The argument is that competitions can happily exist in their own right without the incentive of moving on or up to somewhere else. The Isthmian League was an example I was aware of but I'm sure there were plenty of examples around the world. Streamlining leagues into a single pyramid is a fairly recent phenomenon, by which I mean in my lifetime. I don't see any reason why Chattanooga FC can't do well next season, despite competition from a team in a league with a nominal USSF designation.
But the whole conversation was about mobility, the opportunity that mobility affords, and how Chattanooga's situation isn't really anything like Blackburn's namely because of those territorial rights and lack of tiers. I'm not saying that this isn't just way things work in the work in the U.S., but I also don't think saying "Chattanooga FC just needs to get over it - look at these examples from other countries in completely different systems where 2 teams co-existed" is a particularly compelling argument.
"Before the Isthmian League was formed, there were no leagues in which amateur clubs could compete, only cups. Therefore, a meeting took place between representatives of Casuals, Civil Service, Clapton, Ealing Association, Ilford and London Caledonians to discuss the creation of a strong amateur league. All the clubs supported the idea and the Isthmian League was born on 8 March 1905. Membership to the league was through invitation only. The league was strongly dedicated to amateurism; the champions did not even receive a trophy or medals; the league motto was honor sufficit." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isthmian_League#History You don't think that's a bit of an outlier? Again, orthogonal to what we're talking about. In order to grow as a club - and we're merely talking about about growing beyond "amateur, summer league", Chattanooga FC has had to help organize their own league play in. Because there are a finite amount of potential fans here, this is zero-sum game. When, as an amateur team, you regularly draw around 4,000 people, there's not really any more of the pie to grow: you're dividing the pie at that point. One or both of these teams are either going to lose a lot of money or the feel-good success story of little Chattanooga averaging more people per game than half of USL is coming to an end.
I wasn't part of that strand of the discussion. It was Paul that mentioned Blackburn Rovers and Olympic. I agree that mobility is limited by the status quo and that Chattanooga FC are facing a bit of a wall under the circumstances. I think Paul's point though, is that soccer grows out of people simply supporting local teams and that their support ought not be predicated on their capacity to move up or even grow. If they introduce pro/rel tomorrow and LA Galaxy goes into free fall, I'll still support them regardless of tier because that's what supporting and following a club is all about. If the Galaxy goes to the wall and a spiritual successor is formed, be it in USL, NPSL or UPSL, whether promotion or mobility is a factor or not, then I'll follow regardless.
While I sympathize, this kind of activity is usually the organic way that league structures are fleshed-out. Both the Isthmian League and Conference's were born out of needs and/or ambitions. I sincerely hope that CFC and their associates can make something happen.
They were and outlier because they were supposedly strictly amateur leagues that abhorred the concept of being paid to do something as noble as playing sport. The Athenian League was another example, along with the Spartan (the names extolling the "Olympic spirit" are hardly a coincidence). Once the FA abolished the distinction between amateur and professional players in 1974 (due to the rampant shamateurism going on), these leagues either eventually died or introduced pro/rel and became part of the pyramid.
This still misses the point. Clearly people have come out in droves for CFC for the last 10 years. However, there was a point, probably after the 4th NPSL final loss (sigh) that expectations really started to take root that this club could be more than just an amateur, summer-league team. By the 2017 season, when there still wasn't any forward progress on this front, you began to see some frustration from some of the fanbase about not just joining USL. Personally, this seems really entitled -- CFC's board has been pretty open about why USL doesn't appeal to them -- but the sentiment behind it was pretty widely held: we're ready for a bigger challenge. When 2018 rolled around and CFC was still playing in front of dozens in Knoxville and Nashville (while ticket prices, parking, and concessions -- all outside of CFC's control -- all went up), average attendance dipped a bit, although still a respectable 3300/game. The forward momentum was lost, though, because there was nowhere to keep growing.
I fully understand that point and have stated that I sympathize. I also see the issue with joining USL and effectively handing your identity and intellectual property to a league.
