Ok, here is a way to have a 24 team league for next season. Milwaukee was not included since their future for 2014-15 is up in the air. Pennsylvania was not included for obvious reasons and since I have not heard anything good about Bay Area Rosal, they were removed. 3 Divisions – East, Central, West Each division split into 2 groups. East-Group 1 Baltimore, Rochester, Syracuse, Harrisburg East-Group 2 Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Illinois Central-Group 1 St. Louis, Wichita, Missouri, Chicago Central-Group 2 Hidalgo, Texas, Saltillo, Tulsa West-Group 1 San Diego, Ontario, Dallas, Monterrey West-Group 2 Las Vegas, Turlock, Mexico, Sacramento No interdivisional play during the regular season. Home and away against each team in your division with an additional home and away against each team within your group. This equals 20 games. Playoffs – Group 1 Option 1 – Group 1 #3 vs Group 1 #2 in a one game playoff. Winner plays Group 1 #1 in 2 game series w/possible mini game. Option 2 - Group 1 #2 vs Group 1 #1 in 2 game series w/possible mini game. Playoffs – Group 2 Group 2 #1’s meet at a central predetermined location to play a final 4 (including the host team). If host is a Group 2 #1 then #2 from that group would be included. League playoffs. The three group 1 playoff winners and the Group 2 champion would play in the semi-finals with the Group 2 champion playing the Group 1 team with the best regular season record. 2 would play 3 and the winners would meet in the finals. These could be single games or 2 games with mini game.
I like it. Replace Illinois with the Wave. Illinois can play in premiere so all eyes are not on Pontoon City again this November. Syd, get going on this please.
good idea, but the wave is going to join the pasl, so we're likely looking at 25 teams. the pasl had 10 teams make the playoffs this year. lets say 12 in total, the 6 division winners, then the next 6 teams with the best records. playoffs are full best of 3 series. top 2 division winners get double byes to the semis, next 2 get byes to the quarters, bottom 2 play in the first round with the other 6 qualifiers.
Putting all 24 teams in one league makes zero sense. Youd have a bunch more teams like Reading and people wont regularly pay to watch the Baltimores and the Missouri's whoop up on teams week in and week out. Went to watch the PASL games at Sears last weekend and the level of play between the PASL and MISL is apparent from the speed of play, physicality, intensity and size of the players as well as the technical ability. If some sort of merger goes through I think you will see a division with 10-12 teams that includes the current MISL teams minus Reading and then 4-6 teams from the current PASL which will be based on arena size
The reason that you would see a 24 team league is because it helps all teams save on travel costs by being in regional play. This has been touched upon in one of the other threads. @CFL Fan - I think that four divisions with 6 teams per division is more likely. And even if it was six divisions of 4 teams I would think that Missouri, Wichita, Tulsa and Dallas would be one of the 4 due to regional play.
I get the economics of the travel and what regional play would mean from a cost savings perspective. However, take wichita as an example, there is a reason they went from 3,000 average attendance in the MISL to 1,500 this year. Its called level of play. A big 24 team league with regional play would greatly reduce the current MISL level of play as we know it which would directly translate into a massive reduction in attendance as whats been seen in Wichita. Bottom line people wont consistently pay high ticket prices to see marginal soccer and blowouts. Any realized cost reduction from regional travel would be offset at a much larger percentage in less top line ticket sales over time.
You make some good points and you may be right. But as discussed in other threads, the reason some of us are participating in this 24-team 2014-15 fantasy league discussion is that history has shown that the other way just won't work. So it could be an attempt to try a different model, one that includes some teams that you wouldn't consider ideal, but it's a model that the PASL has worked on for the past few seasons and they're the only ones still here, so more than anything else, it's worth a try. To say it makes zero sense I think is too harsh.
Let me stop you right there. We're going to have Wow the PASL players aren't even the same size as MISL players? Wichita's attendance went from 3,808 to 2,870 in their two years in the MISL. Was that because of the level of play in the PASL? Their attendance last year had as much to do with the Wings folding and the new owner having only about two months to start a new team. They ended the year with attendance on an upswing and I guarantee you they lost hundreds of thousands less than the Wings did. If you read the comments in the Wichita Facebook forum 90% of the comments are positive about the move to the PASL.
Ticket prices in Wichita are quite reasonable and not high at all. And although not as high as the approx. 3800 attendance of their 1st year this last year Wichita was in reality closer to 1800 to 1900 not the 1600 listed. Having been in the arena for 3 seasons I can tell you their attendance counts listed were a little low. And if you are discounting the affect of all of the chaos that went on when Hartman pulled the team from the MISL and then sold it over the summer months had on the attendance, then I am not sure what to tell you. And the travel costs of an East Coast team going to the West Coast or vice versa even twice in a season, would season after season break a clubs bank faster than the projected loss of ticket sales you seem to think there would be.
WOW- so we get a HUGE 24 Team league lets say .... Let's now spread the already very thin High Level of Talent we currently see between more teams! We had a 7 team "TOP LEVEL" MISL this year... and look at 2 of those teams as far as talent.. Hell, Reading would probably have been 3-13 in the PASL
Don't know if anyone was paying attention but all of the group 1 teams except Chicago (and they were put in because Milwaukee is questionable) are in the top 12 average attendance in the 2013-2014 PASL and MISL combined attendance table that Kenn presented in one of these threads. Of the 20 regular season games Group 1 teams would play other group 1 teams 12 times. In other words a Division 1 and 2 with some inter-Division play.
