We almost had a Miami/Cosmos NPSL semifinal, but the Cosmos lost to the other best team in the league, FC Motown* tonight. Miami did beat Little Rock 3-0, so they could still win the title. *Which does not play in Detroit, though you might well think so.
Well damn. I was looking forward to their FO and fans justifying counting an amateur title to their total. It’s bad enough they count 3 D2 titles to their total.
The most recognized??? maybe 25 years ago. But Beckham, Gerrard, Zlatan have put LA Galaxy out in front now. You can argue about a half dozen MLS clubs being ahead on that list as well. Pele playing for Cosmos back in the day was a great thing. But that's 40 years ago now. You can't live on that shit forever. Only people that remember that are elderly and retro hipsters. Their branding motto is about as useful as "Space Aged Technology" is these days.
That's just what clubs past their sell by date do. Aston Villa fans are always quick to mention their European Cup, too.
Don't remind me. Remember years ago with that fiasco as far as putting a team in Virginia? Well, USL is doing that for the same area and recycling some assets. USL actually revived a dead NASL idea with DC United.
I take your basic point, but this is a bit harsh. Teenage fans of the Cosmos in their heyday would be in their mid-fifties now--not young, but hardly ancient. If you think that's elderly, all I can say is that you have an interesting awakening ahead of you.
Cosmos also has their hand on the corpse of the original NASL, while today they're sitting in a hospital room where the newer version is in a coma, obliviously tugging at the chord of the life support machine, asking "what does this do?".
Instead of joining an healthy existing league Palmer would rather gamble on leagues that may never see the light of day. Been working on a larger (unrelated) USL piece, but, wanted to update some folks who have asked me about the future of @JaxArmadaFC -JAX president, @ArmadaPresident , tells @SocTakes that USL is "not an option for us (JAX)". The team will play in 2019 -either in NPSLpro or NISA— Nipun Chopra, PhD (@NipunChopra7) July 23, 2018
This seems like a pretty smart play to me: USL isn't going anywhere. There's enough smoke coming from the NPSL teams to think that something is imminent there. If nothing pans out, he's not going to go broke. USL is simply not appealing to these owners, so until the last ember of all alternatives is extinguished, they will lean towards those.
=== Yep, that was me, watching Pele and the Cosmos at the Rose Bowl vs. the Aztecs. Heck, the first day I had my drivers license, I drove to Anaheim Stadium to watch the California Surf !
Dude, seriously. Seeeeeeeriously. Chattanooga and Detroit could probably go pro, though Detroit at least admits it would take some bolstering of their investment group, even WITH the highest attendance in the NPSL and control of their venue. (They'd have to actually pay players and add staff and travel outside of the state of Michigan several times a year.) They were initially tied to the NISA, though, which, at this moment, appears to be just as vaporware-y as a professional division in the NPSL. They can't do both. (Losing Peter Wilt was a blow, no matter what they say, as well as a tell, and the prospect of having Eric Wynalda run the show is not an improvement.) There are probably some tweener NPSL clubs who aren't Detroit or Chattanooga but who aren't the Dakota Fusion, either. Could they take a stab at D3? I guess. Is Palmer going to subsidize them? He could, I guess. It would help. But it's just silly, the entire premise that because I've Been An Owner For Just Over A Year Now Guy is honked off about USL, he can't see that's the side that won the war. (Now, could there be personality conflicts there? Absolutely. USL's hierarchy ain't exactly warm and fuzzy. But come on.) IF you convinced Detroit and Chattanooga to join the Cosmos, Jacksonville and Miami to form a professional league, you're still three shy. Who do you figure you're going to get? These are the 10 NPSL teams for which I have all their attendance data for this season: You can see last year's limited data set here. Clubs that can at least get arrested include Grand Rapids and Little Rock, which, yay. So which existing teams are they going to convince to move up, or which markets currently without teams or with subsistence farming teams would they put those other three teams in? Anybody currently in the NPSL who would want to be part of a professional league would have to adhere to the standards, if they're not going rogue. I don't know how many could realistically do that. And I don't know how far a rogue league would go. I guess we'll see.
