That paper was all kinds of embarrassing. Look at all the pro sports jobs England generates compared to America! By the way, what's an "NCAA"?
Proof positive that @Dan Loney can be persuaded when an argument makes sense. 1106256045377236992 is not a valid tweet id But as usual, Ted latched on for the ride, like a barnacle with a boat fetish.
The word "cookie" is one of the last vestiges of the New Netherland colony and I won't stand for this Anglo nonsense about biscuits.
No it's a wider issue with the American Higher education system which is reliant on donations, endowments and student's (and their families) paying for the University particularly as public funding goes down, at least as a percentage of cost. Also with the general pervasive attitude that rules are only for people who can't afford to ignore them. And finally a desire by parents to make sure their child's college is of a high enough stature that they can impress their friends and social media followers with it. This scandal for sure has a lot of layers to it, and seems to have hit a nerve in our country. But none of this has ANYTHING to do with pro/rel. You could eliminate all college athletics tomorrow, from Alabama football, to UC Santa Barbara's Ultimate Frisbee team and it wouldn't make pro/rel more or less likely to happen. Just look at Baseball and Hockey. Neither rely heavily on the college game, instead drafting the top players at 18. Yet both have had professional teams for over 100 years without pro/rel.
He told me about it. He said you seemed to be a nice guy in person at the game, then you tried to tar him as a racist on the interwebz only a few days later. Stay classy, Dan. Not sure if this was the same incident I witnessed when you harassed this particular journalist, but in the case where I personally observed one of your tirades over the course of a 30 minute lunch break, it was closer to "hundreds" of random jibberish posts than dozens. Roy is neither. He's not even particularly a fan of soccer, which gives me a unique appreciation for someone who pens a newspaper article a few years ago supportive of promotion/relegation in soccer, and then summarily gets TROLLED by at least two of BigSoccer's usual suspects... I can be accused of being a crybaby on this forum in particular, except I prefer to play the "victim card" on behalf of not just myself, but on behalf of all the other former-BigSoccer posters I've met on twitter who happen to be a pretty intelligent, well-informed lot. And you are clearly the latter, a hypocrite pretending to be an above-the-fray journalist on BS while simultaneously trolling as an anti-Pro/Rel psychopath with a bot/sockpuppet collection on the twitter machine... just ask the good folks at Motorik FC about that. Alamo City SC looks like some sort of youth club, yes. Especially when the anti-Pro/Rel troll who posts under it pretends to be some sort of expert on the sport of soccer, well... I read the exchange. He, in no way, shape, or form, spammed HTTK. If anything, the opposite was true. Besides, spamming people on twitter seems to be your job there, sporty. And kudos to Roy Bragg for putting MLS fanboy HailToTheKing in his place... as an anti-ProRel perpetual MLS apologist pretending to be an expert on everything. That's so funny coming from you. Did some Pro/Rel advocate take a piss in your Wheaties or Cheerios prior to me changing my mind on Pro/Rel for American soccer? In 2007? or 2009? Or 2011? Or maybe as recently as 2013? Because I simply haven't witnessed people pulling the same crap you pull. Not since I started following "the movement," such that it is... Why wouldn't he want to view evidence of the crime? I was so surprised when you pulled that psycho twitter spamming bullshit on me that I didn't even have the wherewithal to do a simple Screenshot. Q: What is accomplished when Loney spams like that? The discussion gets circumvented? Erased? I'd heard he'd done shit like that before, but hadn't ever seen how it works. A: Nothing but poisoning the well. He is the other Ted. Q: I had no idea he was a total sicko. That's way over the line, totally creepy. I reported it to twitter so they can keep track if he does that to others... sheesh. A: Lol, go read his blog on BigSoccer. It's not just a couple of poignant articles, it's weekly crazy. Well, you just keep telling yourself that. I guess you take the tact that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth, eh? My change of heart on ProRel (my thoughts on Pro/Rel activists prior to 2014 or 2015 boiled down to a simple: "Have fun storming the castle") started back when I was told MLS may overexpand past 24 teams to 28 and was inspired initially by my frustration at dealing with USL and the NASL. Both seemed to want me to sell prospective owners/investors/sponsors on a "this is as good as Oklahoma will ever get" salespitch and the director of franchise devlopment from USL even told me in 2009 point blank: "Oklahoma will never get MLS." But they touted the 11k-seat ballpark I was trying to save in Tulsa as something that could be as successful as what their flagship team was doing at the time: the Portland Timbers. Yet I knew that the very people I'd desperately wanted to get involved were some of the same people who proposed dueling MLS bids in OKC and Tulsa in early 2000s. And to this day, I believe OKC Energy FC's Bob Funk Jr was on the fence with USL until the league changed its salespitch into "USL would be a better springboard to MLS than the NASL" because of Orlando and the new affiliation agreements. I