I think they would be conferences and not divisions. "Conferences" are the biggest groupings of a league and "divisions" are smaller units of conferences to me. I don't see any other usages of those terms that are different. I don't know why you are saying "essentially means no conference and only divisions". "Division" to me implies that those groups would be organized into some sort of conferences below the league level. Calling the 7 team groups "conferences" seems to me to convey the idea that they all have the same relationship to each other under the league umbrella. By "will they keep the arbitrary eastern and western conferences" you mean in terms of scheduling since teams in a particular 7 team group would not necessarily play the teams in any other 7 team group more than the others?
Sorry, to be clearer. Right now, the conferences are larger. But with 28, you'd essentially have 4 conferences instead of 2 (whether you call them divisions or conferences is immaterial). But, would they force playoffs between the two eastern conferences and the 2 western conferences (like how the NHL does?)
Maybe? Depends on how they split the games up. If they do a double round robin with teams in the same division/conference(12 games), then one game against teams in the other divisions/conferences (21 games), they'd end up with a 33 game season with each team playing every other team at least once. On the other hand, if they kept the 2 Conference split with 4 divisions below that, they could do a double round robin within the conference (26 games) and 7 games against one of the divisions in the other conference (7 games). That'd also give them a 33 game season, but would take 2 seasons for a team to play all the teams in the league and 4 seasons for a home/away cycle.
Right. I think that is the key difference as far as how the playoffs are structured. I would vote in favor of 4 conferences where teams play the other 3 conferences as equally as possible every year. We shall see what the league does.
I dunno.. If I'm understanding you correctly, that'd basically be 1 game per team per season with some rivalry games mixed in (28 teams = 28 games + 4 rivalry games = 32 game season). That might be fine for a 28 team season and a 32 game season, but once they get to 32 teams the rivalry games would likely disappear without an increase in the # of games above 34.
No, I think it should be 7 teams per conference. Play each of them twice for 12 games. Then play the the other 21 teams once for 33 games and maybe play one of them twice to get to 34. That's what I mean by "play the other 3 conferences as equally as possible every year". I thought that was pretty much your first suggestion. If the league goes with that then there is not much reason to divide the playoffs East-West. Which, to me, leads to a 4 conference tournament where you aren't stuck with East-West. It also means teams play every team in the league every year. At least until there are more than 28 teams at which point you might not play all of the other teams every year but you would still play most of them. I'd like that better than your second suggestion of a double-round robin within 14 team conferences. That would me much more likely to keep us with an East-West tournament and would mean that teams would not play all or even almost all of the teams every year. The 4 conference plan, in my mind, makes expansion above 28 easier since you are really only committed to playing every team in your conference twice and as much of the rest of the league as you can once. At 28 that would be all of them. At 32, it would still be 20 of the 24 other teams. I think I'm agreeing with you.
So assume a 4 conference structure with something like: Pacific: All Pacific time zone teams including SRFC Heartland or Southwest: RSL, COL, 3 texas teams, SKC, STL Atlantic: 2 florida teams, ATL, DCU, PHI, 2 New York teams Northern: MIN, CHI, CLB, CIN, NER, MTL, TFC with a 34 game strucutre. Here's my proposed playoff structure: 15 teams. with SS winner getting a real benefit of skipping a prelim match. Top 3 teams in each division plus 3 wildcards..... 2 and 3 seed in each division play each other so that creates some rivalries. Non SS-winning division play wildcards based on seed. Teams are re-seeded in quarters league wide. Thoughts?
I couldn't fit it any better without creating other discontinuities. Montreal and Boston has a rivalry in hockey. Do NER actually have big coastal rivalries?
Boston/New York is a thing in just about every sport. I think you leave the Northeast together with NER, two NY teams, DCU, Philly and Montreal, and you add in Toronto. Rather than have a "coastal" group you have a Northeast and a South that includes Texas.
Like this: Northeast: 5 current Norteast teams plus 401 derby Southern: 2 Florida teams, 3 Texas teams (including San Antonion), Atlanta, SKC. Central: 2 Ohio teams, Chicago, Minnesota, Colorado, RSL, St. Louis Pacific: 3 cascadia, 4 California (including SAC) Central seems akward
The difference I had in my post upthread was predicting expansion in Tampa/Nashville/Charlotte/Raleigh-Durham for the 7th "south" team and then moving SKC to what you call "central" here. I didn't have, and still don't expect, a team in Cincinnati. If there is one, that complicates things. So what I called "Heartland" was RSL, Colorado, Chicago, Minnesota, KC, St. Louis, and Columbus. The only outlier here is Columbus. The rest are one-hour apart in Mountain or Central time zones. If they ever expanded to 32, I think you'd move Columbus to the "northeast" with Toronto. If Cincinnati gets a team rather than St. Louis, San Antonio or one of Tampa/Nashville/Carolinas, you can just throw my ideas out the window.
I depends what new teams we wind up with but I think something like this works: A: Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Jose, Galaxy, LAFC B: Salt Lake, Colorado, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Kansas City, Minnesota C: St. Louis, Chicago, Columbus, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami D: Montreal, Toronto, New England, NYCFC, Red Bulls, Philly, DC United The names for the ones in the middle might be tricky but it is probably the most geographic grouping if these the 28 teams. You have to add Sacramento, Cincinnati, and NYCFC but this map pretty much shows who is close to who. The Northeast 7 and Pacific Coast 7 are gimmees. Salt Lake and Colorado make a lot more sense if they are grouped with the Texas teams. So then you have to add 2 to that. Kansas City and Minnesota make sense to me because then you can keep the Florida teams with Atlanta. Those three then join up with the St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Columbus four. If Charlotte gets in instead of San Antonio then push St. Louis into Group C and Charlotte is in with the Group B. teams, for example. This would be easier if we knew the teams.
Yep. Basically splitting the current conferences in half makes more sense to me than stretching two of the new divisions across so much space. Salt Lake to Houston is much shorter than to Columbus. A time zone (ish) setup makes for the most geographic compactness.
It was the best one I could find on Google Images. It had two teams in LA along with a lot of the expansion candidates so I went with it.
I agree I think they will try to group them by geographical areas no more than one time-zone apart. New York to Miami, Boston to Minnesota, and Vancouver to Los Angeles are all roughly the same distance to each other. The furthest travel in a division would be Salt Lake City to Houston.
If you have 32 teams on the other hand Orlando could join the East Coast, as they've already built up rivalries with the NE teams.
should clearly be split into 4 divisions. Just a matter of who teams #27 & #28 are. If San Diego is one of them, it throws a big wrench into who gets left out of the Western division. Or the West gets split in have. I have San Diego & Detroit as the last two added. NORTHWEST: Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake, Colorado, Kansas City & Minnesota SOUTHWEST: Sacramento, San Jose, San Diego, LAFC, LA Galaxy, Houston & Dallas CENTRAL: Chicago, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, Toronto, Montreal & New England EAST: NYCFC, RedBulls, Philadelphia, DC United, Miami, Orlando & Atlanta.
As a Texan I'm not buying the connection to California. Two time zones and nearly 1,500 miles. I think they could strive to keep teams closer. Better to couple texas with KC and the Midwest or with the south.
If San Diego is added, that's 8 teams on the West coast. 7 team divisions would bump someone into a different division. The North/South divide works best.