NASL Future teams?

And I'm guessing that the ill-will over the USL1-TOA split will fade very quickly. Most of the hardliners from that period have either left or been marginalized. Additionally, the USL PRO teams do have more say than they did in the old USL1/2 days.

I don't see "bad blood" being a reason to keep a team from moving from D3 to D2.

And I agree with Kenn that if the Orlando ownership really does want to expand into MLS, and it looks like it's at least 4 or 5 or more years away, at some point they'll likely choose to make the jump to D2 - especially if they plateau in D3.

Caveat: This all, of course, assumes a level of stability in D2 and D3 that hasn't existed. Ever.

 

In the ownership ranks, yeah, I can see that. But I think there's still a big grudge held on one side at the upper echelons.

As for the stability part, yeah, that's what we're all kind of hoping for, regardless of the initials. If one side or the other starts feeling the effects of the traditional instability, they could find themselves having to move back in together just to pay the bills. The external pressures of the NASL having to have additional teams as time goes on, combined with there being no guarantees any league is going to hold onto every team it has today, could force people to do things they wouldn't have considered last year, or even today.

 

Exactly. The NASL is squeezed from both sides. USSF wants a larger league, the NASL wants to be larger, but it's hard to find folks to line up to lose money, and any team or sizeable market that the NASL invests in - they run the risk of having that market taken away by MLS.

It's a tough sell. A team in Los Angeles might be interesting in the same way that the Chicago Wolves co-exist, and do well enough, with the Black Hawks in town. A successful NASL team in Los Angeles would not likely be in danger of moving to MLS.

The key then is to find markets that have the corporate and fan base that can support a D2 level team without being a complete financial disaster for the team owner.

As you have pointed out, eventually MLS will level off and stop expanding. Possibly sooner rather than later. At which point that will add some stability on that side of the NASL equation. The negative to that, of course, is that part of the draw that the NASL (and USL) use to attract new owners is the potential to follow in the footsteps of Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, and Montreal. As we see in the various thread touting the inevitability of Orlando or San Antonio (or Rochester?), all it takes is a few games in a row over 5,000 announced and a visit to your town by either Don Garber or Mark Abbott and the message boards go apeshit crazy.

 

I'm not 100% convinced that all the cities that have been put forth as potential NASL expansion markets actually have legitimate ownership contenders (when they say St. Louis is at the top of their list and they're actively searching for an owner there, that tells me something), but there's a bit of salesmanship involved in this, obviously. Can't fault someone for that.

But, yeah, it seems like there's a limit to how many more teams MLS will add (it's at least one, but it's not 11), but there's no guarantee a new market would mean an additional team necessarily. While there's optimism in DC, there's no guarantee Columbus wouldn't be in play and its franchise couldn't wind up in one of the lower-division markets angling for MLS.

 

While I agree that there's no guarantee Columbus wouldn't be in play but I will personally start a movement to keep the team in Columbus. I take friends to the games every chance I get to try to help grow their fan base. Sorry, but this is just a sore point for me. I hate that my team's fans, ownership & FO give anyone anywhere a reason to say the Crew might move. I've experienced it once with the Browns and I don't ever want to go through that again.

Now, back to the thread. It's an interesting idea - the very standards that are in place to promote stability could in fact cause the instability they were designed to correct. I just don't see multi-millionaires lining up across the country to start or fund a D2 soccer franchise. This is why I have stopped wildly speculating about expansion. Expansion starts with the money and ends with the money. I know there are a lot of great cities without soccer teams in D2 and some good venues too but without the money who really cares?

 

I think Columbus was just a "for instance". And as has been shown by other sports, the threat of relocation (or contraction) is a time-honored tradition in America to extort municipalities into opening their coffers and waiving various ordinances to keep and appease big league (and some minor league) teams.

In the end I would be shocked if we go 20 years without any relocations in MLS, but I'd be hard pressed to pick exactly which team (or teams) might be involved. And given that the current life expectancy of major stadiums is occasionally less than 20 years, I wouldn't necessarily count out any teams that have their own stadiums.

 

I only mention Columbus (something that would have been unthinkable 13 years ago and probably even five years ago) because it has that confluence of factors that have combined over time in other sports to make one team or another a relocation candidate (not a certainty): a small market, an aging stadium (seems odd, but, yes, given what the rest of the league is doing), uncertain ownership commitment and underachieving attendance. Doesn't mean the Crew will ever move, just means if you were going to target an existing MLS team because the expansion window is narrower now than it was in 2005, you'd target Columbus before you'd target Houston or Chicago or some others.

You could personally start all the movements you want, but there's a reason why Columbus would be on the list of relocation candidates in the first place.

I think a lot of factors could come together to make future moves by teams between leagues more possible than it is today, that's all I was saying. The top-down pressure from MLS, which is highly unlikely to expand to accept all the markets whose fans feel they "deserve" a spot and the bottom-up pressure from USSF, which has made NASL expansion a must, could make things interesting. I mean, if you're the NASL, wouldn't Orlando be an attractive market to you? And if you're Orlando, you're thinking "We're winning here, our fans are okay with us being here for now, and if MLS is three years off, that's one thing. If it's ten years off, that's quite another."

There have always been people willing to start lower-level franchises, the sheer number of them over the years tells you that. But if USSF puts wealth standards in play, it reduces the pool (rightly so, I would say - we can't have any more Mike Fields situations). Which, obviously, makes it harder to find the right people.