Someone just won the $414 mega million lotto in the county I'm from. There is a bigger chance of one of us being the next mega millions dollar winner than a complete merger between the PASL and MISL working out. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but look at the level of competition in the MISL even. It was just this year that a "new" team won the championship. For five years before, it was the Blast, or Wave, or the time LaRaZa won. Do I even need to bring up the countless times the Wave has crushed a PASL team or the "PASL all-stars" even in their preseason exhibitions? People aren't going to pay $100+ for their family to go see a game against those type of PASL teams. Blast and Wave fans especially would pick up in the difference of quality in play. Merging the MISL with ALL the PASL teams is like combining the NBA and its D-league together. What needs to happen is what Soccer Sam is advocating for. The strongest PASL teams and the MISL teams need to form a new league all together or a new division in the PASL and make sure all the owners are on line with each other. Because families will pay $100+ to see the Blast and Sockers in action or the Wave and Monterrey; whereas seeing the Blast take on the Texas Strikers would be a free exhibition game at best.
Do you honestly think some of those matchups would be any worse then the Blast-Roar games this year, or the Blast-Mass Twisters games of yesteryear. When the Baltimore Bays played in the old I-League we would refer to the opponents for most games as the Bum of the month. Yet those teams still drew capacity crowds albeit to a 600 seat facility despite scores such as 19-3 vs Philadelphia, 12-3 vs Rhode Island, 10-2 vs Reading and of course 14-1 against the Western Mass Twisters. All during the 97-98 season.
By "countless" I assume you mean one. Milwaukee beat Cincinnati 7-3 in a game that was a dead heat until the fourth quarter even though Milwaukee dressed and played 20 players and Cincinnati brought 12. The next year they played again and the score was 2-1 at halftime and then Milwaukee went nuts and won like 15-2. The only other games I know of I think Detroit lost 4-1 once and last year Rockford beat the Soul in a preseason game.
That's not too bad. I don't think you'd have balanced schedules even within the divisions, and I think it needs a few tweaks (in this scheme Dallas' travel costs are going to be much higher than they were this year) but this looks like a good starting point. I really do believe that the league needs to recognize that the PASL business model was the one that "won", and they need to stick with it and let the league to continue to grow organically. As has been said by people far more savvy than me, this "merger", by itself, really isn't solving any of the sport's fundamental problems, no matter how satisfying it might be to the hardcore fans.
This is a discussion of what we want and what we need. What we want is a league of strong teams, competition across the board and close games every night. Games and highlights on ESPN/ESPN2, real media coverage and packed arenas. We want to see San Diego play the Blast 4 times a year, Dallas as well, Milwaukee playing Monterray and Las Vegas as well. What we need is to take the safer more efficient route that keeps San Diego around, Dallas around and all the others. Would seeing those 4 games a year for 1-2 years be as good as watching them play 1/2 times a year only, but making it a yearly sure bet? We need to allow the big boys to stay big boys and not turn every team into Roar's or Twisters. We need to ensure teams can have time and funds to grow and not force them to spend the little cash they have on travel cost instead of getting people in the arena and interested in the team. I would love if we could get what we all want and it would work. Perfect world scanario (hey I remember that thread), but this is reality, and for our world to be perfect the teams worlds would collapse. Lets find a happy median here that we will FINALLY get to see a league in double-digits again, FINALLY get back some old rivalries we've missed, and FINALLY crown a true #1 and only Professional Indoor Soccer Champion. Thats good enough for me to buy season tickets and see a few blow outs here and there...wouldnt be that much different from last 10 years + and we get the added perk of seeing some old rivals.
East: Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Harrisburg, Rochester, Syracuse Central: Chicago, Detroit, Illinois, Missouri, St. Louis, Wichita South: Dallas, La Fiera FC, Monterrey, Saltillo, Texas, Tulsa West: Las Vegas, Mexico, Ontario, Sacramento, San Diego, Turlock
Couldn't agree more, except drop Illinois and replace with the Wave. This regional model will allow for many old rivals to be reborn and allow for huge cost saving on travel for many of the teams. Let's hope the powers that be can get this done with little disruption. I for one have already renewed my season tickets and am very hopeful to see the Heat battling the Blast again. So many great games between those teams in the past, not to mention both of the blast coaches got their start playing for the Heat.
The 3 Divisions with 2 groups of 4 each if done right I think would work the best travel wise. Play 2 home 2 away with the teams in your group and then play each of the teams in the other group 1 home and 1 away for 10 games. But what if we have 25 and not 24 teams. Would 5 Divisions of 5 teams each work? East, Midwest, Central, South and West perhaps?
Here's my idea. Obviously the PASL-2 would need additional teams or interleague play with either PASL-1 or PASL-Premier.
My proposed configuration is based on the feedback that travel expenses is a driving factor in the team's cost (the attendance is the average attendance for the combined teams in the division): East - Syracuse, Rochester, Harrisburg, Baltimore (2013 Avg. Attendance ~4,000) North - Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleavland (2013 Avg. Attendance ~ 1,700) Midwest - Missouri, St. Loius, Wichita, Tulsa (2013 Avg. Attendance ~ 3,500) South - Dallas, Hidalgo, Monterrey, Houston (new team) (2013 Avg. Attendance ~ 2,800) West - SanDiego, Ontario, LasVegas, Turlock (2013 Avg. Attendance ~1,800) Within each division, the maximum travel time between cities by bus should be 5 to 6 hours. Play each team in your division 4 times plus closest rival 2 additional times (i.e. Comets vs. St.Louis and Wichita vs. Tulsa) for a total of 14 divisional games. Play 8 games against teams in other division for a total of 22 games (i.e east vs. north in 2 game set). Of course, there are weak teams and the West coast travel is always the problem. Just a dream of an original Wichita Wings!