return of the Central?

[embeleshow]

If Portland gets in, the two division format doesn't seem feasible with six West Coast teams, 2 Rocky mountain teams and the Texas twosome. That leaves eight teams in the East come 2011.
Does anyone think MLS goes back to the 3 division setup?
WEST
Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, L.A., Chivas

CENTRAL
Dallas, Houston, RSL, Colorado, Kansas City, Chicago

EAST
Columbus, Toronto, NY, N. England, Philadelphia, DC

[Lavictoireq]

just make it a single table...

[Domenico from Chieti]

I posted this thread 2 weeks ago and SportBilly moved it.

[santeroatomico]

I hope they briing back the central division. what I wonder about is the schedule. Having divisions and playing each team twice does not make any sense unless you paly your division three tuimes but that is 39 games.

[thomas19064]

It would sorta suck not to see every team home and away each year....

honestly I see MLS straying away from this idea, at least as the league continues to expand because this format could limit the Vancouver vs. Toronto games... something they will obviously want to harp on.

[Lavictoireq]

actually there's not much of a rivalry between TO and VAN, at least not as much as MTL-TO

Vancouver mostly rivals against it's Cascadian buddies.

[TuleTowner]

If Portland gets in, the two division format doesn't seem feasible with six West Coast teams, 2 Rocky mountain teams and the Texas twosome. That leaves eight teams in the East come 2011.
Does anyone think MLS goes back to the 3 division setup?


IMHO, I don't think MLS will go to three divisions yet. I think they like determining the Cup finalists via the conference championships in the playoffs, and that's awful hard to do with three divisions rather than two conferences.

Eventually, they'll get enough teams that they'll go home-and-away against everyone, or they'll employ something like what Louis Bueno is suggesting over at his blog:
As far as 18 teams goes... I hope the league keeps the schedule at 30 games. That could mean teams play their eight conference rivals twice (nine teams per conference), each team from the other conference once and then there would be a final game which probably would be a rivalry match ...

Although, I don't think they'll do that until they get to a 20+ team league, if not more. They'll have to if they want to expand big enough to cover all the major markets without having a schedule of over 40 games in the regular season alone, with brutal travel.

When they hit 20 teams I think they may go to two conferences of two 5-team divisions each. That could serve them well until they hit the 24-team mark, which I think is likely if they want to get StL, NY2, Miami, and Montreal, plus a couple of other strong bids that may pop up along the way.

[Tigerpunk]

as far as 18 teams goes... I hope the league keeps the schedule at 30 games. That could mean teams play their eight conference rivals twice (nine teams per conference), each team from the other conference once and then there would be a final game which probably would be a rivalry match ...

8*2 = 16 + 9 = 25 + 1 = 26

[TuleTowner]

8*2 = 16 + 9 = 25 + 1 = 26

Yeah, interesting math, no? Maybe multiple rivalry games, home and away? I dunno how Luis has it figured, but if they get bigger than 20, they'll have to start getting pretty creative.

I've got math issues of my own. I opened my big mouth before I looked to see where all those teams would go.

With 6 West Coast teams, you'd have to at least wait until they hit 22 teams, probably 24. That way they can put all six teams from the West Coast into a Pacific division. The trouble is, you break up a set of regional rivals (like KC-StL) in the other divisions no matter what you do, and/or leave yourself with a mini division if you try to keep those rivals together.

Let's say the next four are StL, MON/OTT, NY2, and MIA, for 22 teams. The Central gets the Mountain teams plus Texas, and Missouri (6). The Atlantic gets the East Coast, and the North is left with Chicago, Toronto, Columbus, and MON/OTT (4). I'm not sure who else you hope to add for the North division footprint to work, but it would probably have to be a couple of northern teams, though I can't see which. Otherwise, you stick StL over there and hope for a rivalry with Chicago.

Ugh. Forget it. Whatever they do, I don't think they'll go single-table, because they like the conference setup for the playoffs, and I think they'll do some form of unbalanced schedule eventually, to get more teams (markets) while keeping the schedule remotely manageable.

[devioustrevor]

With 3 Divisions of 6 I think a better scenario would be 4 games against each of your division rivals (double home-and-away) with 1 game against each of your non-division foes (alternating home-and-away each year). That would be 32 games per year.

To easily keep a 32 game schedule with a 20-team league, you break down into 2 divisions of 10 teams. You home-and-away each team in your own division (18 games), you play each non-division team one per season (10 games) (alternating home-and-away each year) and each of the 20 teams has 2 designated "Rivals", they play each of their rivals a further twice per season (home-and-away) for a total of 32 games. If could be done that teams only have 1 rival to play home-and-away to get back down to 30 games.

Once you get up past 24 teams you'd either have to start playing more than 34 games per season or have a really wonky schedule.

[DCU1996]

no keep two tables, 9 in each.

home/away in conferece + 1 game out of conference, + 5 more random out of conference games = 30.

[devioustrevor]

no keep two tables, 9 in each.

Home/away in conferece + 1 game out of conference, + 5 more random out of conference games = 30.

16 + 1 + 5 = 22

[The Marquis]

16 + 1 + 5 = 22

Pretty sure he meant 16+9+5 = 30 meaning 1 extra vs. each out of conference club.

[devioustrevor]

Pretty sure he meant 16+9+5 = 30 meaning 1 extra vs. each out of conference club.


OK, that makes infinitely more sense.