Exactly. The only teams that would change would be the doormats. But the Boise States, Western Michigans and every other team gets a shot at being the doormat and maybe even staying awhile. And the Current doormats get to go down and maybe even win a conference championship in this century. Easy Peasy.
Those doormats you speak of a usually founding members of the conference in good standing. They've also paid millions in dues to the conference over the years. Plus, major conferences are more than athletic entities, they're also academic partnerships that share resources in academic research. You'd also be taking schools that have signed conference-wide TV deals out of the contracts they've signed up for. You also have to realize that NCAA conferences aren't just one-sport leagues. Utah plays in the Pac-12 in everything. If football has a terrible year, do they get kicked out and women's basketball gets to stay in? What happens when the women's basketball team is kicked to the Mountain West and the men's team stays in the Pac-12. Does the TV money only go to the men's team? Do you like Title IX lawsuits?
********ing academics getting in the way of athletics?!!?! WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT?! It's not like these are schools meant for higher education or something... This hypothetical would be fun for schools like Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, and UConn. Their football (the obvious focus here) is typically garbage. But they have some of the very best basketball in college. So they get relegated to the MAC because the football team sucked? Really!? If you wanna commit to this, fully commit. Every sport (both genders) gets a set amount of points. Yeah, we're valuing the sports. Kind of like your deseret duel or whatever the hell that thing is called. Except its for ALL of the colleges. Jesus, this would be a nightmare. And the Pac12 would murder because of it's love for Olympic sports.
This would be Football only. Rebrand the MWC to PAC12 II or something and the other newly affiliated conferences. The money could be worked out. It's all just about the money anyway. The academic argument is simply bogus but a nice touch said the athletes at North Carolina. In fact this post just received an A- and credit at tar heel community college.
I mean, you can pooh pooh the NCAA's handling of the situation, but I don't see how you can twist it into them suddenly tearing down conferences as we know them. What incentive does any D1 school in P5 conference have to back this idea? One bad season in football and suddenly you're in a mid major? Yeah, I see USC jumping at this chance. And that's the point - you're not getting this idea anywhere without the buy-in of the major players in NCAA football. It's a non-starter. Great idea for your Boise States and Middle Tennessee's or whoever is good for a few years, but it's not something that will catch on. On topic: if you have kids/are involved with youth soccer in any way, please push for them to play futsal. The number of leagues I see around the valley is promising. However, the thought of playing indoor instead of futsal drives me batshit crazy - and I see significantly higher number of indoor teams at shared facilities as opposed to futsal teams. Any kid I've coached, when asked what they can do in the off season is met with the following response. 1) play something other than soccer. 2) no, really, please go play basketball or volleyball or underwater basket-weaving. Get away. 3) Fine, you want to play soccer? Play futsal.
Those doormats you speak of a usually founding members of the conference in good standing. They've also paid millions in dues to the conference over the years. Plus, major conferences are more than athletic entities, they're also academic partnerships that share resources in academic research. Yes, this is the argument against Pro/Rel in MLS. You'd also be taking schools that have signed conference-wide TV deals out of the contracts they've signed up for. The money could be worked out. It is just money. You also have to realize that NCAA conferences aren't just one-sport leagues. I did not know that. Seriously? Crazy. If memory serves it's not wholly uncommon for colleges to play in different leagues for different sports. Utah plays in the Pac-12 in everything. If football has a terrible year, do they get kicked out and women's basketball gets to stay in? What happens when the women's basketball team is kicked to the Mountain West and the men's team stays in the Pac-12. Football only. Does the TV money only go to the men's team? The money can be addressed. You could possibly argue that there could be more TV money because you would be capitalizing on larger major conferences. And At the end of the year Oregon State, Kansas, Vandy, etc. might actually have something to play for. Do you like Title IX lawsuits? No, and I have never been banned from a mall. Ever. Not that I ever tried. Here's the thing, college football is simply unequal and unfair at the FBS level. FCS not so much. They actually have playoffs and every athlete, every program has the same opportunity when it comes to winning a title. FBS that is not the case. Simply by circumstance and geography the football athletes st someplace like Iowa State have greater opportunity for success than say the athletes at Boise State even though by every metric Boise State is a better program. The same could be said for other programs like Air Force or Colorado State, Central Florida etc. etc. A team that hasn't won a conference title in 105, now 106 years can have 1 good season and have an instant advantage over other programs that play the same sport. It's like nothing else in college sports. It should be addressed but you know, money.
