At that time oil was easy to get here, and there were plenty of gunrunners who would supply him as long as he busted a few banks while raining hell.
NASL announced that the Silverbacks have suspended operation today. No local owners found to take over the league-run team. This means (as of today) the league will feature 12 teams in 2016, 1 of which is MLS Minnesota and 3 are the rookie franchises in Miami, Puerto Rico and OKC.
Maybe 1 of them... I don't see Miami surviving the arrival of MLS Miami and I don't think Rayo will last long in OKC.. From what I understand the home fans aren't very happy with them spending money in the US on a dev team when their first squad is in a shambles. If they can't produce players almost immediately, I could easily see them having to pull the plug.
Letting in franchises like those, it makes you wonder if the league itself will be around in 5 years.
From what I've seen and heard, their home fans appear to be quite pissed. Some of them were seen protesting a little while back waving OKC Energy flags, which was really funny! There is picture evidence in one of the OKC threads.
---------------- Agreed. Almost seems like the scraps or leftovers. Mia and PR are not markets that are going to put your league on the national stage. Your 5 year figure may not be to far fetched. I can see other weak teams folding, some jumping/moving to USL or MLS. I can also maybe see a last ditch lawsuit of some sort against MLS- kind of like the USFL - do they believe the MLS is a monopoly or similar?. Anyway, didn't USSF want or require NASL to have a West Coast presence? Whatever happened to that. And besides MLS poaching markets, lets not forget MLS partner in crime- the USL- with its huge 24-25 team league and growing. It too is covering markets the NASL may have had a chance. - I agree with you 5 year figure and I figure our soccer pyramid is going to look like MLS>USL>PDL. (3 levels). Once NASL is gone, then NPSL may need to think their position. Are they equal to PDL or are they a 4th division? If they want to be the 4th level on the pyramid and work at sustaining that, good. If not, maybe a merger with PDL is a good way to consolidate our pyramid- with a reorganized NCAA ( longer spread out schedule, training days increased, rules changed to FIFA) underneath. I would accept this as our soccer pyramid
A couple of things to say here... 1) MIA and PR are certainly more international markets than say Sacramento or Cincinnati. Not dissing, Just saying. 2) "Last ditch lawsuit" <- supposedly already started for the monopoly reasons once the USSF raised the D2 standards. I say supposedly because we haven't heard much about it since last fall. West coast presence is for 2017. That sanctioning would not result in the league disappearing either. 3) I think the USL is at 31 teams as of today... Rochester is in trouble but will likely stay. 4) PDL will never be the third division. It is a 2.5 month league that serves as a training/development league for players while in college. It would take a lot of changes in the pyramid to make this the case; more than just the NASL folding.
============== PR and MIA were tried before with other leagues and failed. MLS -MIA is going to have to come big, with great stadium, players, deep ownership to make it work. Sacramento is hugely successful. Haven't heard too much about Cinncy- new market, will be interesting. PDL- more meant to be in the stacking order, not necessarily the length of season. IF NCAA reforms goes with longer season, then PDL sits ok as the NCAA off-season league. - When all is said and done, our alphabet soup of soccer leagues is still not organized right and I fully blame the USSF for not making more firm decisions about the number of levels and how many teams in each. (I think FIFA recommends but doesn't enforce a league size) So not sure if this is why USSF not too worried? Am I not understanding the relation between the organizations and the leagues. - If we are not going to have pro-rel anytime soon, then we need to design our pyramid for player development for both the top divisions and the national team.
@canammj When MIA and PR were tried before it was a very different time for soccer. MIA MLS might be a few years away a lot can change in that time. My comments about Sac and Cinncy were just to point out that on an international scale, people might write news about a league expanding into Miami or PR but not Sacramento no matter how successful they are in the third division its not as sexy as Miami. That is exactly why Beckham is stuck on Miami & why the MLS wants to expand to Miami first (before Sac or anywhere else) in their stated plan as well. Its worth mentioning that the MLS had a reserve league prior to this arrangement with the USL. That failed. Sticking reserve teams in the third division with independently owned and operated teams was a great idea and so far moderately successful. Although the Rochester situation should worry some; being successful in the third division costs more than it pays out and your competition is a bunch of teams run at a loss just to develop their payers for the first team. I myself have not seen the numbers, but I'd reckon that very few if any USL reserve side makes a profit as its own entity. This raises questions to the health of the pyramid if the USL is to become the only league at division 2. NASL is by no means a threat to the MLS presently, it may never be especially if it does as you suggest and folds. It will however be interesting to see what happens in Miami, OKC & (possibly) Chicago. If the NASL teams there can carve a dent into the MLS/USL teams there, I'd give them longer than 5 years...
A quick aside on Rochester (since they're my team ); they already have a prospective owner interested who is submitting a proposal to the USL (current owner of a minor league basketball team in the city), and there is also rumored interest from a couple of other groups. They should be fine.
This is not true at all. AFL teams even big ones like Oakland were loosing money. The Only reason the AFL survived they ONE AND ONLY reason is Lamar Hunt. He could take financial losses without batting an eye. After teams folding and teams relocating they had some stability in the mid-60s
That's true, but the Dallas Texans relocated to Kansas City and the Los Angeles Chargers relocated to San Diego. The New York Titans rebranded to become the Jets. The Boston Patriots relocated to Foxboro (about halfway between Boston & Providence after the merger. And, at the time of the 1966 merger talks, the AFL had only 9 teams.
Does PR really have that much international cachet? The only reason a team in PR would be noticed is that PR has its own federation and a team there has a separate route for entry into the CONCACAF Champions League. It's not exactly a well-known global destination the way Miami is.
Given the economic situation in PR, not sure the timing is great to start a team there when there are so many other untapped markets in the US and Canada. Is the benefit nostalgia for the Islanders and proximity to Florida?
Um, no. While Hunt (and Adams, I believe, and perhaps Wilson) made loans to other clubs at times (the Titans, surely), the ABC TV contract (and later the one with NBC) was the real lifeline. Hunt was not the ONE AND ONLY reason. As referenced above, no AFL teams folded (though Werblin bought the remnants of the Titans for a million dollars, half what Wismer was asking for, and Wismer never saw a dime of it), though some moved. From 1963 on, no AFL teams moved, rebranded or were particularly unstable. And the merger with the NFL WAS a merger of equals (or near-equals), unlike the ABA-NBA, WHA-NHL and AAFC-NFL mergers. The AFL succeeded in hitting the NFL where it hurt, to a much greater extent than the other leagues (which all drove up salaries, as is inevitable).