2020 San Jose Earthquakes regular season schedule

How exciting, we play on Leap Day, what could possible go wrong.

 

G, you're going to update this thread with the real schedule when it comes out or maybe rename it to be more accurate?

 

Yup, two games isn't our entire season

 

Cool!

 

They just keep creeping the schedule up more and more every year. Next year we'll start on Valentine's Day, and maybe in three years they'll end on December 31st and start back up on January 1st. MLS needs to realize that less is more. You need to give fans (and players) a rest.

Plus, for those teams that aren't particularly competitive, you're prolonging the suffering for those fans, which I would think would further drive interest away from the league. And that's not to even mention the weather impact. Even San Jose is not a great place to watch a game starting at 7 or 7:30 that early in the year.

 

The opener on February 29 has an afternoon start time.

 

For every market? How about the rest of March? There's just no justifiable reason to start that early in the year. If it were being done to stop play during the hottest summer months, I could maybe see it. But they're still going to be playing games in Texas in August. It's just so they can cram more games in than they need to. Reduce the number of games, shorten the length of the season.

I honestly think the number of league games should be capped at 30, with the season starting April 1st, ending October 31st.

 

"Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?" -- Marv Levy

 

I feel like the rest time is way too long. I’m ready to go to a game.

 

Two questions. One, do you have season tickets? 2, did you follow the MLS season all the way to MLS Cup? And a third question for good measure: do you follow any other sports or have a seasonal hobby of some kind?

I imagine if I cared about the league enough to follow it through to the final game, or if there weren't other sports I enjoyed, I might not feel as though the off-season was too short. But given the time investment of going to every home game and balancing that with family life/responsibilities and my other hobbies, it is somewhat of a relief when the season is over.

But just as I think the league is expanding more than it can realistically sustain right now, I think it's also beyond the acceptable saturation level for the enjoyment of a lot of fans. I could very well be wrong about that, but I suggested the April to October season with 30 games because it breaks down to roughly one league game per week. This does not include playoffs, so you'd extend the season into November ultimately. But a game a week for 30 weeks seems like a sweet spot to me.

I dread when the full season schedule comes out with its terribly uneven distribution of games, all so there can be fixtures against teams I could not care less about.

 

Yes. Yes. And yes. And I'm chomping at the bit for my next Quakes game.

 

What else do you think I give a f@#$ about?!



Sorry, I don’t really mean that. I just couldn’t resist.

For the most part, I don’t watch the playoffs. Some years, if there’s a team I (sort of) like, other than the Quakes, I’ll watch. I don’t watch any other sports. My deal with my wife is that I can only follow one sport, so I picked soccer because it’s my first sports love, and it’s on TV all year around.

I don’t have no season tickets, but then I live 675 or so miles away. My live soccer fix is often the local Community College team. (They are usually really, really good.)

I could see aligning our season with the Scandinavian countries — more or less early March to early November. That would make transfers between the leagues easy. BUT, MLS is much better than those leagues, so there’s not a lot of profit in that for us. So, I’m good with our season running late February to late October, plus playoffs, which OUR team never makes, ‘cuz we suck like a Dyson.

I have lots of other hobbies, they aren’t really seasonal, but are rather all year activities. (Well, hiking is mostly a spring to fall sort of deal, because it rains a boatload where I live.)

I am concerned about the length of the season on the players though. If we keep expanding, we’re going to have to go to West teams only play West teams and East only East. It will be like two separate leagues. That or we’ll have the top teams play each other and the bottom feeders play each other, and it will be functionally two leagues. The USA can certainly support 50 or 60 soccer teams. We’re easily big enough, we’re just going to have to organize regionally and then have playoffs to settle who’s best. (Not going to be SJ until Fisher dies and we get a new owner.)

Oh well, time for more alcohol. (No season to that.)

Go Quakes!!

- Mark

 

You champ at the bit just like you stamp at your grounds .

 

Well, the point is mute.

 

This is the longest offseason in quite a while.

15-16: 89 days
16-17: 82 days
17-18: 83 days
18-19: 83 days
19-20: 100 days

That's MLS Cup to Opening Day. The gap between Quakes home games:

15-16: 141 days
16-17: 138 days
17-18: 131 days
18-19: 131 days
19-20: 152 days

 

I'm glad it's a longer break than in previous years, and that means they shouldn't have to start the season in February. I am guessing that the longer off-season is because of the fewer number of post-season games. So I'm more curious about the time between the regular season beginning and ending, since those are the only guaranteed games each year.

In any case, I stand by my position of April to October for the regular season.

 

They moved MLS Cup one month earlier and shortened the playoff format without making a big change in the start date. 2015-2019 all started on the first weekend in March. We'll see if the 2020 schedule marks a permanent creep into February or if it's a one-time thing because of the leap day falling on a Saturday.

 

Yes to all. Even though MLS is adding teams to the league you’ll note that the number of league games is not increasing. This is both good and bad. Good because it means teams can focus on the CCL and LC (crucial for expanding MLS fan base) and bad because it means we don’t get to play every team anymore.

 

I would consider starting a week earlier than usual to be pretty significant, especially if they shaved off time at the end of the season by shortening the playoffs. Doesn't seem like moving up was necessary at all, in that case, which is why it's baffling to me.

I just don't get the sense that there's any reason behind moving it up other than the usual inability of the league to create a reasonably coherent schedule. I am pretty confident we're going to see crowded multi-game weeks and weird weeks off like we typically do.

 

Quakes opened last season on March 2. So, it's two days earlier this upcoming year. One day, if you consider that last year, February 29 fell on March 1.

 

I'm betting this means the California Clasico will heretofore be one game each season. I'll bet Garber and the league are more interested in an LAG/LAFC rivalry...

 

What MLS should start considering is start their season during the Bye Week before the Super Bowl, have the northern teams either play indoors or on the road to warmer climates and take a few bye weeks off for International breaks in the earlier part of the season.

We had two 3 game road trips in August and September in 2019 so I don't see the difference....


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