Iowa State would probably beat Boise State in football this year. Iowa State has a pretty damn good team. They have wins against TCU and Oklahoma on their resume. "one good year" is also how you could kind of sum up the recent history of Boise State. But don't let that get in the way of your argument. I also laugh at your notion of it being "unfair" for Boise State. College football has addressed this pretty well, though not perfectly. Still, the two big (Now "New Years Six") bowls that Utah have been to was while they were in the MWC, not the Pac12. Boise has played in these too. Does FCS have a better system? Definetly. But to say we should go full pro/rel is a bit ridiculous. Just like it's ridiculous in US Soccer. If Boise wants to address this "unfairness" then do what TCU and Utah did - get your ass in a P5 conference. And this is where you'll discover that there is more to this than football, even if there is a large amount of money in it. You need a decent university to back it.
OK...back to soccer...SUM looking into setting up a loser's tourney in the US for US, Holland, Italy, Chile, etc. Probably have contract issues with WC/FIFA and Fox if they held it during WC. Will also be in season for MLS. BTW--will MLS take a break during WC?
Maybe we can boot Colorado out of the Pac12 for Boise State. Although BYU is Utah's natural rival, Boise State seems to be more of a rival to Utah than Colorado and Boise is also closer to the Pacific.
MLS took a short break (about three weeks) during the group stage of the last world cup. Since the US and Canada aren't in this year's world cup, I would expect MLS to not take a break this time around.
I would hope this doesn't happen. I'd prefer to not lose players during the season for a meaningless tournament.
I'd love to see this. Meaningless? No. Quirky? Sure. (Says one of the founders of the Rocky Mountain Cup)
The problem I see with is is that I'm not even sure that teams would be forced to release players for this. If they're not, you're getting 2nd string players at best. Even if you can call up 1st team players, I don't see anyone actually wanting to play in this. I know if it was me, and I wasn't going to the WC, I'd much rather rest, vacation, and spend time with family vs playing some meaningless games. Let the Euro based players rest and prepare for their upcoming seasons. Let the US based players play for their MLS teams, where the competition is actually mattering.
So the NIT* version of the WC. *Yes I know NIT started before NCAA tournament and was once considered more prestigious. "If Russia can figure out a way to win the American 2016 election, then America needs to find a way to win the World Cup in Russia" - Roger James "Rog" Bennett
Never in a bazillion years would this happen. You have the wealthiest and most politically connected people in each state, in the entire regions, who attended these big universities. They sit on the boards of directors of all the corporations that sponsor the schools, conferences, television broadcasts, etc. Iowa may not win championships, but there is a literal $#!t ton of pride connected to being top-tier. With that said, crap does happen. At a certain point, the old Southwest conference became a problem. Too much concentrated in Texas, hurting their television revenues tremendously. In 1991, Arkansas bolts for the Southeastern Conference. In 1996, the biggest and most successful schools (and their wealthy benefactors) saw that by moving to other big conferences they could enhance the reputation of the school tremendously by expanding their marketing footprint beyond Texas. The less successful schools were left in a lurch much like what happened when the top teams in England decided to form the EPL. These smaller schools went to 'mid-major' conferences. Indeed, this period was one of great shuffling of memberships among conferences. Often with bigger schools moving to bigger conferences and smaller and less successful schools moving to smaller conferences. But, in all of that upheaval, it has been incredibly rare for the major state universities in any given state to move down to lower level conferences. The ones that are in lower status have tended to always be there due to a long history of not much success in football (Northern Rocky mountain states). So, in a sense, a reshuffling does happen... a kind of pro/rel does happen. But, unlike a formalized system as we see in much of the world's soccer leagues, it happens somewhat catastrophically.. A kind of punctuated equilibrium model operates instead.