I see the SUM/MLS/USSF conspiracy has taken over Wikipedia. "A single entity that holds a monopoly by this definition cannot be a cartel, though it may be guilty of abusing said monopoly in other ways. " Kartik describes the USL franchise model here. No agenda in this post, I just thought it was interesting.
Oh, you did indeed demonize Ted "using a deadly plane crash to promote their agenda," and IMO will continue to spout this kind of one-sided nonsense until/unless someone calls you out on it You like playing good cop, so you claim you "didn't say anything close to the bolded part." Here's what you said: "Ben and Ted are prominent, staunch pro/rel fundamentalists who feed a lot of misinformation and "opinions-as-fact" into the broad discussion while in the case of the latter, engaging in some hideous behavior." I counter that, although I disagree with these two on several issues and their occasional forays into confrontational exaggeration and hyperbole, much of what they provide to American soccer novices is actually useful, albeit opinionated, information, not misinformation. Here's my accusation: USRUFNEX: "Ted talked about the plane crash, but didn't do anything to denigrate the players who died in it... that's your bullsh1t accusation, and it's heinously wrong of you." Here's your response: "Ted piggybacked on tweets about the Chapacoense crash in the immediate aftermath, lambasting the US media for not mentioning the role pro/rel played in their story, like that had any damned importance at that moment." Which, to anyone with two brain cells to rub together, implies Ted was crassly denigrating the players who died in that plane crash.... I mean, you really can't get much clearer than that. I know how to read, and I know what you (and the BS Ted-haters who repped your post) are trying to say.... what you actually mean. And if that's not enough, you'll continue to pretend to be an open minded voice of reason on the issue of Pro/Rel in the US, while simultaneously repping others who troll and routinely demonize Pro/Rel advocates in dismissing our arguments by putting them into a marginalizing and politically palatable "truther" box. Insisting all who use #ProRelForUSA think our "movement" is equivalent to the fight for racial civil rights or that we have no problems denigrating the deaths of a soccer team... when not even Ted Westervelt believes this. What I saw on Twitter at the time wasn't insensitive (although with his large number of daily tweets and re-tweets I can rest assured at least a couple of them would have been in poor taste), especially if put in proper perspective rather than nitpicked and cherry-picked, which is what you and others engage in on a regular basis. The SI article I linked to was literally the first time I'd ever read that Chapeconese had a rather miraculous series of promotions from fourth division to first in a few short years. I saw several news clips at the time (usually in the morning before work) from CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS and none of them went into detail about the multiple promotions on the field of play that enabled this club to experience success... in one documentary I watched, I remember either hearing they'd been promoted and/or maybe avoided relegation, but didn't really remember them prominently mentioning they'd been promoted multiple times over a five year span... You'd think that'd be something a Pro/Rel guy like me would remember, eh? I mean, isn't the prospect of getting promoted from D4 NPSL through D3, D2, and upwards into D1 MLS the dream of any superfan of a (defacto) fourth division club? Like mine? Massive congrats to @TonyRocha16!Tony penned a deal with @NYCFC today after 3 solid years in Orlando. Tony was a consummate professional in his time here and we wish him the very very best as his footy journey continues. 🦁🏐🦄——>🍎🏐🗽 pic.twitter.com/firbPh666b— Tulsa Athletic (@TTownSoccer) December 12, 2018 There is nothing wrong with being a political activist about a league structure. It is NOT a frivolous cause, and the rest of your sentence proves to me that my accusation of your intent is 100% correct: You accuse Ted Westervelt of denigrating the deaths of the Chapecoense players.
Not even close. That's an outright lie. What were you looking for? A Pro/Rel Magna Carta? Most everyone understands we're not ready for a fully functioning open pyramid right now, but methodically moving towards one would be both advisable and ultimately lucrative and rewarding. After this year's Garber address, I'd expect MLS to embrace Pro/Rel as a "sellers league," but without any payments to non-MLS teams and only as a split for their existing league of 34 to 40 teams after the 2026 World Cup... and only after they cement themselves as a monopolistic billionaires-only cartel. #ProRelForUSA
Those who complain about USSF/MLS conflict of interest please refer to CONCACAF/CPL. CONCACAF, who's President is a major promoter of CPL, has just banned Ottawa Fury from playing in USL next year.. This comes after season tickets have been sold, fixtures scheduled and player contracts signed. It's also too late for them to jump ship to CPL meaning they are out of business for 2019.
