After a single season? Yes.. Yes they would. Bailing after a single season tells people that A. They didn't put in any pre-work into selecting the market. B. They didn't even try to make the market work once they were there.
If the owners were that incompetent would they be able to relocate, or would the team be folded and an expansion slot opened up. In saying that Houston did OK given 4 months notice.
.... which in of itself is another conversation about "open" systems and the perils there of. This 'false' upping of 'value' of players by the top 1% of clubs in the world *cough* ... yeah. Houston also had a club handed to them. It wasn't necessary to conjure up a roster (among other staff) or completely remake a roster for play.
I'm not saying it isn't possible to find a viable market at the end of a short search.. What I'm saying is that if MLS had moved into Houston, only gotten 5k in the 1st season, and then relocated the team to San Antonio the next season, people would absolutely be ripping MLS and AEG a new hole about moving the team into Houston in the first place.
So the club with the least money from the EPL delegates in the CL is the only one surviving in the CL.
Seems a pretty ringing endorsement for playoffs now don't it. ... how's that league form again though
Are pro/rel's most ardebt activists hurting their own cause in fits of sexism, racism, name calling, and by doing little more than shouting into the ether? This article seems to think so: https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...orelforusa-movement-is-so-utterly-ineffe.html
Oh God yes. On Ben Fast, I'll say that I admire the guy's enthusiasm. To his credit, he at least brings banners to lower league games, so he takes it beyond twitter. His problem is that he tweets a high volume of factoids, many of which are so inherently flawed or irrelevant that he turns the #ProRelforUSA hashtag into the quitter equivalent of clay pigeon shooting. As an example, after Barcelona's epic comeback against PSG, Ben tweeted to the hashtag that clubs like Barca "aren't allowed in US Soccer". Barcelona have never been relegated and are far from a product of pro/rel. I assume that what Ben really meant was that MLS parity measures prevent an American Barca from existing. The problems are: a) That's not a pro/rel issue. Closed leagues without parity are just as capable of producing dominant forces. b) Because Ben tends to scattergun these tweets and rarely responds to counters, there's no discussion that clarifies or expands on his point. c) There's a much more extensive discussion to be had that the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid may not be the best thing for domestic US soccer and from their practices both within Spain and UEFA, they're almost the opposite to a vehicle for open opportunity. He's also rather disappointingly, latched onto the practice of labeling writers as MLS shills and bought into the conspiracy theories wholesale. His final issue is that on top of his pro/rel banner, he made the mistake of implying (or at least consciously allowing people to come to the conclusion) that he was responsible for the pro/rel plane banners flown over certain MLS and US soccer events. When it came to light that he actually had nothing whatsoever to do with it, he suffered a highly embarrassing blow to his credibility. Ted is something else. I actually wish articles would stop giving him attention for reasons well beyond the pro/rel debate. He can try to make out that his twitter handle is an online persona, that his harassment is necessary to effect change, but he frequently crosses unnecessary lines. I myself was part of a twitter thread where his main counterpart was of Indian heritage. Before we knew it, Ted started blurting out crap about Caste systems and ethnic guilt. The stupid thing was, the guy he was debating with, is actually something of a pro/rel advocate. Ted's beef seemed to be that he guy wasn't doing enough to force the issue. I've had at least one individual claim that Ted contacted his employer to try to have him fired. He frequently tries to impugn people's integrity - yet when you get him on a podcast, he's a lot less ballsy. I've heard him both with Jason Davis and Alexi Lalas and in both cases he was positively chummy. The thing that really gives me pause with him though, is how (as this article suggests) ineffective he is at anything but getting himself known as the "Radical Pro/Rel Guy". Consider this: one of his jabs got the attention and triggered an interaction with Scott Van Pelt. Van Pelt is a media personality with 1.5 million twitter followers. If Ted's twitter shenanigans have any purpose, surely it's to get this kind of opportunity. So how did it go? Did Ted use this chance to put the pro/rel debate out there for well over a million people to see? No. What actually happened was SVP, baffled by Ted's baiting (the discussion was initiated by his replying to a fairly old tweet) and general tone, quickly looked into who he was dealing with and the conversation was all about the nature of Ted's interactions. This then led to the Applebees incident being raised and Ted spending the next 24 hours being mocked via a "#TedCard" hashtag that the restaurants twitter account put up. Now again, this could have been an opportunity. A nationwide chain with 600k followers were blasting his name across the web. Now consider this: Ted actually has a plan. There's a pretty comprehensive document that he wrote about how pro/rel could be implemented and run in the US. Ironically, there are actually some interesting ideas and real thought put into it. If I was in Ted's shoes, I would have tweeted a link to that plan to Van Pelt at the fist chance I had. Even if Van Pelt didn't look at it or acknowledge it, if just 5% of his followers looked out of pure curiosity, that's 75,ooo people looking at your plan. Honestly though, I think that at this point, Ted just enjoys the pseudo-celebrity. He's like the Ripper-ologist who dedicates their life to the Whitechapel Murders, but if the mystery was ever solved, they'd be left with little to do.
