Eric Wynalda's "Howard Beale moment": FSC employees rant against MLS at the NSCAA Convention

I was thinking Charlie Sheen more than Howard Beale.

Winning!

 

The word "epic" is quite often overused.

Not in this case. This was truly epic.

 

I don't always agree with him, I disagree with him here, but the guy took a 60% pay cut to come back to America to help start MLS up. These GA kids coming out of college these days make more than he did in MLS. He deserves some respect. He is the main reason I got drawn into following San Jose as a kid (my parents are not soccer people nor are they sports fans and I had no idea who Dayak and Doyle were before MLS as I did not follow the Blackhawks). The same is true for a lot of 20-something SJ fans I know. I would write this off as more of a "crazy uncle that you love" moment. I respect the guy a lot.

 

Wynalda reminds me of the Jim Carrey character from Me, Myself & Irene - he's generally unable to comprehend the world around him nor understand the consequences of his actions due to his deficient mental state. He's like the 10-year old who gets worked up telling a story and starts adding embellishments and falsehoods in there to make it sound better.

I'll wait for Garber to confirm that David Hill of FOX told him he'd put him on the network if we just moved to the Fall-Spring calendar. Yeah.

Ahhh . . . So that's how he tailed John Harkes to the motel

 

If Wynalda is wrong then I don't want to be right. Love the guy and we need guys like Eric to help open up the discussion about soccer development in our nation. We have people holding us back and we need to move forward.

 

There is a difference between an open discussion and just being an ignorant idiot.

I'm don't think an open discussion is on Wynalda's agenda.

 

Yes, they are the people who spout stupid shit without looking at basic facts. People who have more access to microphones than brain cells. People who continue to feed our inferiority complexes and act like we need to do things a certain way because that's how they do them in europe.

 

So Wynalda takes Sinaloan drug money to act as a "scout/consultant" for Murcielagos FC and try to pick off SoCal Mexican talent and send it southward in some official capacity--which of course he proved completely incapable of doing, thank the Lord--and now his main concern is winning the World Cup, except the reason we won't do it is because we don't have Pro/Rel or mirror the Continental European calendar.

Hmmm.

Too much of this "big picture" Jackson Pollock thinking; I'd rather hear 45 minutes on how important win bonuses can be to make more MLS games competitive to the final whistle backed up with Eric's Bundesliga anecdotes on the topic. That's a legitimate point to push, and something even MLS players frequently admit would make a difference (to wit, Myers and Besler).

Those more competitive games, in turn, would forge better players. Which in turn could help the US on the national team level.

But the rest of his ranting pantload of mythologies should go back to the sphincter from which they came.

 

I heard Wynalda donated money to Craig James (killed 5 hookers) Senate campaign. (Google it.)

I don't see why discussing changing the schedule of MLS is such a forbidden topic? I don't why anything he talked about should be off the table. These are ideas that are proven to work all around the world. We would "utterly moronic" not to consider them.

 

Putting the off in off-season.

At the very least it appears he "cares" about the league.

But if anything should be taken away from this story/thread, it is not the comments of Wynalda, but rather those of Will Kuhns.

 

If the NSCAA taped the session, what's the over/under on how long it will take Fox to drop him?

 

Change that title!
A "Howard Beale" moment would imply that he is right. Make it "Charlie Sheen" moment.

 

It is easy to discuss it. However, the only people that have the relevant data on the economic side of things is MLS. It is their job to know what times of the year they make more money and how that effects their overall financial well being. Wynalda thinks that the soccer will improve with a schedule change (no evidence for that) and that MLS will make more money (no evidence for that). His idea is to have (as Jasonma pointed out in another thread) basically a 31 week season to fit in the same number of games as we are this year in the 39 weeks this year. It also ignores the unknown factor of if you the average American fan will pay attention to a league that stops for 2 to 3 months. No other sport in America does that so you have no evidence either way.

