Can't tell if you're serious. That would be at least 5 rounds, which probably never going to work. I'll also throw in some variant of how the SPL (Scotland) used (or may still) work, which draws a line between the top and bottom of the table and those teams start playing, basically upper and lower divisions. For MLS, I would do it this way: Regular season, you play each team in your conference home/away, don't play outside conference. First stage, divide the conferences in half top and bottom, and the teams play each other in group format sorta like pots, where they jockey for playoff seeding. Second stage, put everyone into a single table and play rounds by seeding earned in first stage. I don't seriously support this, but just another thought experiment. Edit: The benefit, if it's not clear, is that even the team that's last in the table has something to fight for at the end of the season.
I like that idea, similar to the idea of having 1 open slot in MLS for each year's 2nd division champ who goes into a playoff with the current year's MLS/USL team to see who takes the open spot the next season. Sort of a limited pro/rel system.
New England's win over Kansas City makes the battle for first and second very interesting with a few matches remaining.
Question: which teams would you want to meet in the first play off round? Realistic teams, so don't say Montreal since they're not going to make it
Toronto, New York, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Columbus, New England, and then Houston. Least no Chicago worries this year.
The teams I'd want to avoid are NE and Columbus. And of course Houston, if they were going to make it (I don't think they will)
It would have been more interesting if SKC had won and been tied on points with us going into next week. Of course, NE is clearly a better team over the past month or so than SKC.
Interesting sure, but I like this better where if we win today and beat KC next week, we just need 1 point from 9 to clinch.
True for KC. Unless I'm doing something wrong, NE could still catch up if we only got 1 from 9. NE tying KC made the race for 2nd and 3rd more interesting. Us winning today made the race for 1st much less "interesting" If we beat SKC next week AND NE loses next week we would be 6 points ahead of each with 9 points still on the table. But if NE wins, next week also, we'd need 4 points to clinch out of 9 (or possibly 3 depending on the tiebreakers, although we'd probably lose those to NE if they ended up winning more to tie us on points).
With this win, the Magic Nbr for both New Engl Revs and Sporting KC is now down to 7 points. Thats a combination of DC United either getting points or the other teams NOT getting 3 points for a win.
As for the magic number right now...... (baseball season has had me practicing this a lot lately) the contenders are at 45 points, with 4 matches remaining- their best possible point total is 57. DC needs 7 points to eliminate them both. With each match played, that number will either remain the same or diminish until season's end. Currently, DC at 51 points, SKC and NE at 45 points, with 4 matches remaining. With a win over SKC, and a NE loss, DC would go to 54 points, SKC and NE stay at 45 points, resulting in a 9 point spread(not 6) with 3 matches remaining. At that point, DC's magic number for the East would be 1.(hence the term 6-point match(7-6=1)) DecadeofDC26 is right, provided NE lose next week. And so is JohnL. And you're right too- if NE wins, DC would still be 6 points ahead with 9 points to play for, so their number would drop from 7 to 4.
Yea, I didn't realize New England had tied KC with their win over them on Friday. I mentioned this in another thread, but we will not hold tiebreakers over New England, and likely not Kansas City when tiebreakers become relevant after 34 games. It is much more likely for New England to make up 6 points on us by them winning 2 more and us losing 2 more, as opposed to them drawing 3, and us losing 3. In this event they will have one more win than us, holding the first tiebreaker. KC is a bit more complicated. Currently we have a 6 point lead, +4 GD lead, and +1 GF lead. If we beat KC, and then lose all 3, with KC winning all 3, then KC will make up a bare minimum of 6 goals, assuming they only win by one, and we only lose by one, every match. This will give KC a +2 GD, but we also have to factor in our winning amount this Friday in this scenario. Since we would have to win by 2, and then have the slimmest possible margin in 2 matches per round, for 3 rounds, this is mostly likely that KC will have superior GD when all is said and done. There is more I could type depending on different results, but the point is that in order for us to be in a scenario where tiebreakers are relevant v. KC or NE, then the results that would have to happen to enable that scenario would put the tiebreaker in favor of KC or NE rather than us.
So, we just have to get more points than either of them and we're fine ..... and math nerds can't bother us
Not trolling, but sometimes I lurk on here to check out the latest stadium rumors and such. Great turnaround this year. Twellman was bleating about how CCL is soooo hard for NY and SKC and explains their troubles, while ignoring the fact that DC seems to be doing OK. Anyway, as a math geek, I thought I'd point out that, for magic number purposes, if you beat SKC and NE lose this week-end, then you shouldn't be calculating the magic number against either of those teams, as they will be tied for third, not second. Not that it will make much difference in the end, if DC wins and NE lose this week-end, as that will surely do it for DC winning the East, but the magic number won't be 1.
Good points, but if you beat NE Saturday and move into second, and assuming we win, we'll be 8 points ahead of you with 3 games left, and we'll have 4 more wins. It will be impossible to for you to make the win tiebreaker up. Our magic number is still 1 as that would put us on 55 and 16 wins, while your maximum would be 55 and 15 wins.
Gotta credit 2 things here. First of all credit the Gods who gave us an easy group. And then credit Olsen for having the balls to not really mix in any starters for the home games and he got away with it.