believe that got Sacramento off the fence, also. So, there is ample evidence that the opportunity to buy expansion into MLS will spur investment in USL even as a stepping stone/incubator... so, wouldn't logic dictate if promotion on the field of play and satisfying some baseline stadium criteria was the only way to get into MLS, that would also spur investment? More investment in lower division soccer from places like Austin and Nashville than would otherwise be the case? ... Why yes, yes I think it surely would. Who are you channeling here, the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz? I don't have to. A surprising numnber of American soccer fans already find it interesting, at times compelling, and a solid majority are in favor of some version of it happening here in America. I thought at the time that my enthusiasm for how Promotion/Relegation including MLS could change the game in positive ways and mitigate the stratification between D1 MLS and whoever occupies D2 might only be a phase I was going through but over the past 4+ years... Garber needlessly insulted the ideal of a Pro/Rel that included MLS and the reality of Chattanooga FC at BlazerCon, a media mogul made MLS a $4bil offer if the league would move to Pro/Rel, the US men failed to qualify for a 32 team World Cup, the Columbus Crew (the closest thing MLS ever had to a grassroots team) were very nearly destroyed and relocated to Austin, a Cosmos owner made a commitment of $500mil and USSF doesn't even want to meet/deal with him, while MLS won't even stop expanding once they get to 28, and USL just recently renamed their three divisions after an English open system that prominently features promotion/relegation both between its divisions and the EPL itself... So, if you're a ProRel cynic who only believes that the only reason it should ever be instituted is if there are "too many teams," why yes, yes indeed, I really do believe that 28 or 30 or 32 teams really is too many for a single entity league that will never dominate globally in its current format and will never have the kind of appeal that "best in the world" major leagues like the NFL, NBA, MLB and the NHL enjoy... Oh, well okay then. Bye, Felisha. /end rant
ftfy EDIT: Fine. Senpai shall notice you. Screenshots of how I accused this Louisville fan of racism, or shut the ******** up. You and Bragg have been wearing my boot marks on your asses for literally years now, because - say it with me - you can dish it out, but you can't take it. Neither of you - none of you - could make a coherent case if your sanity depended on it, because obviously it did and you couldn't. For you, the day I graced you with callouts on your hypocrisy about spamming, unless you're the ones who get to do it, was the most important day of your lives. For me, it was Tuesday. So take my name out of your mouth, McCollum. You tried, you failed, you lost. Pick up the broken pieces of your miserable life and try to move on.
How? How is this over-expanding. You've never made a coherent argument why, in a country the size of the US (including Canada's biggest cities) that we should limit the size of leagues to to 20 teams other than "reasons". And unlike NBA/NFL/MLB, there's not a huge risk of talent dilution since we have an entire planet's worth of players to choose from. You would rather hamstring the growth of the game to implement your preferred standings gimmick. That belief is based on nothing more than your opinion and isn't supported by any sort of fact. It's just you ranting in the wind because Tulsa didn't get a MLS team. First, we can support 30 D1 teams easily. We could probably support up to 48 before the league gets too cumbersome to deal with but I don't see there being that many investors to make that scenario a reality. Secondly, the only thing really holding MLS back from being the best league in the world is that they're not paying players at the levels of the EPL and the other major Euro leagues. If you copied and pasted the NBA salary structure into MLS, they'd easily be able to out-spend most Euro leagues and thus attract world class talent. The market isn't there yet. That was a pubicity stunt and you know it. At least you should. Do you watch a lot of Flat Earth videos on YouTube and think "they bring up some good points"? So did Italy and the Netherlands. Maybe they need pro/rel? Oh wait... Philadelphia says "hi" on the grassroots part. The Crew were saved and Austin also gets a team. It was the best possible solution. If the Crew or any MLS team was relegated, they'd either go out of business or move within three years, I'd be willing to put a $20 on that. Pro/rel doesn't stop relocations Because his "deal" was nothing. He wanted to prop up NASL but only if they could stay D2 despite being in clear violation of the statutes. Did you make a cheesecake and are looking for a good topping because you're doing some severe cherry picking. Why should they? Owners are willing to invest in soccer and are willing to invest in MLS. More MLS teams is great for the game and it exposes more people to the sport. You want them to stop because...reasons? And? USL again is investing in the game. They just today announced a youth system and you have a problem with this because they chose the same naming criteria as the English leagues? The hell? You really hate to see the growth that the game has made in spite of not using your preferred standings gimmick don't you? There's literally no problem that exists in the American soccer system that pro/rel comes close to solving. Get over it.