Jeff, I worked for large multinational companies for 35 years as an employee and a consultant. I've prepared reports and written Priyanka proposals for companies such as Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Credit Suisse, ING, Fidelity, Putnam Investments and Thomson Reuters. The Deloitte Report is the sort of proposal you'd slap together in a couple of days to justify a small project or budget increase to let's say, hire a contractor. The sort your boss's boss will glance at the summary and then approve. You're basically justifying something that's already been agreed and you can get away with all sorts of conditional statements and assumptions. QUOTE="USRufnex, post: 37348819, member: 9687"] Most everyone understands we're not ready for a fully functioning open pyramid right now, but methodically moving towards one would be both advisable and ultimately lucrative and rewarding. After this year's Garber address, I'd expect MLS to embrace Pro/Rel as a "sellers league," but without any payments to non-MLS teams and only as a split for their existing league of 34 to 40 teams after the 2026 World Cup... and only after they cement themselves as a monopolistic billionaires-only cartel. #ProRelForUSA[/QUOTE] MLS is never going to accept pro-rel until it makes commercial sense, which will be a long way away. So just forget it and create something that actually has a chance of being implemented, diverging that can be expanded at a later date. Unfortunately it seems as though Garber will continue to consider expansion as long as investors are willing to make bids, which makes it harder to create a workable plan outside of MLS. Sport is a billionaires' playground. Soccer is a billionaire's playground. Even the players will be billionaires spoon. Manage what you can control, otherwise you'll go crazy. A, single-entity cannot be a cartel, though it can act like one. My plan would be to create a workable lower division framework them see where pro-rel would fit into that.
I'm not sure what you think you're reading but at no point did I say or imply that he denigrated the deaths of the players. Nothing you quoted stated or implied that. As I clearly stated, my beef was with him using the incident to promote his cause. To me, it was akin to when Joe Jackson used a press conference about his son Michael's death to announce the unrelated launch of a new record label. I'm afraid that just like your claims that I pretend to be reasonable and open minded, anything else you're reading is in your own imagination. And for what it's worth, the fact that 71 people lost their lives was the important part of that story. The fact that almost an entire soccer team was among them was also poignant. The fact that they had been promoted in quick succession is a minor detail that was largely covered in the synopsis that they'd had a rapid rise to success. Every post you make in defence of this and every post in which you attempt to turn it back on me, exhibits a bias and double standard. I'm certainly not alone in my interpretation of Ted's tweet as others (including a Chapacoense supporter) had the same reaction. But in your book, apparently @Dan Loney blogging extensively about a pro/rel study is a far worse offence. Edit: FYI, I have multiple pro/rel advocates who I mutually follow on social media and have had extensive civil debates with them. I've also reached out to some and acknowledged that I was at times a bit too bold and brash when I first joined the platform as I had made the mistake of tarring some of them with the same brush as Ted & co.
Finally the European Superleague idea I was talking about. https://barroldinhosoccer.wordpress...as-im-giving-the-gift-of-a-euro-super-league/
Well they'd have a clear path to the upper echelons based on meritocracy, fan power and... cash, I guess...! Think of the investment that would flood in!! #ProRelforUEFA
Fury obtained written approval from the Canadian Soccer Association to play in USL as recently as last month. And they wouldn't be the only Canadian team playing in USL. TFC II will be playing in League One in 2019.
They announced that they were returning to USL prior to getting exemptions from CSA, USSF, or CONCACAF.
We don't actually know TFC II's situation, so I'm not sure it's comparable: if nothing else, they're playing in a divisional level that doesn't exist in Canada and CPL doesn't want a B team.