I never thought I'd say this about BigSoccer in general, but I'm really glad we have a fairly civil crowd here. There's SO much hate for CHI/NJ/BOS going on over on Equalizer right now on that expansion article...
I think it would be tough to go back to the Northeastern corridor again at this point. Personally, I still like my idea of Sky Blue broadening it's base and playing half it's home matches in Philly.
I'll read the articles there, but I avoid the comments like the plague. Although, I would like to see SBFC move closer to Philly, so one of the NYC MLS teams could start a NWSL team (now that NYCFC is launched, they would be a prime candidate for NWSL, seeing what their ownership is doing with the Man City women's team).
Let's say three new franchises join the league in 2016. That increases the # of teams in the league to 12. 1/4 of those 12 teams would be expansion teams. How would you "feed" their rosters? Obviously there would probably be an expansion draft. I mean, why wouldn't there be, right? This time, however, each of the current 9 franchises would be allowed to protect less players than before. Maybe 7 players at most, and within those 7, 2 allocated players at most. Therefore, most teams would be protecting 5 non-allocated and 2 allocated = 7 total protected players. You've gotta leave enough talent out there for the new franchises to build upon. I could see the protections end up like this (allocated players in bold text): Boston: McCaffrey, Ketlen, King, Whitehill, Kallman, Mewis, Naeher Chicago: Huerta, DiBernardo, Colaprico, Gilliland, Chalupny, Press, Johnston FCKC: Hagen, Groom, Tymrak, Buczkowski, Robinson, Holiday, Sauerbrunn Houston: Ohai, McDonald, Brian, Bach, Ochs, Lloyd, Klingenberg Portland: Long, Farrelly, Zerboni, Williamson, Angerer, Morgan, Sinclair Seattle: Yanez, Little, Fishlock, Brooks, Fletcher, Rapinoe, Solo Sky Blue: Kerr, Nadim, Freels, Killion, Foord, Grubka, O'Hara Washington: Banini, Nairn, Huster, DaCosta, Oyster, Dunn, Krieger WNY Flash: L. Williams, S. Mewis, Dahlkemper, Edwards, Taylor, Engen, Leroux That leaves plenty of talent out there for the three expansion teams to gobble up. They would possibly keep the same rule as before. For every time a player is drafted from your team, you get to protect one more of your non-protected players. At most, 5 players from your roster can be poached. I would say the expansion draft would feature 10 rounds. 10 rounds * 3 expansion teams = 30 draft picks taken in the expansion draft, with no more than 5 players being poached from each of the 9 non-expansion teams. I would give each of the 3 expansion teams the Top 3 picks of each round in the college draft. They would need to build a young nucleus, as it's perceived that each of the current 9 teams would "protect" their best "young" talent. The college draft would feature 4 rounds. The expansion teams now have 10 expansion picks, and 4 college picks = 14 players. The other 6+ players need to come from internationals, discovery, free agency, try-outs, etc. Thoughts?
A) No way there are three "new" teams in a league with less than 15 teams already. Even MLS hasn't had an increase in a single year of more than 20% before. B) There aren't three teams even aiming for 2016 right now. Atlanta is, but SLC and Indy are talking 2017, and Pittsburgh is talking 2018. C) Why in the world start a new thread asking about new teams when we already have two? Mods, can we merge this back into the American Expansion Possibilities thread? Or infrastructure challenges? Or just lock?
Let's say three new franchises join the league in 2016. That increases the # of teams in the league to 12. 1/4 of those 12 teams would be expansion teams. How would you "feed" their rosters? Obviously there would probably be an expansion draft. I mean, why wouldn't there be, right? This time, however, each of the current 9 franchises would be allowed to protect less players than before. Maybe 7 players at most, and within those 7, 2 allocated players at most. Therefore, most teams would be protecting 5 non-allocated and 2 allocated = 7 total protected players. You've gotta leave enough talent out there for the new franchises to build upon. I could see the protections end up like this (allocated players in bold text): Boston: McCaffrey, Ketlen, King, Whitehill, Kallman, Mewis, Naeher Chicago: Huerta, DiBernardo, Colaprico, Gilliland, Chalupny, Press, Johnston FCKC: Hagen, Groom, Tymrak, Buczkowski, Robinson, Holiday, Sauerbrunn Houston: Ohai, McDonald, Brian, Bach, Ochs, Lloyd, Klingenberg Portland: Long, Farrelly, Zerboni, Williamson, Angerer, Morgan, Sinclair Seattle: Yanez, Little, Fishlock, Brooks, Fletcher, Rapinoe, Solo Sky Blue: Kerr, Nadim, Freels, Killion, Foord, Grubka, O'Hara Washington: Banini, Nairn, Huster, DaCosta, Oyster, Dunn, Krieger WNY Flash: L. Williams, S. Mewis, Dahlkemper, Edwards, Taylor, Engen, Leroux That leaves plenty of talent out there for the three expansion teams to gobble up. They would possibly keep the same rule as before. For every time a player is drafted from your team, you get to protect one more of your non-protected players. At most, 5 players from your roster can be poached. I would say the expansion draft would feature 10 rounds. 10 rounds * 3 expansion teams = 30 draft picks taken in the expansion draft, with no more than 5 players being poached from each of the 9 non-expansion teams. I would give each of the 3 expansion teams the Top 3 picks of each round in the college draft. They would need to build a young nucleus, as it's perceived that each of the current 9 teams would "protect" their best "young" talent. The college draft would feature 4 rounds. The expansion teams now have 10 expansion picks, and 4 college picks = 14 players. The other 6+ players need to come from internationals, discovery, free agency, try-outs, etc. Thoughts?
