You still didn't answer my question. No, it's not. The standards don't cater for the possibility of pro/rel leagues. We've discussed this several times on here.
It doesn't matter what my opinion on that is. It does zero moving the conversation forward and honestly I have zero interest catering to your deflecting BS. As it's a lame ploy to not engage in anything less than name calling.
You didn't rebut anything I said. The NFL has such a unique broadcast deal it's really an anomaly to talk about but let's use the NBA or MLB for example since they have similar situations and MLS more closely resembles both leagues in terms of media rights. If the NBA sat a negotiating table with Turner Sports (OH NO TURNER HAS THE BROADCAST RIGHTS TO MARCH MADNESS!!! THAT'S A CLEAR CONFLICT OF INTEREST!!) Sorry. Anyway the NBA sits down with Turner and says "we're going to kick the Knicks out of the league next year because they suck. We'll take $2 billion for our national TV rights, please", they'll get laughed out of the room. On a similar token, if the Cincinnati Reds went in to Fox Sports Ohio and said "we want $20 million for our TV rights but we're playing in AAA now because we sucked last year" they'll also be laughed out of the room. It looks like MLS is going the NFL route with the league controlling all media rights deals, including regional and streaming, since they've asked their franchises not to extend media rights beyond 2020 or something like that. The ACC just pulled down a $1.8 billion media rights deal with ESPN that includes a ton of content for ESPN+. I'm not saying MLS is getting anything close to that but I wouldn't be surprised to see them get a deal that blows their previous one out of the water provided they put all their online content on ESPN+. Either way, that much money flowing into the owners/investors pockets is going to make kicking teams out of a league for one bad season even less likely unless USL decides to do it within their own self-contained pyramid.
Wrong again. The standards are set up to provide a divisional framework. If USL wants to do pro/rel within itself or in partnership with another league, they can. But you know this. You just want USSF to bludgeon MLS, etc to accept a Europeans system where a cartel-like FA gets to arbitrarily set league size and force an outdated and unnecessary organizational gimmick on pro leagues. Thank goodness we have a superior system here.
Wrong again. There are several facets of the standards that clearly don't take into consideration pro/rel leagues. I want the USSF to create a level playing field for closed and pro/rel leagues. We don't.
Yes but the build-up to World Cup could be quite lucrative. I'd expect some high-profile friendlies for the US and Mexico and SUM sort of dress rehearsal , similar to what was the Confederations Cup. And I know Silva doesn't have $6 billion, but he didn't have $4 billion when he offered $4 billion did he?
Nothing that can't be worked around. Most leagues have standards. Most leagues have issued waivers when necessary, see SD Eibar. The PLS were created with the agreement of all three pro-rel leagues at that time.
Why should a waiver be needed to run a set of pro/rel leagues? It's something that the USSF could proactively address if it were actually interested in creating a level playing field for pro/rel leagues. It's actions suggest it prefers to go down the road of having an overarching closed league.
How am I wrong? USSF rightly approved standards for each division that were approved by its membership. I don't think USSF has any right to dictate anything in the pro game but it's a FIFA issue so here we are. Until USSF bans the existence of pro/rel leagues, which they haven't, you'll continue to be wrong. USSF isn't mandating pro/rel leagues, which they should never have the right to. They have. Meet divisional standards, you get sanctioned. USSF is taking the NCAA route of letting its constituent leagues add and subtract members as they see fit provided each team meets divisional standards or has a plan to do so at the time of their acceptance to the higher league. If USL gets enough teams that meet D1 standards (which aren't that outlandish) and USL wants to create a Premier League and promote and relegate from USL-1 up to USL-Premier, they can. There's literally nothing stopping them. Oh but we do. We don't have an FA telling some sections of our country (which have more autonomy than the "countries in the UK") that they can't be part of the same league as teams in say California. We don't have an FA telling Canadian teams that they can't be a part of MLS or USL because of...reasons. If we wanted to create a North American Super League with Liga MX, nothing is stopping us. Our FA is hands-off as it should be.
So here is a counterpoint.... Couldn't you just sell the lower division as part of the entire package?
Why? I'm not trying to be overly snarky but that doesn't really solve anything. I'm sure USL could try to do such a thing if they wanted to do pro/rel in-house but...why? Another big selling point is matchups so if the Dodgers got relegated down to AAA, they can't sell their rivalry with the Giants when the Dodgers are stuck in a league with Reno. Adding a lower league to the TV package (which now doubles the amount of teams you need to find a timeslot for) seems like trying to fit the square peg of pro/rel into the round hole of the reality of sports business. It's like the whole MLS1 and MLS2 thing that "media" people sometime fawn over. It doesn't make sense when you have a far superior system of just having a large major league divided by regions.