LOL. Damn if you're not outright delusional. You were the one who resorted to twitter spamming dozens upon dozens of times after you were OWNED on a one-on-one twitter discussion about Promotion/Relegation by both myself and then months later by Mr. Bragg. You could have simply just "agreed to disagree" but no.... You were so embarrassed by it that you felt the need to repeatedly post random gibberish in order to move the twitter discussion beyond where anyone could read it in order to save face... why else would you resort to that kind of behavior?
I maintain that limiting the top division to 20 teams is a recipe for more club relocations, regardless of whether or not there is pro/rel. China is the poster child for that. When there are far more large cities than there are places in the top division, it is much less expensive and far more certain to buy a club and relocate it than to build up a club from scratch. Also, there is nothing preventing eventual pro/rel with a 30-team top division. Indonesia had a 36-team top division for many years.
His fantasy team and twitter account predates that club. Are you saying that you object to people having twitter accounts named for clubs they have no official affiliation with...? But just to illustrate that it's not us, it's you, earlier today I sent the following DM to somebody who was involved in the aforementioned thread: "Full disclosure: Usrufnex & I have a significant history on Bigsoccer. As I hope is clear, I prefer an interesting, civil debate. As you'll have observed, I'm also not above fighting fire with fire where snark is concerned. So it was with this fella a few years back. The problem is, he's a classic case of dishing it out without taking it. In fact he blows a gasket if the tone is slightly less than reverential so he's a magnet for mockery. I've been guilty of mocking him pretty hard but in my defence, I've also apologized for my part, offered olive branches. Tried to point out why he gets those reactions (he gets them everywhere). The whole forum has participated in efforts to soften the tone over the years (I personally relented a long time ago)... except him." This was a reasonable guy who is actually an advocate of pro/rel. Imagine my surprise when his response (which out of respect for his privacy, I won't paste verbatim), was that he was aware of you and that you'd already blocked him. I also can't help but notice in the thread that you linked, you elected not to respond to my calmly-worded, logical post but to rant at Dan and Kenn about anti-pro/rel herds and one of your dull stories about talking directly to various league officials in an unknown capacity and being told Tulsa might be MLS team 28. Always the drama, never the conversation you say you want to have.
Yes he is. Most of SA sports fans that aren't just fleeting by to be hip with some friends will agree with one of, if not both. See, this is particularly funnt because I've seen Roy and his schtick DEVOLVE over the course of the years. I can remember him serving up decent stuff regularly. Somewhere along the way he quit doing that and turned into HOT TAKE HEADLINE guy/fluff piece for clicks #981737163 .... Why? You said it yourself. He's not really a fan. He doesn't give a shit. He has stated publicly he puts shit out just to start shit. At this point he's nothing but an employed version of you with a legit platform through which to spew his shit. No wonder you've latched on for dear life. You're holding up and preaching the virtue of a guy who literally doesn't give a shit about you or the piece your championing. If NO pro/rel was the hot button he'd be thumping that At least you finally admit it. Oh God ... Because THEY are the picture of right. Jesus you keep digging a hole. It's astounding. To people that can't read or purposely pretend something isn't there to attempt to discredit someone, sure. I do have SOME expertise on the sport, inner workings of sport, and the like ... yes. Though what you're alluding to is no more than what you shit all over the place as gospel. [quoteI read the exchange. He, in no way, shape, or form, spammed HTTK. If anything, the opposite was true.[/quote] Patently false Jeff. I called him on his fluff article that took shots at the SA fans. You know, the article through which you found your now Obi-Wonesque figure. You were already late to the party and then, as always, saw what you wanted. The piece itself was spam genius. He did nothing of the sort. He, just like FCA LAT on twitter, got shown to be full of shit. Being a STATE OF THE GAME IN THE US REALIST isn't being an MLS apologist. I don't have to pretend to be anything in circles with you Jeff. You're an idiot, liar, and piece of shit. Simply not being you makes me better on every level possible. Literally everything you post. Literally your MO Jesus ******** Jeff .... NO HE REALLY DIDN'T.
