Seriously? Who really wants the NY Cosmos to be MLS' 20th team?

On Twitter....

 

Correct, but the percentage of 18-35 year olds that are democrats is significantly larger (roughly 60-40). In that age group, wealth is comparable between the political parties, so the young "blue state" demographic could be perceived as more valuable.

However, in reality, the NFL wants to appeal to as broad a base as possible. This is what I was implying. They don't ONLY want to appeal to a republican demographic.

MLS should appeal to a broad base as well.

 

To recap, a NYRB fan who has repeatedly supported the idea of the new Cosmos being NY2 in MLS says that the new Cosmos are channeling the original Cosmos. Somebody different casts doubt on that and suggested that this would be impossible in today's league. Original person states his belief that the new Cosmos would have the same philosophy and style while existing within the framework of today's league, which is clearly different from the NASL, and avoiding the mistakes of the original incarnation.

Your interpretation of that is that a NYRB fan is afraid of playing second fiddle to the new Cosmos if they come about.

Are you illiterate?

 

Do you have any stats to back up that a majority of supporters come from JoCo for both Sporting and the Chiefs? I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but I have also not seen anything that indicates that. Making a claim that more than 50% of people that go to those games comes from JoCo is a big claim when that is only one section of the metro.

 

Yup...I'm sure MLS fans would be happy to see the league fold twenty years from now, just so we could be the biggest league in North America for a year or two.

 

Pretty sure MLS has already done both of these. They signed the most recognizable soccer player in the world a few years ago, if you'll recall. And if you look at Wikipedia's list of U.S. club soccer attendance records, MLS has had nine games over 70,000, and the Cosmos (and the NASL overall) only ever had seven. Sure, most of the MLS games were gimmicks. So were the Cosmos.

I suspect the "mistakes" in question are more likely to be:

1) Spending so much money building up your team of superstars that it lost money every year, even with all of those 70,000 seat sellouts.

2) Paying more attention to players' marketing potential than their playing potential, leaving the Cosmos with rosters full of a mix of over-the-hill superstars and anonymous eastern Europeans, and unable to compete internationally with serious teams from serious leagues (see: Bayern 7, Cosmos 1; Stuttgart 6, Cosmos 1).

And, most importantly,

3) Thinking one team pulling in 40,000 fans a game meant you didn't have to worry about the fact that some of the other teams were under 5,000 fans a game.

 

but it's exactly what someone from joco would be expected to say.

 

I understand the nostalgia about the NASL, and the Cosmos, I saw Pele at the opening game of the Kingdome ( which apparently held over 250,000 people that day because ask any native of seattle over 40, and they will claim to have been there)

But I'm not sure if anything the NASL did could be considered 'heights'. It was always a struggling league with a few very bright spots scattered about some very questionable business choices.

 

What team in any sport could survive if it primarily drew from the county it played in?

Few, if any, you jacknut

 

When did I ever say that?

People from urban areas are much more likely to go to an urban stadium. People from suburban or rural areas will go to a stadium regardless of location. To appeal to a youth (and thus urban) demographic in many (but not all) American cities, the stadium has to be located near the city center. End of story.

 

This is true for soccer, and no other sport in the US. In short, soccerfan can't be bothered to get out to the games if it's less than convenient.

So there are no young people in the suburbs?

 

This red/blue thing is a bit ridiculous. Big cities tend to be blue. Sports teams are in big cities. Fans of the team come from the general metro areas of those big cities, including some affluent Republican-leaning areas. There is no real correlation on people's political leanings and their willingness to support their local MLS team.

 

No, of course not. The original poster who brought it up was wrong, but I basically said "I know where you're coming from" because most stadiums are located in urban (and thus "blue") areas to facilitate travel for those who live in the city.

 

Truth.

No, the soccer mums live in the suburbs, their teenage spawn live in Urban Coffee shops where they play with skateboards they can't ride and argue about who the biggest hipsters are while fannying about on Spotify. They claim to hate popular music but love Nirvana even if their second favorite album was from unplugged and they think they are too cool for NFL where fans are (gasp) "Blue Collar" while they vote Democrat and try and pretend they are not part of middle class white America.

Seems to me none of the sterotypes really fit, I do however think there are more Mathletes per capita in the MLS fanbase than any other sport. Urban, suburban, rural soccer demographics .. only a ********ING MORON (not directed at the ever lovable and cuddly Mr Warmth) would think the same rules regarding soccer fans apply to every city in the US, and that soccer fans are the same in every city.