This is a pretty big misrepresentation of the Canadian teams in USSF leagues. They play in MLS or USL because there is no Canadian equivalency and the various federations and confederations have granted waivers to the Canadian teams to play in USSF leagues. I guaran-damn-tee your "laissez-faire" FA would put the hammer down on San Antonio trying to join Ascenso MX. This is actually super not true. Assuming the USSF and FMF were both cool with it, it would still need to be approved by CONCACAF and FIFA. The former may be an easier sell (although probably not under its current administration) given the clout of US and Mexico within the confederation, but the latter is definitely no given. "Nothing is stopping us except the fact that none of these teams could play in FIFA events or whatever" is a pretty big hurdle.
Yes, they do. There is NOTHING stopping a league from going to the PLS Committee with a detailed plan to "cater" to a league with Pro/Rel. Further, there is NOTHING stopping USL, MLS, etc. from implementing Promotion and Relegation if they want to. Well...............according to one favorite Canadian poster on BS.........the CSA does have that sort of say and influence............ I disagree as the rest of CONCACAF would oppose this, particualrly the head of CONCACAF Victor Montagliano who used to be the head of the CSA. Has any league come to them with a SERIOUS plan to have promotion and relegation? Has any league or it's officials gone to the USSF and the PLS committee and stated with a plan that they intend to have pro/rel between it's leagues? If they have, it's not public knowledge. Contrary to popular belief the USSF is and has always been extremely laisez faire when it comes to the professional game and professional leagues in the US. This is why it's nothing short of miracle that MLS is going nearly 25 years now & the USL has three levels with over 50 teams combined. It's also a big reason as to why the lower divisions in this country have had such a revolving door of teams through the past 50 years. The federation leaves the governance / regulation / running of professional leagues to the professional leagues themselves. Hell, the PLS was created largely by the NASL with the sole purpose of keeping the USL down (the owners who didn't agree with them which caused the split). This was barely a decade ago......in 2009-2010 folks were still fighting for the survival of the pro game in the US. Even with the recent expansion of MLS at that time, many still didn't believe the league would truly take hold. Never mind the survival of the USL & NASL at that time. @Expansion Franchise the USSF has granted waivers in the past. IMO, the granting of those waivers was just making the problems of the lower divisions grow and fester. The USSF's hands off approach to the professional game in this country is a huge reason as to why they are spending so much time and money on legal matters these days. IMO the federation only has themselves to blame for all of their legal troubles. The hands off approach to pro leagues, and the endless granting of waivers opened the door for Commisso and Silva to sue them when they suddenly weren't granted a waiver again. Their appeasement of the USWNT, and subsidizing of the USWNT members pro salaries for the teams in the various iterations of Women's Pro Leagues over the past 2 decades has directly lead to them being sued by their own employees (the USWNT). The fact is that the USSF is a weak organization. If they were actually a strong federation and had strong leadership that wasn't afraid to piss people off in order to grow and move the game forward in this country, a lot of these problems wouldn't exist (i.e. lawsuits, player unrest, etc.). In their effort to make everyone happy, as it turns out very few are happy. The USSF still has not figured out what to do with all of the money it made from hosting the Copa America Centenal. They're too busy listening to all of their constituents grovel and beg for a piece of that pie instead of making a plan to use it to grow the game in this country. The English FA went out and built St Georges. Sporting KC went out and built a National Training Center ($70M private and public $$$)..........which the USSF barely uses.........Seriously....a Pro Team built the USSF a training center. That's how weak the USSF is. Over the past decade Pro Teams (mostly the evil MLS teams) have invested hundred's of millions of dollars on training and youth development infrastructure and programs. When is the USSF going to build a national training center??? When are they going to construct a concrete plan with benchmarks for moving the national teams forward?
The USSF is supposed to have a master plan, but haven't reached their financial targets yet. I posted it in a forum a long way away, a long long time ago. Bear in mind that it took them 149 years using all that money they make from Premier League teams. The FA was far worse than USSF and CSA (see Hillsborough) until it started to take a professional approach in the 1990s. Just a bunch of county associations plus endless gin and tonics.
FFS. What's USSF supposed to do? Tear up the SUM contract and bundle with another sports marketing company? Not a single truther has an answer to this. It's the great mountain out of a molehill that the pro/rel cult clings to as evidence that big bad ML$ is keeping them down. Once again...the SUM/USSF deal has nothing to do with pro/rel.
IMG did f all for USSF. The main competition for SUM must be Relevant Sports, the company that tried to bring La Liga to the US.
Talking about yourself again I see. Nervous about who your first National League opponent will be - when are the fixtures out?