Basically Wynalda wants MLS to totally change a formula that has, to this point, proven fairly successful (especially the past few years) for a bunch of uncertainty. That would be like me telling you after you bought a nice new house (which you have a mortgage on) and a new car (which you have payments on) that you should change your career to something else because it may make your life better (though I have no actual evidence for that and it may cause you to go bankrupt).

 

He's said something with which his bosses at Fox would disagree, or would cause them to end Wynalda's employment?

I'm assuming Wynalda and Rob Stone will be the studio hosts for FOX's (broadcast) presentation of Arsenal-ManU on 1/22/12.

And as for the titling of this thread -- this is more of a "Preston Zimmerman moment," as it won't have significant impact on anything (beyond the life of this thread).

 

As much as I respect Eric as a player & analyst of soccer games I really don't care who puts MLS games on the tv. Actually with the switch to NBC I will see my direct tv bill go down which is good for me. Also NBC has the potential to reach more people for their system reaches 2x as many people which can bring in more fans. More fans will mean more money for MLS which will mean better players will be drawn in. In turn this will be mean that level fo play might be as good as EPL in a few years. In retrospect this is like the old AFL trying to catch up to the old NFL in the early 1960's. By the 1970's they were equal to each other.

 

As much as I respect Eric as a player & analyst of soccer games I really don't care who puts MLS games on the TV. Actually with the switch to NBC I will see my direct tv bill go down which is good for me. Also NBC has the potential to reach more people for their system reaches 2x as many people which can bring in more fans. More fans will mean more money for MLS which will mean better players will be drawn in. In turn this will be mean that level of play might be as good as EPL in a few years. In retrospect this is like the old AFL trying to catch up to the old NFL in the early 1960's. By the 1970's they were equal to each other.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I'd never stand in front of an audience with a microphone at a convention and talk about what my boss says in meetings...especially meetings I didn't attend.

 

Maybe.

It certainly will be interesting to see what the ramifications are, if any, for these comments.

Again, I'd find it tough to believe that his current employers would take issue with what he said and the forum at which he said it. (maybe I'm incorrect in that supposition.)

 

Don Garber saves MLS again.

heres my idea for a winter sched

 

If he really said that then not even a Picard double face palm is enough to express the dissatisfaction.

I would seriously love to have what he and those execs over at Fox are taking into their bodies. Besides, it's not like Fox ever cared about MLS when the NFL wasn't going on to begin with... Wait, they do? Then that explains the lack of money being poured into production during the non NFL months. If Fox really cared about the league, then why was it that the games were not on Fox/FX more accessible networks, but was relegated to FSC or FSN with FSN re-airs being butchered* to high hell?

*Commercials interjected while the game is playing (missing 30-180 seconds of the game) along with missing 20-40 minutes of game time due to it being completely cut out and claiming, "Due to time constraints". It's in a 2 hour time slot and they're claiming "time constraints"? They NEVER pull that crap with the EPL/UEFA CL broadcasts in the same allocated time slot...

 

True story about my brush with the greatness that is Eric Wynalda...

A few years ago, Eric was calling a match for ESPN in San Jose between the USMNT and China. I'd just finished interviewing Bob Bradley about his first match as head coach and here comes Eric walking behind me and up to the security rope where a large security guard was keeping watch. The guard refused to let him without a press pass or clearance badge, despite Eric telling him repeatedly that he works for ESPN. Hearing this, I turned and said, "hey you're Eric Wynalda!" and introduced myself. We shook hands, and he looks back at the guard who then unhooks the rope and finally lets him in...

The end.

 

The more Wynalda talks, the more he strikes me as the equivalent to a BigSoccer poster who just happens to have a microphone because he was good enough to play in the German second division almost 20 years ago.

 

Let's not generalize, belittle or marginalize the concept of "a BigSoccer poster."

Whether we like it or not, the guy who scored the first goal in league history will likely always have an MLS microphone of sorts.

(Thanks a lot Jeff Agoos.)