If the new standards are as tough as rumored, what will the league look like next year? Can enough teams meet these standards? Will the teams be forced into regional leagues? Is this a good thing? http://www.insidemnsoccer.com/2010/08/09/us-soccer-starts-d2-meeting-with-tough-standards/
Extremely Interesting!! Good to hear that USSF is getting serious with D2. Sounds little too ambitious, but hope it works out at the end!!
I dunno, it may be a loose interpretation of those two criteria. Take the examples of the Islanders and Stars on the Inside MN Soccer post. Neither of those teams have any financial troubles, yet wouldn't qualify as having a majority owner worth 20 mil. Both also play in what could be considered soccer specific stadiums. Looking at the overall landscape, as far as stadiums are concerned, a lot of the teams play in stadiums that are either purpose built true SSS or function as such: Miami FC/Strikers: Lockhart Stadium ACSTL: Busch Soccer Park Carolina: WakeMed Montréal: Obviously they are good for 2011 Atlanta(if they play): Silverbacks Park PR: Juan Ramón Loubriel Stadium Minnesota: NSC Stadium And any teams have 5 years to get a stadium situation worked out. The ownership thing is going to be the bigger issue, and IMO, that's a good criteria. It helps to ensure stability in the league. It hopefully will weed out the shaky operations and in the end give us a stronger D2.
The problem that I have with expecting any D2 team to get a stadium situation worked out in 5 years is: DC United and the New England Revolution. It's been how many years for DC? And they've actually been working at it. It took more than 10 years to get Red Bull Arena built, and that was with a billionaire owner. Granted, I'm a little sensitive, considering who I support, but it's extremely unrealistic to require Austin to get a stadium built in the next 5 years. I've watched city politics more than enough to know that it would be a miracle for that to happen... unless we end up in the suburbs. Something none of us want. And I wonder if it'll be that easy in Tampa and Edmonton to pull it off. I don't know the politics there. I'll have to defer to those closer to the ground. I think the two issues are equally difficult. Which one is more difficult depends entirely on the city involved.
Yes. Hopefully what the USSF is saying is "this country is really too big and soccer is not popular enough for a nationwide lower level league to survive without MLS level money and none of you clowns have it "
You know, that's a very good point. I really don't get why anyone thinks soccer should have a national D2. Even the most popular sport in the country by far has regional minor leagues. Football. (Yes, I mean college.) How anyone can think that D2 can survive as a national league when football, baseball and ice hockey aren't (haven't looked at the NBA D League, so I'm not going to comment) is beyond me. The tough, painful question is "How do we get there?"
Brian Quarstad is going to be on It's Called Football Live at 9 pm EST talking about the story he broke. If you want, you can ask him questions through the UStream comments area about the story.
I would assume how MLS is adding teams. Teams with the money will start right away, while the rest can try their hand at Division 3 before moving up after getting investors and a stadium.
Since MLS is looking for a more economical way to run the reserve league, they should have their reserves play in whichever regional league is closest. Maybe Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso and another of the more stable PDL teams would work for a Texas league. With 6 teams you could play 4 times against each of the other 5 for 20 games then schedule 3 home and away series with teams out of region. 26 games and the expenses are much lower. I've seen 3 different team names and 4 or 5 owners since I started going to USISL games here in Atlanta in 1991. At this point, I'd rather have a stable 3rd division team in a bus league with lower expenses and a little more staying power. As much as I’ve been pissed at the Backs in the past, I can’t really blame Boris for not wanting to come into the NASL next year to throw money away.
But what happens when you only get five clubs that can meet the newer standards rumored to be coming? Lowering standards to fill out numbers and waiting for other clubs to "move up is what got us into this in the first place. I think people need to get the notion of D2 and D3 out of their heads. There aren't enough D2 caliber clubs to warrant a D3 yet. US Soccer should also come out with a milder set of "professional club" standards, then divide the country into 3-6 areas and start that way. If a region then gets too many professional clubs then they can split it off into two levels, and maybe even have the "p/r word". But that's way down the line.
