who don't know about NISL either. Sure some fans will wonder what happened to Baltimore or New Jersey, but by and large most will forget. I never got talking to someone during a game who said, "Hey, whatever happened to [insert team here].

~CurryMan

I don't think that's what Tom was saying. I think he was saying they each had a huge ego based on past success and only want to do things their way even if their way conflicts with the success of the league and the other teams.

Hale found a way to make money in the league he had, in the league he was in, he favors continuing down that path.

Hantz, found a way to make money, or he must be close enough he can taste it, in a smaller arena with less costs, and he wants to continue down that path.

Likely for both, it probably mirrors what they do in their other businesses. I don't think ego, has anything to do with either, or being rich.

We have found a formula to put recreational indoor facilities in cities that works for us. We know what the cost of our real estate can be, what our maximum expenses can be, and rough population minimums. If we can't get those things, we won't go to that city.

Grand Junction Colorado is only two hours from where I live now and I at least once or twice a year I get requests from folks that live there to put a facility there. Grand Junction and the surrounding area doesn't have the population to support what it would cost us to obtain and maintain a facility there. We're not going. Our odds are not high that we would succeed. On occasion when I explain it this way I'll get responses that we don't care about the kids in Grand Junction, we're "too big" to care about little cities, Grand Junction is special because........We're not going. No rich, no ego involved.

There may come a day when we find a foreclosure building that we can buy for 50 cents on the dollar somewhere, then we only need half the population we would normally require. Some day we may find a lender that will lend us at 3% interest, then our costs go down considerably and maybe Grand Junction works, until then, it won't be us.

But Let's Play is a single corporation. You don't have partners that are counting on you to put a building in Grand Junction.

Hale and Hantz were partners in the MISL. One team can't succeed at the expense of the others. It can't be every man for himself within a league.

But it wasn't every man for himself. This is where you are clearly wrong and this is also where the demise of the MISL gets murky. The MISL was split long before it was official. Half of the MISL supported The Great Commissioner Steve Ryan and the other half didn't. Plain and simple. The teams that didn't, had better attendance and made a profit (or came close). These are the business owners from BALTIMORE, Philly, Monterrey and to a lesser degree Orlando. They realized that Ryan didn't know what the hell he was doing and that following him was a recipe for disaster. The teams that defected are now in a league that is geared towards doing things with higher standards; like spending money and being responsible with that.

Now lets look at some of the teams that continued to follow The Great One. St. Louis held all sorts of MISL Finals and playoff games etc and are now out of business. Stockton made all sorts of promises to host all star games and believed Ryans lies about western expansion. The Cougars have downsized to the PASL-Pro.

The XSL's teams held league Finals and all star games and still to this day have faith in Ryan's business philosophies. For whatever reason, they still believe that the single entity is the way to keep cost down and have successful individual franchises. The NISL fully understand that the only way to have successful individual teams is to have strong ownership and an atmosphere of real cooperation league wide. But you have to be on the same page for that to happen. Mr. Hale's plan works and is focused on having a TRUE MAJOR league of indoor soccer. Got to pay to play.

You make it too easy.

Orlando and Monterrey were #8 and #9 (out of 9) in the MISL in paid attendance (yes, Monterrey was actually last). Rockford is an expansion team for all intents and purposes (new owner, moving into a real arena).

Milwaukee was 2nd and California was 4th and they're not in the NISL.

The NISL doesn't even seem to have a business plan other than eliminating the league office (Ryan was a schmuck, but leagues don't run themself).

There are no great choices to make for those starting indoor soccer leagues. I think any approach could fail because it's a very difficult sport to sell with so much competition from other sports teams, even in places that are not huge markets.

But it seems the "pay to play" route in the hope of becoming a "true major league" is the worst choice of all. The owners cannot and will not spend anywhere near enough to make the NISL "a true major league." But they may spend enough to make their individual enterprises quite unprofitable.

Several people scoff at the PASL, but I think it's approach of starting small, keeping costs low and building gradually makes the most sense. But we'll see what happens!

For what's it worth....

The All Star games were cancelled by the league master schmuck Steve Ryan. The same guy who messed with the TV deal and almost cost us the only live game from Stockton. Only massive intervention by the owners kept that game on TV.

The same schmuck changed the whole TV stuff toweards the end and we ended with a complete disaster of the finals with massive outages. Which of course in itself wasn'r Ryan's fault.

If there is one single best thing in Indoor soccer world in the last few months is, that Ryan is gone.

Ed Hale makes money and will continue to do so, but an approach of: My way and my way ONLY is not good, if most other teams loswe massive amounts of money. Unless you find a system that gives the majority of any team in any league a chance on becoming profitable you will continue down the MISL way. Add 2, remove 3, add 1, lose 1, add 1, lose 2 etc etc.....

And how many mor sucker with money are out there willing to try their luck in indoor soccer ventures?

Find a way that works, if it means start small and grow slowly so be it.

Would I prefer 30 teams in one big league wioth sold out arenas in the 10-20K attendance range and indoor play superstars?

Sure do, but unfortunately this is not a perfect world.

All I personally care about is a strong solid Cougars team that has strong solid competitors.

And quite frankly, I feel much more confident with them in the PASL with sane financial scenarios than I would be, if they'd join Ed Hales newest incarnation of whatever prior leagues.