Well there is a very good possibility that there will be expansion in 2016... but I guess this thread isn't about actual expansion. If they announce actual expansion, a dedicated thread for that would be nice. (btw, I agree I don't see 3 teams joining in 2016, if they couldn't add a team in 2015 because of the WWC, the Olympics would surely create the same sort of problem for 2016 making even one difficult.)
>Per Hal Kaiser at keepernotes.com, commissioner Jeff Plush said an expansion announcement could come early in the summer. The Equalizer’s Jeff Husted was there and reports that per Plush, three of the six expansion candidates are MLS teams and there are three to the east of the Mississippi River and three to the west of it. Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis are known to be interested in the NWSL. Unless I'm mistaken, since PIT, IND, and ATL are all eastern cities, and only SLC of those four is MLS, that indicates the other two are western conference MLS cities doesn't it? That gives us two out of: San Jose LA Galaxy LA FC Denver Dallas Vancouver Minneapolis I'm not counting Sacramento because they haven't actually been approved for MLS expansion yet. I don't think Minneapolis is likely; I live there and haven't heard a peep. We also don't even have a stadium yet. San Jose's made some noise in the past (http://equalizersoccer.com/2015/02/11/the-lowdown-when-where-nwsl-expansion/), so I'm inclined to think they'd be one of them. People have been talking up Mia Hamm's part ownership of LAFC and asking her about it, (http://equalizersoccer.com/2014/10/30/mia-hamm-owner-los-angeles-mls-lafc-as-roma-board/) but I don't know how much weight to give to those answers. Vancouver used to have a team, and it'd be good to have a Canadian club on board, but they've been flaky in the past and just closed their women's side a couple years ago. Don't have much data on Colorado, but the Plush connection seems unlikely to be a coincidence. Haven't heard anything about Dallas or the Galaxy, which makes me think it's not them. My bets? I'm thinking it's San Jose and Denver, with LAFC as the third most likely possibility.
With the WWC in Canada, however, I wonder if that will make a difference for Vancouver if their MLS team is interested.
AEG is already on board in Houston, so I doubt they'd want another NWSL team. While they haven't said anything, Dallas does have a few things in it's favor: They've had 2 of the top 3 attendances in the past 3 years (only the St Louis match outdrew them, but they were both above capacity, so not much they could've done other than play at a different venue) and the Houston rivalry. If NWSL could get the Hunts on board, that'd be big statement. If they were going to have a team in Vancouver, no better time to announce it than during the WWC when everyone will be watching. And it'd be great to expand the Cascadia rivalry so all 3 cities had MLS and NWSL teams. But Vancouver ownership's last statement on the matter was that they weren't interested, so I think until we hear otherwise it's just wishful thinking.
This stoked my memory; IIRC there was rumor of a Colorado group being interested in WPS during its decline. I'm not sure if that was the Rapids or not, but the Rapids had a W-League team for a LONG time - founded in 1996. Unfortunately, like with Vancouver, the Rapids closed shop on their W-League team recently, early in 2014. Seems weird to me to have completely shut down the women's side if they were going to be looking toward "promotion" into NWSL, especially if the earliest possible promotion would be in 2016. Also, Plush left the Rapids in 2011, so I'm not sure how much of a not-coincidence we can attribute it to be. There are three other W-league teams still in Colorado, so I could potentially see one of them being the WPS-interested teams I remember from earlier. Also, as a note: Sacramento and Indy are both MLS-interested sides, so there's a possibility Plush might've been including Indy in the 3 MLS sides?
I'd say the west coast teams/cities would be Salt Lake City, San Jose & Los Angeles. Denver seems like a long shot. Out of the 6 candidates, I wonder how many will be selected for an expansion team. 1? 3 to even the league out with 12 teams?? I wouldn't mind 3; add RSL, either California city & Atlanta. Keep Indianapolis, a 2nd California team & any Canadian cities on hold for the future. I wouldn't mind seeing the league grow to 16 teams by 2020. EASTERN CONFERENCE Boston Sky Blue FC Washington Atlanta(2016) Western NY Toronto(2018) Indy(2017) Chicago WESTERN CONFERENCE Seattle Portland San Jose(2016) Los Angeles(2017) Houston Salt Lake City Vancouver(2018) FC Kansas City(2016)
See: I realize now that part B can be countered slightly by suggesting that the two unannounced interested groups are both aiming for 2016; still, I find this HIGHLY unlikely. If a group was aiming for 2016, they'd have made some noise by now. Besides, Part A is a lock. No way NWSL grows by 33% in just one year. This isn't a fluid, lower-division league like USL or WPSL. My guess at the absolute fastest NWSL will expand is +1, +2, +2 in successive years, where that 1 is Atlanta and one of the first 2 is SLC. Doubling from the original 8 to 16 by 2020 is massively pushing it, too. MLS didn't double from the original 10 until just this year, for crying out loud - in its 20th season.
