As we already know US Soccer & the US Open Cup Commitee has penciled in Tuesday, May 15th as Round 1 Proper for 32 Amateur sides to start the 2012 tournament. It looks like the USASA will have two sides per region, 8 altogether. I think I have found a solution for the other Amateur leagues to settle this problem. USL has nine divisions in four conferences and the NPSL has added a new division in the Southeast conference even though it's not on their website at the moment, but if you follow their news section, there are updates. I think what needs to happen between the end of April before the 13th of May are these divisions to have a quick single elimination tournament. You have at least several games within a certain period of time as well as the amount of teams in each division to be a part of this. You can either have a blind draw to set up the matches or the starting points can be based on the final standings of this past season for 2012. Any expansion side entering 2012 will automatically start as the first match depending on how many sides are in their respective division. Here are the divisions of the PDL and how many sides are in. PDL East Conference Mid-Atlantic Division = 8 North East Division = 6 Boston Vicotry & Worcseter Hydra FC: Expansion South Atlantic = 7 Baltimore Bohemians: Expansion PDL Central Conference Great Lakes Division = 6 Heartland Division = 5 PDL South Conference Mid-South Division = 7 Texas Dutch Lions: Expansion South East Division = 7 Tampa Bay: Expansion PDL West Conference North West Division = 5 South West Division = 8 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NPSL Northeast Conference: Atlantic Division = 6 Keystone = 8 NPSL Southeast Conference East Division = 8 West Division = 4 NPSL Mid-West Conference = 10 NPSL West Conference = 10 US Club Soccer is new to me and I don't know who is in this Amateur league and trying to find where these teams are I don't know which is the youth league or the U-23's/semi-pro teams. But the idea is to fill these 32 slots. If this is an idea that the USOC Committee could adopt, then I think it can work. Short amount of time and you can add these games to the regular season records. Also schedule their regular season games after May 15th. Thoughts?
Aren't most of the players still at their college in April. Shit will they even be able to make it to their teams by May 15?