A year ago I started debating Ted and before you know it, things got crazy. I don't follow him on Twitter.
Dear Ted, I'm 100% in favor of pro/rel. Once you have 6-8 teams outside MLS pulling 20k+ MLS and USSF need to start a serious discussion. But I'm 100% behind you in principle.
What about the article do you disagree with? Why do you think the author is a hack? Why is it that you tolerate/defend behavior from Ted Westervelt that is far worse than much of what moves you to demand mod intervention on this site?
Towards the end of his time here, Ted was using this forum to advertise memberships in some organization he was trying to form. I asked him to please give more information, and he completely lost his shit. Mind you--he was using BigSoccer to ask people to send him money. And forget being told that that's a clear violation of the TOS, he was actually outraged that he should be expected to answer questions about what the money was for, where the meetings were held, etc. He actually told me that he refused to share that information with a skeptic like myself. He also did the usual "MLS shill" crap. Man, I WISH MLS paid me.
As far as I'm concerned, Ted should have been disqualified from the entire conversation the moment he used the Chapeconese plane crash to push his agenda. I don't care how passionate you are about the subject -- using the blood of dead players as an excuse to rail on about pro/rel is one of the lowest, most shameless things I've ever seen.
He should have been disqualified from the entire conversation when he attacked an Indian by saying something to the extent of "Of course an Indian would support a caste system that doesn't allow movement between levels", or when he airdropped in on a discussion to tell a female African American that her hair was nappy, or the times he's contacted someone's employer in an attempt to get them fired, or the times he's claimed that pro/rel is a civil rights issue, etc, etc, etc
Would this be related to the now-deleted donations page of his website, that he later claimed was "never live" and that he "never promoted"?
I kinda doubt it--this was several years ago. I can't imagine he was still soliciting donations specifically for membership in an "organization" which clearly never existed outside of his own imagination after all this time. But, hey, I could be wrong.
I know Aaron a bit--we're not friends by any stretch but I've met him and we have a few acquaintances in common. He strikes me as an honest person, so I believe the story.
Any of the above, yep. He really set the entire debate on a very nasty basis. He established the precedent in which believing in pro/rel became a moral imperative, so anybody who felt differently--or, anymore, simply doesn't agree strongly enough--were fair game for accusations of moral or character failings. It's true that snarkiness and whatnot have infected both sides to some degree--AT THIS POINT--but those who make false equivalencies about the whole situation clearly weren't paying attention at the beginning. It's all on Ted. He's the one who poisoned the well from the get-go.
I think it was. This links to his site that had the (long since removed) contributions page: This was immediately followed by a poster asking what his donations would go to if he contributed, which probably led to the incident you described. Not that it matters of course. He has an entire catalogue of morally repugnant behavior. As you say, both sides are guilty of snark and ribbing, myself as much as anyone. However, to subject people to vile, malicious attacks and engaging in activities that can effectively impact people's lives and livelihood over the way a sports league is set up is as baffling as it is disgusting.