But if the lower divisions are going to be stable first and then grow to the point where, organizationally, they're closer to MLS than they have been, those people are going to have to be identified and found. The standards have been in place for 22 months now. This isn't going to create overnight stability. But it's intended to get us on a path to that.

 

Legion Field is not in need of repair. It is need of dynamite. If the Barons are moving from The Met (yes I know it has a corporate name now, its still The Met) then renovating it to a soccer stadium ala Portland would be a good move. SEC Baseball might think about moving after this years dismal attendance where they would move I don't know, but it can't be worse than playing in an empty Met. Disgraceful for a major tournament. Also UAB did not nix a football field UAT did that for them. Why they feel threatened by a CUSA team getting a stadium I don't know, but the boards agenda is all about bama and they could care less about what might be good for UAB athletically.

 

I watched some of that, so I feel ya. Though they announced a big crowd for the final and claimed the tournament attendance was up 16 percent from last year.

Don't know where they'd go, though, do you?

 

My take is that the NASL is undergoing a similar transition that MLS did a decade or so ago. MLS contracted two clubs (one with no ownership, the other with inadequate ownership) and then took a break from expansion for five years. They also moved San Jose. Expansion since then has been well considered and proved successful do to having enacted a template/standard. That standard includes fan interest, a proper place to play, and of course ownership. Existing clubs with ownership issues were saved or given time to fix those by AEG's investment into the league.

The USSF standards are having similar effect on the NASL. Without them, there is no doubt in my mind that the NASL would be a clone of the USL, franchises coming and going at will. Instead, the NASL brass and Traffic (the NASL's AEG) is keeping the league afloat and trying to pick through qualified candidates to which to expand. If the NASL succeeds in divesting the Traffic owned clubs to proper ownership and hits the mark with expansion a few years down the road, we could see a stable second division platform.

San Antonio is the blueprint for future NASL expansion. Future NASL expansion needs to follow a MLSesque model. They had time to prepare, had an active supporters group clamoring for a team, ownership, and stadium plans. Hopefully Ottawa and other future teams will have the same success.

 

Well, three years. A not-entirely-voluntary break, either.

 

Oops, missed Chivas, thought RSL was the first of the new wave. I do realize it wasn't voluntary, similar to the NASL restricted by the USSF guidelines. Outside forces are upping the ante for new expansion clubs means short term pain in return for long term success.

 

Seriously, the only thing that realistically kept MLS from expanding in the immediate aftermath of contraction was that nobody was convinced they were going to make it. That happened in January 2002. Vergara's expansion intentions became clear in mid-2003, with the finalization of the agreement later that year (oddly enough, around the same time Cleveland was announced, though Wolstein's death derailed that). Salt Lake was announced in July 2004. Both teams started play in 2005.

 

True, after the fellow in Miami they seemed to be a bit choosy with who was allowed into the club. The NASL is being forced to be a bit more selective by the USSF, MLS was forced by circumstances. It isn't foolproof, but if we can avoid future St. Louis AC/CP Baltimore debacles the guidelines are doing their job.

The jury is still out on several NASL clubs, but if they expand solidly that can mitigate struggling markets to some degree.

 

i would like to see the nasl move more to the west. san deigo would be a great place. they can play games against the galaxy-chivas usa-and tijuan soccer team (out side of the nasl) and they could even convice on getting the la team from the usl pro to switch leagues. so now you got san antonio -san deigo-LA for the west. now travel up more and you can even put a team in sacramento, there they want soccer they love soccer but we know the mls aint moving there any time soon. a big time market the is untouched by any of the major sports except the nba. now to step away from the golden state, i say for sure las vegas and (or) pheonix. i think we all pretty much would love to see usa soccer move to a system like over in europe. the mls and usl pro and nasl can still keep there names but as a whole will have the regelation system.each division has to have certin standards. like in order to move up to the nasl from the usl pro the team has to play in atlest a 7,500 stadium and 500 season tickets. to move up from the nasl to the mls they must play in a 14k stadium and have a local tv contract in hand. just a example. back to the main topic, i hope the nasl lives on and spreads to more cities. i would love to see my quakes play agianst nasl teams.

 

Wow, that is either a brilliant parody of the way many Big Soccer users substitute so-called "conventional wisdom" for actual analysis, or one of the most genuinely stupid, barely coherent things ever posted to this site. Either way, congrats.

 

I would love to see a San Diego NASL team too. That being said... Try and keep posts focused

 

While I too would like to see a team in San Diego, I don't think any of the owners of the Flash or Boca meet the USSF standards. Plus, aren't the Flash planning on becoming the first publicly traded soccer team in the US? I'm just not sure how that will work out in terms of getting them into USL Pro, NASL or MLS.

 

If this is still the year 1999, yes.

 

Ok Kenn, what I am missing? Is some other US based soccer club already publicly traded since 1999? Or is this just a Prince reference?

 

No, then-Flash owner Yan Skwara took San Diego Soccer Development Corp. public by merging it with an existing publicly-traded company in late 1999/early 2000. It was part of his grand plan to create the first publicly-traded soccer team here. It didn't work.

 

Oh, and now that you say that, it appears they plan to try it again.

http://sandiegoflashsoccer.com/investors/

Well, good luck with that, guys. I had a flashback to 1999.

 

Wait, is that the same Yan Skwara who is behind the other NPSL team in San Diego- San Diego Boca? It seems like San Diego has a lot of the same players trying to make a go of the soccer business since 1999.

 

Yan!

 

Same guy.