Why would there be contract issues....just sign a contract with ESPN who I'm sure would love to pick up any and all viewers in the US/Canada that would otherwise not be watching soccer at all thanks to those teams not being in the WC. Not sure why anyone would be against this, let's say that teams aren't forced to release their players for the "meaningless" tournament and it's nothing but 2nd stringers. Fine, then we're getting 2nd stringers playing time in international games, those games might not mean anything but at least they'll be playing against other international players of a high caliber. 2nd string international players are better than the majority of MLS players. It would also be a chance for a potential new coach to become acclimated to the player pool who, say, may make up a roster for the following year's Gold Cup. They could also instill tactical ideology with those players and get them minutes against known international teams. At the same time you'll have known international teams playing in the US which will mean more money for USSF to generate off ticket sales during an otherwise game-less stretch for the team. And you're abso-********ing-lutely bonkers if you think for a second that a player who could potentially play for the senior national team against teams like the Netherlands, Italy, Chile, etc would rather be on ********ing vacation than play in an international match (seriously if you think this then you know nothing about the competitive nature of the professional athlete, read: Pulisic's letter). And you can be guaranteed that MLS will take a 2-3 week break for the WC, I mean Jesus, it's the biggest sporting tournament in the world and MLS teams will be losing players to it. The league has integrated scheduling breaks for the stupid Gold Cup for crying out loud.
A four to eight team tournament could be fun. With four, do the top teams from the rest of the world, with at least three continents represented. For eight, include every continent with an uninvited team in the top 50 or so. No, it wouldn't be prestigious. Maybe some countries won't bring their first squads. But it's a good chance for each of those invited to play their younger team members against quality opponents, like the Olympics do.
The other side of the coin is that it's bad for the club owners. It already sucks to lose a player who gets injured for their national team during a real tournament, but to lose a player to injury for a pointless money grab sucks for that team, when instead they could be resting and training with their club. And for countries that would normally not be playing soccer, it's much needed time for these guys to get some actual rest. Between FIFA and the various federations, it seems like everyone wants more and more soccer, and some of these guys barely get any time off some years. While it sucks to not be going to the WC, I bet those players would much rather spend time with their family resting, vs being forced to play some more games that don't actually matter. I do agree that from the US perspective, it doesn't seem all that bad. Players get some experience vs tougher opponents, and it's likely during a time they'd be on break for a few weeks anyway. From the club perspective, there's more potential downside sending away some of your players. We've already had years where we lost players to injury during just the All-Star game. This would be more games and more risk. My vote is still with not having this happen. I'd rather see our guys get some rest and practice in with RSL, vs seeing them get injured and losing them for a chunk of the season.
For clubs around the rest of the world, they may balk at letting their players go. But, for MLS clubs? No problem. Owners make money with SUM, so they will be cool with it.
Yeah, I'm not sure clubs of teams that "lucked" into some of their top players (Italians, Dutch, Ivorians, etc) are going to be super into now having to release those players instead of taking them on their summer tours / preseason trainings.
So my question is this, if it occurs during the World Cup, which is a FIFA sanctioned event which requires clubs to basically STFU when it comes to player releases, and the games are FIFA sanctioned matches then clubs aren't going to have a say in the matter anyways. Club summer tours aren't going to happen during the World Cup window anyways and clubs that would otherwise have players good enough to make a national team like Italy, Netherlands, Chile, etc probably would have lost those players anyways as well. Sooooooo, yeeaaaaa, just not seeing the excuses here. More minutes in international matches for possible 2nd string players = good. More USMNT matches during a time when they would otherwise not be playing any matches = more money for US Soccer = good. Matches occurring during the scheduled World Cup coinciding with league match hiatus = players don't miss club matches = good. The ONLY single negative is purely theoretical and is that a player could pick up an injury, but these are (again) professional ********ing athletes who could get injured walking across the street, nobody is going to fault them for wanting to play for their national team and if they get hurt doing so, well dems da breaks sometimes.
Would it be FIFA sanctioned though? I honestly don't know how all of that works if some federations can invent a quick tournament that would then require clubs to have to release their players. Still though, it's not about the players wanting to play, it's about the clubs being hurt when they do get injured. US teams have less to lose since the players are worth less, but the big clubs losing players worth millions is a big opportunity cost. A lot of teams have expressed frustration in the past about not being compensated when a player is injured during a friendly, so I don't see how they'd be thrilled to send players who should be on vacation to an even less meaningful event. The US players about the only thing that would have anything to gain in terms of experience. The big name players have nothing to gain from this though. In the end, I won't be surprised if something like this happens, but I don't think it's worth it. I know I won't tune in if it's during the WC. I'd rather watch the actual meaningful tournament.
The thing these friendlies would have going for them is that they would be better aligned for tv viewership in the US. However, viewer fatigue would be a real concern. After watching a few matches earlier in the day, I'm not sure even I would be up for watching a friendly. Even if it was Italy and the US.
This is the best argument against the Loser's Cup for me. It'd be fun, but the real Cup will take priority in terms of my time and interest.