More than a rivarly week, I am definitely in favor of a retro jersey weekend or two during the season. As someone mentioned, opening day is already well attended so it should not be done during the first couple of weekends. Instead, find a couple of the historically worst weekends for attendances, and make the teams wear vintage jerseys on those weekends.
A balanced schedule would make this more meaningful. Once you start playing teams 3 or more teams you may loose some of the spark. You could really have more than 1 rival week, for example. LA @ SJ in week 7 SJ @ LA in week 19 - but then LA @ Chivas, Chivas @ LA -Cascadia is a 3 team rivals... = To me it would be to get to 20 teams and stop. And then consistently play 10 games every Saturday Yes, 2 weekends a year, put alot of effort into promoting your true rivals. Some teams may not fit into your grid, but if those teams play enough, maybe you build that up. Assuming NYC2 comes in, here are mine, emphasis on real- traditional rivals first and the remaining teams as best as possible= - SEA- PDX goes way back, nothing more needs to be said SJ- LA before CUSA showed up and even back to NASL days too,epic playoffs &USOC SLC-COL rocky mountain DAL-HOU texas derby MONT-TOR not just in hockey... NY-NY2 big apple cup- and because Don wants it NE-CHI lost count of how many playoff games DC-PHIL when your only 1-2 hrs away- this one should be much better CBUS-KC 2 former hunt teams-battle of middle america CUSA-VAN poor van, but someone has to play the goats
Stop right there, son. MLS is never going back to the single-table setup. Country's just too big. Either we'd have to drop down to 16 teams and spread the games out more so travel doesn't kill everyone, or we continue diverting from the HaA system with every new team we add.
---- Yeh, I know Don wants 20-24 teams, but its what i expected from an NFL guy. Now if you had MLS-1 and MLS-2 (or better yet MLS-west & MLS-east ) with 16 teams each- 32 teams puts us on equal league size with all the other sports leagues in this county. And that would cut down the travel as well. MLS Cup would become #1 W vs. # 1E . Could be a home/home series. Don would probably not have a problem with that, because that would be 32-19= 13 more teams to add and $$$ for expansion fees.
Off topic, but I'll bite. Having two separate conferences (east/west) with no interplay is a really bad idea. The NHL for years tried to limit contact between conferences (for travel reasons), to the point where, if you live in a western market, Sydney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin only play once every other season in your building. And if they're injured that night, it would be 4 years between visits. It was such a problem, that the league and players association voted to change the schedule matrix for next season so every team plays home and away. Obviously, there's not as many games to play with in an MLS schedule, but a home-and-away in-conference and rotating home/away out-of-conference is still the best option until the league expands past 24 teams (36 games). Up until that point, you at least guarantee that every team plays in every building in a two year cycle. Beyond that, you're probably looking at a 4 division setup. Ex: 32 teams (4 divisions of 8) - H+A in-division (14 games) - H vs Div A (8 games)* - A vs Div B (8 games)* - 4 H, 4 A vs Div C (8 games)* * rotating basis Total 38 games. Unworkable today, but if the league is ever at 32 teams, it's popular enough to be playing a higher percentage of midweek games.
Another way we could get teams from the East and West to play more would be to turn the MLS Cup into a true league cup and lets not forget teams playing each other in the USOC