I don't think there's any requirement that a full-season NPSL be "pro". At least not any more than the NPSL currently is. Judging by the owner's responses in https://www.soctakes.com/2017/08/12/multiple-npsl-owners-favor-full-season-play/, they certainly aren't unanimous about the any desire to be pro in any meaningful definition of the word. First and foremost what they're interested in is a full-year season (their opinions of the NPSL season is all basically the same: too short to build anything meaningful in their respective communities beyond a certain point). The NPSL is already a mix of teams that pay their players and those that don't (the latter, often because of their college players). The owners, pretty much across the board, felt that a full season was necessary for growing revenues (they also talk about how the short, summer season is exhausting for their fans, as well) and none of those interviewed expressed reservations about a full season from a financial standpoint (the skepticism is centered around the reliance on college players). There are certainly going to be a lot of teams that are content to stick to the 10 week summer season, but definitely enough show the desire for a longer season that there will be *some* attempt at making it work. "NPSLPro" is probably a misleading nickname - my guess it would be the same, anything goes mix of teams and financial models as you have now. Just over a longer season. If you want to make the argument, "why not just move the UPSL, then?", I think that's a pretty legitimate question. I don't really have any sort of counter to that except that these clubs are currently in the NPSL and the NPSL probably needs a reason to keep them from moving the UPSL.
Topical: This is arguably the most important tweet we will send out this year. Your answers will be digested and used as e prepare for the 2019 season. Every voice is heard. We want to know what you think! https://t.co/gTQS0KhWqQ— Chattanooga Football Club (@ChattanoogaFC) July 23, 2018 The third page is almost entirely about gauging interest in a 20+ game season. Responses: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...TJpfp_-iWBY-JgCv2SU3s2iwd2cbigQ/viewanalytics
So....if some teams in the NPSL are thinking "We'll just play a longer season with the guys we have," they have to know that there's not going to be more interest in seeing those same amateur (or lowly paid professional) guys play more home games in most of those cities. Not to mention....who are they going to play in these extra games? Each other? When they're spread all over the place? The only way the equations come close to working now is the critical mass of teams and the short season. Take the Greater Binghamton Thunders of the world out of the mix and it's an even bigger mess. I mean, the problem with Hartford City is not people saying, "I need more of these guys." Kingston, New York isn't saying "Give me more Stockade soccer." If all you're going to do is have these same non-relevant brands run out there 12-15 times a year rather than 5-7 times a year, I don't see the point. Even if Chattanoogans want to see their club more than 7 times a year, who are they going to play? There are plenty of people willing to pony up to put outdoor men's soccer teams on the field, in one form or another. There are more willing to do that at the professional level - and do it in a form that's way better than the D3 Pro League of 1998, where the average captcha would have been a more robust test for ownership suitability than what they had. But I don't think there are a lot of current NPSL teams (or even yet-to-be-formed teams) who can come together to make a meaningful league at a higher, even not-fully-professional level. Or a demand for it across the board. I just don't see it.
I dunno man, you're probably right. But that a plurality of these owners see something there probably can't be written off as naive folly. They have to have seen something in the numbers that made them all come to the conclusion that the first step in growing is to play more games. To be honest, I doubt it has much to do with growing attendance and everything to with growing corporate partnerships (which, in turn, might lead to more butts in the seats). Let's say you took the simplest route to make the season longer: simply take your existing schedule and play one game a week. That would immediately increase your season by about 75%. This is much more palatable to the fans (and, no doubt, sponsors), as well. There was widespread agreement that they needed more home games. Dennis Crowley broke down a pretty useful algorithm here: https://medium.com/stockadefc/stock...goal-setting-and-the-so-now-what-d3c1c95219bc - the gist being that the more home games played, the lower attendance needed to break even at the end. There is almost certainly a ceiling on this, and I certainly don't think a team could draw enough in, e.g., February to gain the benefits of extending the season that far. However, getting to 12-15 meaningful home games with a schedule closer to one game per week doesn't seem totally unrealistic, but you're right, would likely require some more travel. At least during the extended part of the season.