 

It seems that a Pc4th poll on who is cuddly, lovable, and a ********ING Moron is in order. Where is that professor?

 

Did wonders for Dan Kapanke.

 

And how would this happen under the current single entity structure with the current ownership groups in place? Oh and not to mention every team in a stadium that's either purpose-built or controlling their own revenue, and the league-wide adidas deal, 3 tv contracts and most teams with jersey sponsors. But yeah, soccer is in the same place it was 30 years ago when the idea of a professional league was just being introduced to the US.

Bottom line, NASL was damn successful for it's time, and anyone older than 30 should realize that. MLS would have likely failed back then as well or do we not remember how close this league was to failing just a decade ago. If not for NASL there would have likely been not US team in the World Cup in 1990, without that no US World Cup in '94 and without that not MLS in '96. Please give credit where it was due, NASL and the Cosmos brought soccer back into the national zeitgeist and laid the groundwork for what we have today.

 

Sure, if by "laid the groundwork" you mean "Gave MLS a list of everything not to do, when it comes to establishing a viable football league."

 

This would definitely be a coveted road trip for every supporters group. I like this idea...

 

You're an idiot if you can't get what my meaning is. Any league that was just establishing a sport out of nothing with no prior experience was doomed to fail bc they simply had little foresight into how to launch such a thing from scratch. It's rarely worked in our history. Most startup leagues fail. Especially given the times, NASL (unlike MLS) didn't launch in a time where viewership of the World Cup rivaled most nations on the planet. It launched in and era where the US did not exist in World soccer. MLS nearly failed under much better conditions for the sport. I consider NASL as more of a beta-test for US Soccer. But make no mistake, had there been no league in the 70's and 80's there would almost certainly be no MLS today. NASL established the conditions necessary for MLS to start. And even then MLS made alot of mistakes that nearly destroyed it. We were down to 10 teams and 3 ownership groups at one point.

The biggest things that have established the stability of the league are stadiums and SUM and neither would have either been possible or profitable without the groundwork established by NASL in bringing the sport into our consciousness. No cities would be partially financing stadium deals back in the 70s even if it were under the MLS business model and no coercion by SUM would be enough to get a major network to actually pay MLS for tv rights at that time either. The sport was still too new. To simply dismiss NASL is short-sighted they played a role for the sport for it's time. As did indoor leagues like MISL and smaller leagues like the A-league afterwards to keep it alive. But without those catalysts we have no '90 and '94 World Cups and no MLS in '96, period.

Now it seems that the younger generation of MLS fans can't even appreciate that the conditions that MLS launched in are far far different from those that NASL launched in or even the conditions of today vs the time that I was growing up in. There was no FSC, no US World Cup team, no US Women's team winning on a regular basis, none of these things existed as a crutch to stoke the public's interest. NASL had none of this so they had to go over the top otherwise they would have attracted noone's interest. Ppl weren't as educated or sophisticated about the sport as they are today. Most of the ppl in those stands didn't really even know the rules. Ppl back then would not have understood why the US could not attract the best players in the world as our leagues did in every other sport bc there was no understanding of the depth of foreign leagues. It's just so obvious that making such a simplistic comparison without even considering the actual nuances of the circumstances is so blindingly gauche that it's almost laughable.

 

Have you ever been to Las Vegas in August? You think Dallas and Houston are bad, they got nothing on Vegas. Sure, they could build a dome stadium, but the league really needs to move away from artificial surfaces. And I think you over estimate the sports demographic in L.V. There's a reason why no other (more successful) American sports league has made the move to Vegas. Yes, they do great as a tourist town but there's just too much else going on for a team to be successful. I'm not going to get into this here search the MLS expansion franchise forum for Vegas and you'll see the topic discussed ad nauseum.

As for the question posed in the title of this thread, I'm divided on this. I'd like to see the Cosmos take their place alongside the Earthquakes, Timbers, Sounders, and Whitecaps as NASL legacy-named MLS teams. That said, I just don't think it makes sense. RBNY is having issues filling their beautiful stadium, even with their star-studded line-up. And to the people that make the argument that there are thousands of New Yorkers that aren't willing o make the trip to Jersey to see a team, this isn't entirely accurate. Old Giant Stadium sold out when Barca came through a few years back, I have a hard time believing none of them came from the other side of the Hudson. The people that won't make the trip from NYC to Harrison are (by and large) glory-seekers. Meaning that if Cosmos 2.0 aren't an immediate success and continue to be, they'll have the same attendance problems that RBNY have. This is at least, my opinion (as someone who lived in NYC for a few years) on the subject.