Pfft! Indonesia are a soccer backwater. Come back when there's a league in a nation that's globally renowned for their soccer. Like Argentina. Who have 26 teams in their D1 this year and had 28 the last.
Because it's all you deserve. What does Ted Westervelt do besides spam and troll? What does Roy Bragg do besides spam and troll? What do you do besides spam and troll? Me telling you about the history of my last name is, by far, the most interesting thing that has ever been on your feed. Me explaining fantasy sports to Bragg - likewise. You want a link to the best thing you ever wrote? Here's your crowning achievement, after years of support and advocacy: http://www.tulsaroughnecks.com/blog.html Hey, nobody steal his stuff, all right? It's copyrighted
Chinese league outspends clubs like Chelsea, resulting in Chelsea management complaining they can't compete with those kind of salaries. Yet the Chinese league isnot making a dent in the world of soccer. The same will go for the mls, if they pay Chinese contracts sums. Mls can't beat the UEFA cup competitions.
It's all we deserve after beating your ass so bad in separate twitter discussions that you felt you had no choice but to bury the headline? You so funny. 1. He posts some pretty amazing and compelling stuff that proves soccer wasn't only popular during just the MLS era or NASL era. 2. Alot of what he posts are retweets from fans frustrated at the current system and who look fondly at the concept of Promotion/Relegation. 3. His views have been consistent and have stood the test of time pretty well IMHO, even if I don't agree with the most conspiratorial of them. 4. Unlike you over the past few years, Ted has earned at least some begrudging respect from me. 5. Despite observing how the guy gets routinely trolled by anti-Pro/Rel sockpuppets with zero followers, his comments on his retweets will always make more sense than your 7-part vindictive BigSoccer hatchet job on the Deloitte Report. Roy has never been so butthurt as to lower himself to cut-and-paste dozens upon dozens of random gibberish posts in order to avoid taking responsibility for losing an argument the way you have. He doesn't spam or troll while you clearly do both of those things. I have never been so butthurt as to lower myself to cut-and-paste dozens upon dozens of random gibberish posts in order to avoid taking responsibility for losing an argument the way you have. I don't spam or troll while you clearly do both of those things. How would you know? That's right, you don't. And frankly, if BigSoccer knew half of your bizarro shenanigans, they'd never let you post 75% of the content on their blog. I'm sure he appreciated being educated by such an expert as yourself. /sarcasm Says the guy who's so butthurt by my POV in favor of reform in USSF including Pro/Rel that you feel the need to vindictively write a 7 part hatchet job on the Deloitte Report and psychotically spam my twitter feed with random gibberish after getting your butt kicked in a one-on-one discussion about why I want to see Pro/Rel in the USA. Oooh, burn. /sarcasm
Did I say every team is outspending Chelsea? Nope. However, if you're paying even NHL levels, you're able to attract some of the best players. Top stars in their prime would easily be swayed to come to NY, LA, or Miami for $3 million a year. Of course since MLS isn't in UEFA, they're never playing head-to-head but do you really think that matters if they're paying top dollar. Keep in mind, that $3.1 million is average for NHL rookies with the league minimum around $650,000. Couple that with the strong players unions we have here and that you're not subject to totalitarian regimes like in China, it's a pretty sweet deal. Spending at just the NHL level puts MLS above all but one of the top leagues in Europe, which is what I said.
Yep. Let's make a big deal because MLS teams who haven't even really started their seasons are getting out played by Mexican teams in mid-season form with higher payrolls! I bet if I put some video about an amateur team getting smoked by a USL Championship side you'd get all butthurt about it though.
You deserved the accolade, much like how Vladimir Putin deserves Man of the Year honors. Congrats to you and your bots & sockpuppets! Meanwhile, here in the real world... Yesterday leading up to the FIFA Council meeting in Miami via email and hand delivery to Gianni Infantino, all the members of the @FIFAcom ExCo, @ussoccer and @Concacaf over 100 US clubs spoke up in support of @StockadeFC and @TheMiamiFC's CAS case by asking for #ProRelForUSA. pic.twitter.com/Ues40o4Y9n— Chris Kessell (@THEChrisKessell) March 14, 2019