Maybe I was a little too quick in estimating when certain expansion teams would arrive. Maybe it'll be more likely as follows: 2016: Atlanta; 2017: Salt Lake City & Indy; 2018: San Jose/Sacramento & Vancouver; 2020: Toronto & Los Angeles. EASTERN CONFERENCE Boston Sky Blue FC Washington Atlanta(2016) Western NY Toronto(2020) Indy(2017) Chicago WESTERN CONFERENCE Seattle Portland San Jose/Sacramento(2018) Los Angeles(2020) Houston Salt Lake City(2017) Vancouver(2018) FC Kansas City
Atlanta will not enter #NWSL in 2016; still pushing for 2017, group tells me. "Vibe" no more -- Atlanta FC: http://t.co/bVdYXyT2Hf— Jeff Kassouf (@JeffKassouf) April 27, 2015 Nowhere, as of now. Think they will wait until 2017. https://t.co/2UqKtiOnjD— Jeff Kassouf (@JeffKassouf) April 27, 2015 This is what I feared when they said no expansion for this year because of the WWC. Why would they wait to expand next year with the Olympics... because they won't expand next year either.
I doubt they blanket vetoed expansion in 2016 simply b/c/o the Olympics; most of what Plush had said in the past month or two made it sound like 2016 would have been fine if a group was essentially ready just a month or so into this season. Atlanta was the only group (that we know of) that was actively pursuing 2016, but they always seemed kinda iffy to me to begin with, so I'm not surprised at the no-2016-expansion if just for that paired reasoning.
I don't see why they wouldn't. What reasoning could they have had to not do it this year that doesn't also apply next year? Sure the allocated players will be gone for a little less time... not really a big difference. Unless their reasoning this year had nothing to do with the WWC and we were just mislead and the truth is they just haven't had another MLS team force their way in the way Houston did.
Well, for one, the WWC is more important the the Olympics. Also, I don't think they blanket vetoed expansion this year either - they just literally had no candidates until late last year, at which point it was to late for 2015 expansion (since they didn't want to pull another Houston). They talked too much about expansion candidates in the offseason to have blanket vetoed expansion for next year, anyway - do you think Atlanta would have been making as much noise as they have been for the past four or five months if NWSL had told them "sorry, it's the Olympics in 2016, tough luck"?
So if you don't think they did it last year, why did you post making it sound like you did? I guess I misunderstood your point? I was responding to you based on what I thought was your premise that they did for the 2015 season, but not the 2016 season. Atlanta was making noise before they had talked to anyone at the NWSL offices. Once they actually did, that's when they started changing things like their name and what venue they would play at. What I'm saying is that I think they didn't have anybody force their hand for 2015 and they took the same philosophy for 2016, but again no team is forcing their hand. So they're gonna wait until a non-Event year like 2017 to let non-MLS backed ownership groups like Atlanta in.
I really don't know about any of this, but I think this year is being pretty complicated for owners and coaches and is going to be for fans too as to national team players coming in and out depending on how their team fares in the World Cup. The same thing probably will be true for next year too with the Olympics. And this all is complicated by the allocation process. For a fledgling league just trying to get by, it might be worthwhile to keep things simple until the Olympics are over -- unless something happens such as the current Sky Blue ownership wanting out and creating the possibility of the sale/transfer of the entire team to a new ownership group elsewhere. I'm just using that as an example, I have seen no indication that is a likely or even "being discussed or considered" event.
Now I'm quite confused... what part of my post made it sound like I believed they blanket vetoed 2015 expansion? I explicitly said they didn't blanket veto this year - i.e. 2015 did not get the blanket veto, WWC or otherwise. They just didn't have the candidates for it. Now, before saying that, I said the WWC is more important than the OG as a possible answer to your question as to why they might blanket veto 2015 without blanket vetoing 2016 - but then I followed it saying I thought they didn't blanket veto 2015 in the first place, i.e. I disagreed with the assumption you made in asking for the distinction between 2015 and 2016. Changes were already being made before they had spoken to NWSL officials (at least that's what's insinuated in this article - if they had actually spoken, the owner would say so to show things were moving forward). Also, Plush has directly spoken of potential 2016 expansion, so it was clearly on the table, with several telling quotes: That article was March 19th, and a follow-up on April 2nd said You don't say that much about a subject, and apparently have hours and hours of talks behind the scenes, if there's an underlying barrier that makes all the conversations moot. All those comments are why I think the only real reason there's no 2016 expansion was that the one team interested in 2016 simply wasn't ready, i.e. not that it was simply an OG years (and, similarly, there simply wasn't anyone interested in 2015, as opposed to the WWC being the big barrier).