Right now the teams that I would guess meet all the the standards perfectly are Atlanta Carolina Charleston (they'll go up again if travel isn't bad; they went down for that reason) Miami Montreal Rochester St. Louis (should they still exist) Assuming additional exceptions would be made Minnesota (they are a nonprofit) Puerto Rico (multiple investors including the government that combined meet the standards) Other teams without a SSS that would still be allowed in for now Austin (no plans yet) Edmonton (no plans yet) Tampa (planned but nothing set in stone) So right there there are as many as 12 teams for the league to start off with and at the very worst 8. You can make that into North/South conferences or whatever but at least have some sort of regional divisions. If they have to grandfather some teams in to make it an 8 team league after the 5 years, they should. Then simply relegate them once other teams that meet the standards join the league. In D2 there were as many as 24 teams in 4 divisions. And D3 had 38 teams in 6 divisions. A lot of the teams there ended up folding or moving to PDL after the league went national. Even when it was on the decline both leagues still had around 10-20 teams (that is until USL took over but I'll leave that for another thread). So clearly both can exist and even do well in a regional setup considering the increase in interest in the game. Your idea does sound interesting and I'd be happy if they went in that direction. They're clearly trying to make D2 the division for potential MLS ownership groups - not cities; Arthur Blank and Atlanta Silverbacks are 2 different teams for example - or at least the financially stable clubs and D3 basically a professional version of the PDL. Which will probably bring a huge gap in talent between the two making pro/rel extremely difficult. In the end, I believe D2 will shrink or stay the same next year but grow long term and D3 will swell next year with teams moving up from PDL and down from D2 and expansion teams like FCNY and Antigua that won't make it in D2. They'll need to set standards for D3 as well soon enough. US Soccer should really get involved in the whole pyramid. PDL sees teams 7-8 come and go every year. 67 teams are good and all but that won't be after many of the big teams move up to D3.
The Silverbacks won't be back: http://atlantasoccerblog.com/2010/07/silverbacks-mens-team-wont-return-in-2011/ My guess on Atlanta is either an eventual MLS team or NuRock will exercise their USL rights and put a D3 team here. From everything I've read about Charleston, they won't be back until the league is stable and maybe not even then. Why should they? Their fan support didn't change and travel expenses went down by more than 50%.
Very good point. And college football has a waaaaaaaaaay better TV deal than every American soccer league combined. Minor League baseball is more or less regionalized. Hockey too below the AHL. But the AHL is broken into regional conferences with the bulk of those games being played in conference. Out of conference games are usually done in a swoop to minimize travel costs. So that means the AHL is pretty much run like a grouping of regional leagues. Why should soccer be any different? Then have a play off system and a national championship. Like the PDL does now. Heck, use the PDL as a model. It's essentially a bunch of regional leagues put together under one banner anyway. I love this idea. A proper minor league. You could throw Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, etc in there without making the costs too much higher and still keeping the regional/Texas thing. Like the old Southwest Conference. Which means, some new markets may actually end up with teams too.
Either way there's still 10 teams that *should* be allowed to participate next year. You're probably right about Atlanta being a D3 team and I'm pretty sure I just forgot. I would guess that if D2 is divided into regions to make travel costs comparable Charleston would probably move up. For the same expenses (albeit higher wages) you would get higher level competition and potential to grow the fanbase that D3 doesn't provide. They've been up there for a while so it wouldn't be surprising if they went back with divisions set up. Well what are the odds of that?
According to the Charleston Battery travel expenses for USSF div 2 are like 200 K and for USL2 only 40 K
I don't think are unreasonable, given the past failures of various USL teams. The league does need stability and these rules will give it. I do think that you will see some teams grandfathered in, such as PR and NSC MN. The stadium requirement seems geared towards new teams wanting to play at that level. While I'll agree that having regional leagues make sense and would be the way to go, ego's in soccer are just to big to accept the logical answer. Plus, frankly, playing in a "National" league gives the appearence that soccer is a "Major League" sport - and lets be honest, dispite the growth in the last 25 years, our beloved game is still just the fourth or fifth ranked sport in minds of most Americans. As such, having a National D2 gives a pychological boost to the sport as a whole. So I think you will see a National D2 next year in one form or another, with other teams slowly entering it to have it grow. Although I don't feel that it will ever compete with the MLS.
I think you are right on the money. D2 soccer will quit trying to compete with MLS and will become more complimentary. Although I still think that a greater loan deal or minor league/reserve team system is not out of the question. Imagining MLS owners backing a lower team in another city to develop players is fairly easy. I don't know the draft/allocaiton issues that would present, but the league could surely figure something out. I'd say that MLS is #5 at best on a good day in terms of pro sports recognition but probably more like #6. If I were to guess, I would say that collectively Americans rank the domestic major leagues this way: 1. NFL 2. MLB 3. NBA 4. NHL 5. NASCAR 6. MLS 7. AFL 8-10. MLL, PBR, IndyCar The last three spots vary depending on region and you could make a case for NLL but they have no TV coverage in the US. I excluded NCAA sports as they are not pro. Different regions have different priorities as do different individuals, but the collective attention seems about like this. It's changing all the time - an argument could be made for NHL being higher than NBA in the 1990s, for example. And MLB used to be the uncontested champion of the US.
I don't doubt that. Speaking of which, why does NE need a SSS? Doesn't Kraft own Gilette Stadium? Why isn't that viewed like Seattle's situation?