 

I get your meaning...and you're wrong. The NASL isn't the reason we have SSS today, nor was it the reason why we hosted the World Cup. You seriously act as though the league was some major event in the American sporting landscape, and yet the facts don't back you up in the least. The Cosmos attracted interest from the curious fan for a brief moment with Pele and co., but where was the interest for non-Cosmos matches? It didn't exist. Compare the arrival of Beckham to Pele; both were arguably the biggest stars of the game when they arrived, difference being LA's actions didn't result in the collapse of the league, whereas the Cosmos' did. Hell, there's a reason it took so long for soccer to rebound in the country...who the hell would want to revive a failed idea? It'd be like someone trying to bring the XFL today.

Linking the NASL and World Cup is flawed, too. The World Cup was all about one thing--money. America had it, FIFA wanted it. But they couldn't just award it to a country with no real professional league, could they? Enter the promise of MLS, a league that would be founded upon the principals of avoiding the mistakes of the NASL and actually being self-sustaining. Even then it was a struggle for the league to survive, despite this romantic notion of millions of NASL fans just waiting to come back and support a league.

 

Did you actually read my post?

Please find the quote where I even say this?!! My point in bringing up SSS is to point out that MLS would have likely failed in the 70 for the same reasons regardless of the business model. The reason we have SSS is because we live in an era where there is support and interest for the sport. There is no way that a municipality would have voted for a SSS back in the 70's or even the early 80's. Read my post again.

There was no interest for the entire sport prior to the 70's and relatively few ppl playing late in their gradeschool years. Now the the US federation was still carrying the US Open Cup but throughout most years leading on up to the 80's there were no fully professional leagues in the US. Also it's completely inaccurate to say that there was no interest outside of the Cosmos. The Sounders, Whitecaps, and Timbers were all successful for thier runs until the league folded. It's the main reason why those names were all resurrected in the current iteration.

Prior to the NASL there was no demand for a professional league so none existed. What the NASL did was create a market, which was eventually filled by the MISL and the A-League.

The difference is that Beckham arrived in an era where an entire network dedicated to the sport could survive. There was no SUM, no sponsors, only one network deal which wasn't paying much. And it wasn't NY's actions that collapsed the league, it was the actions of the other ownership groups who could not sustain viability with shrinking audiences. Audiences that would have shrunk regardless. It took a Cosmos level of spending to gain what small foothold the sport had in our conscience. Before that it was zero. MLS had a much more favorable market to work in.

How so? What was the impetus that led to our bid? Of course FIFA wanted the World Cup in the US, if they'd had their way it would have been here in the 70's. We wouldn't have bid for it without the catalyst that was our 1990 WC run. Or did you just think that we all woke up one day and decided to bid for a World Cup.

So summing that up, MLS is bouyed by two things SSS and SUM both of which were not possible in the 70's due to the fact that USMNT was not a profitable commodity and the level of interest in the sport would not have warranted an investment in infrastructure. MLS benefited from a rising level of support for the sport that proceded it's existence and it would have been hard pressed for even the same current structure to have survived under the same conditions in the era that the NASL existed under.

 

I'm not sure who I agree with in this debate, unak78 or looknohands, but this statement did catch my eye. You think that our 1990 WC run was the catalyst that brought about our bid for the 1994 World Cup? But we were awarded the 1994 World Cup in July 1988, before that 1990 World Cup run had begun.

I do think that the NASL laid the foundation for MLS in two ways. First, that a lot of the support that you see in MLS stadiums comes from people who are fanatical soccer fans as a result of having played soccer on school and club teams that didn't exist before the American soccer boom sparked by the NASL. Second, that the demise of the NASL was not caused by the overspending of the Cosmos, but rather by the overexpansion of the league in the late 1970s into weak markets, and that has caused MLS to move cautiously and wisely on expansion.

 

soccer boom was caused by hippie parents in suburbs and how cheap/safe it was and ayso and their everyone gets a trophy and plays mentality.

hockey=expensive
hoops = gotta be tall, children playing it is like watching airball-a-thons
football=dangerous
baseball = for standing/sitting around