The other issue with "full season" is where are all the teams going to play, and if teams are planning on using amateurs - who are those players going to be? Sure, some teams have available civic stadiums (like the former NPSL Tobacco Road FC in Durham), but many make use of stadiums that are available at the exact same time that most of the players are available. Namely from the end of one school year until the start of the next. The first college exhibition match on my schedule is August 8th, with the real game starting a week later. Rutgers isn't boing to kick out Sky Blue FC once college games start, but scheduling options start to go downhill fast. And there's always the possibility that they're not invited back next year. After the original MLS San Jose Clash/Earthquakes team moved to Houston, the 2008 Expansion team found that they were not welcome at San Jose State's Spartan Stadium - eventually striking a deal with Santa Clara University. The PDL/NPSL season has long been what it is (just like the college wood bat summer leagues) for multiple reasons that usually dovetail back to the same issues involving facility and player availability. Ignore that and the costs tend to climb pretty quickly. And, to follow on Kenn's point. It's one thing to see tomorrow's potential pros (mainly college starters) 5-8 times a summer in the current system. But if you extend the system - and you're not going full pro, just who are you getting to play these games? Local rec leagues don't tend to track attendance and charge admission. The available player pool for non or semi-pro players willing to make the sacrifices in availability to be able to fill the needed roster spots can't be very large - or paying spectator appealing. I love soccer, and I'm not lining up to see a bunch of 22 year-old washouts desperately clinging to their fading dreams.
At one time I would have said this is exactly backwards but I support a team that has a shirt sponsor that maybe 2-4 (not 2-4 thousand decision makers or customers) actually see them being advertised each game. So I'm not convinced that advertisers or more rational than fans are. PS Leidos-a defense contractor is the advertiser I'm referring to.
Are you suggesting that the team owners (this isn't supporters group Reddit fantasy talk) haven't thought about where they would play?
It's somewhat cyclical, though. The corporate money is upfront, so that can be used to set up a more polished product, which in turn will make it more appealing to the fans. Or it can be pocketed, but you're probably limiting your future sponsorship options with that approach.
I thought he expressed the issue pretty well here: The key thing is that everything has to consistent with the same strategy: Amateur/short/regional together make for a good strategy. Professional/long/semi-national can make for a good strategy or at least you are going to need all three to make a go of it. What you can't do is mix and match. It doesn't make much sense to talk about an Amateur/long/regional strategy even though the longer season is a key component of a more ambitious strategy. On it's own it doesn't help. That's what makes this so hard. You can't just change a single piece, particularly if you want rapid change. You have to change the entire structure of the business model, and for multiple teams at the same time.
I think one of the flawed assumptions that people are making about this push from the NPSL clubs is that they would have to go fully pro. Just like the NPSL is now where you have fully amateur teams (e.g. almost all of them) to teams that pay their players (e.g. Elm City, Cosmos, Miami FC, maybe FC Motown? etc.), that does not need to change because the season is longer. It's also not like the squads are entirely college players: Crowley, in his post about "what next", mentions the Stockade uses about 40% college players and says this: And yes, there are plenty of very competitive amateur teams playing 12–20 game seasons in the USASA, but I think these clubs work best in very dense metro areas where there’s a giant pool of talented, post-college players (NY, LA, etc). In smaller markets (like Kingston) with smaller player pools, trying to play a full 30-match / 10-month season is a challenge without the level of commitment you’d get from paid players. So, sure, it's possible that clubs like Kingston need to be more pro than amateur to field a competitive squad based on the realities of the surrounding population. Other clubs are going to have a different formula. But the important thing is that it's not binary: you can have a mix of paid players, amateurs, whatever. Also, the UPSL plays a full season (well, 2 seasons/year) with the same sort of investment as NPSL and yet somehow they manage to find enough players for over 160 teams.