As a matter of personal preference, I would like to see both Sacramento and St. Louis in MLS. Preferred road trips for me.
The bidders are not all going to step up simultaneously. When one checks all the boxes, they are going to be in, unless there are 2+ who are ready. Sacramento is ready right now. St. Louis & Phoenix are fairly close, but not all the way. And are likely 4-6 months away, or longer. Sac gets in. Announcement by end of month. Construction could start almost immediately. Shiny new stadium ready for 2021.
At the U.S.A. vs. Chile match here in Houston my buddies and I ran into supporters from K.C. and Louisiana, and then we ran into the Austinites. They are going to be a special kind of breed of MLS fans and supporters for our league! Ha! It snows here in Texas in April. This may sound odd to many, but living in West Texas, with Colorado and New Mexico just next door, there are fronts that come down from the Rockies via Canada that do indeed make it snow in Amarillo and Lubbock in April. Nothing to stop traffic, or cancel games, but my Tech buddies and I were heading out to soccer practice, 1996 iirc, and there we were a bunch of Texans, a few Argies, several Mexicans and two Chilenos playing ball in 28 degree winds n snow, in April. Being from the Gulf Coast I never thought I would play soccer in this type of wind and weather condition.
So this is your answer? The stated criteria doesn't matter because you met a couple guys someplace? Do you have any idea how stupid this sounds? And saying something inane followed by "Ha!" is...well....not exactly an.argument.
You must be a hit at parties Bill. All I was commenting on was the new Austin fans, their fanbase. If I was looking to comment further I would have. Christ! Take it easy!
The folks in Austin want their MLS team to be nicknamed El Tree. So they may not have many US supporters in their ranks.
If they go that route their games with Portland aren't going to go too well for them. No worries, the "Austin" team will probably get bought out and taken over by someone who moves them to San Antonio or one of the other front-runner cities once the Stadium thing falls through and Precourt's shell game is up.
I think Austin is likely to break ground this fall. Though I am curious about how they plan to deal with their wetland onsite. Getting Corps of Engineers approval to fill it in usually takes a while.
I think it's a great nickname. Even kinda puts a dent in the Mexican national team's monolith. I sometimes think any MLS fan rooting for another MLS market to fail - be it Miami or even Austin - must be a relative newbie. I think man, these jackass kids have no idea how hard it was to get here, how hard-fought it's been, how improbable-to-impossible this current success seemed, and how precarious our joy is... But of course that's not the case. It's perfectly understandable that Crew fans in particular want Precourt to fail. But I'm still going to compartmentalize and hope Austin MLS has wonderful execution for their mostly blameless soccer fans, for the health of the league and the sport in the US - and thereby for my benefit as a fan.
Insofar as Austin has shown itself to have soccer fans, they are not "mostly blameless." They were mostly either actively hostile to Columbus fans or dispiritingly indifferent to the fact that Austin was attempting to steal Columbus' team.
The AO chapter here seems to be a small clique. Having gone to the Chile game and stood with AO, I can see why Austinite soccer fans wouldn't want to be a part of that. I certainly won't do it ever again. That said, I'll support US soccer when it matters. From everything we know, we're on schedule to break ground in the next 6 months or so. Precourt hate aside/claims of incompetence aside, this city has been under heavy construction for two decades now, so I'd expect smooth sailing on the stadium construction front. We expect to. Both on the team end and the SG end.
When MLS announces a possible move of another city's team to your city, the natural instinct is NOT to shit on the city that could possibly be losing the team. How would that help the situation? But the losing city has (in their minds) every incentive to be hateful to the city "stealing" their team (your words, not mine), right? So don't be surprised when the fire is returned. That's what happened.
What I do at parties is beside the point, but your gratuitous nonsense continues unabated. You isolated a portion of my post, quoted it and then responded to it. If your comment was simply a generic observation about Austin fans in general - based on, what, 2 or 3 guys - then that's one thing. But the quote that you posted was not a question about whether people in Austin are Jim Dandy, but rather a specific question about which of the 3 well-publicized MLS criteria Austin met. Me: Austin checks none of the stated boxes Your reply: I met a couple guys from Austin who seemed cool. And then you followed it with "Ha!" as if you had come up with a slam dunk of some kind when,in reality, you just burbled some stray nonsense.
No one knows Precourt's worth. A downtown stadium would've never worked in Austin, and MLS is fine with that due to other market factors. The stadium location is fine. The fan support is going to surprise you. Better work on checking some of your own community's boxes before you doubt another community about which you are ignorant.
My "hating on" Austin has more to do with Precourt, and I'm not even a Crew fan, far from it! What gets me is that there are other cities who are doing the right thing, going through the process. The recent discussion of St. Louis, Sacramento or both is an example of this. San Antonio is another city that was putting forth an honest effort to get a team, and by letting Precourt do an end-around when no one other than Precourt and MLS knew about it is what reeks like a steaming hot loaf of cow manure on a hot asphalt road on a hot and humid day. It was either San Antonio or Austin, not both, so if Austin wanted a team, they can get one the same way Nashville, Detroit, Sacramento, San Diego, Phoenix or any other place that did/might get one. That, and the fact that they should be getting new owners like Blank and other big-money guys, not grifters like Precourt.
I thought you misread his post. I read it as those few Austin fans were uncool or something, but CeltTexan was trying to be nice/generous.
There's a lot of "the right thing", "deserves", "the process", "should", etc. in any critique of expansion, I've found. In the end, MLS gets to decide where they want teams, and Austin was clearly high priority. I think it says a lot about MLS' desire to be here if we can get a team and not have to do it "the right way". For the record, I hope San Antonio gets a team.
I guess I feel like I've seen all this and become somewhat enured to it, given the Quakes move and "revival." What a load of bullshit that was. What happened to my team is league owners wanted another market, and were willing to ******** over one of their unloved "minor" markets in order to give an owner said new market without that owner paying market rate. Sound familiar? They also got to put a championship ********ing team in place for Houston's kickoff, btw. So then the league made some exceptional bargain deals to cover their by-then horribly exposed ass and have an operational team in the Quakes market. And by the end of it all, it was rather obvious a shady deal had already been tentatively struck to revive the team. In other words, the new "savior" ownership which should have prevented the whole move had already been found. < poison skull emoji > By comparison? This Crew thing worked out amazingly for everyone - especially Crew fans. It's a freaking dream come true. San Jose? Notsamuch. And all this stuff about Columbus being original or where the league was born or whatever applied pretty well to San Jose too, btw. And there was nothing like #SavetheCrew sympathy for the San Jose situation, incidentally. There was mostly callous derision, blaming and mockery for Quakes fans from whatever supporters around the league were on BigSoccer. Whether that matters or not: I think/I hope there are a ton of blameless Austin fans who will fill their stands for generations to come. As for the relatively few douchebag nerd sockpuppets who beat the drum for Precourt to move the Crew: I hope they suffer chronic, unrelenting hemmorhoids, right to their graves. Like their very last blurry, irritated thought is, "Jesus, these effing hemmorhoids!" And of course I hope the Crew beats Austin every. single. time. the two teams meet from here to eternity.
Only one of those things are actual boxes that the league has said are necessary. I think you're kind of manipulating what the league has said in the past. 1) Deep pocketed owners is legit. I honestly don't know the net worth of Precourt compared to other ownership groups. Although the league has always been more interested in cash liquidity over total assets with regards to ownership groups. But still, I'll give you this one. 2) A history of support for lower level soccer has NEVER been a prerequisite. This dates back to the Toronto expansion. Same with Atlanta. The league has certainly looked at lower division support as a factor in choosing an expansion candidate (Cinci being the most recent example). But it has never been a mandate or even a hinted at mandate by the league. 3) Nobody has ever said "downtown stadium plan". You're just making that up. It has always been a revenue controlled stadium situation. And each situation is taken individually. SKC being a great example of a stadium outside of the urban core. Alianz field being another. While a stadium plan in an urban core is certainly a better fit for some markets, in others, it clearly isn't as big of a factor. And, as has been pointed out, being in downtown has been seen as a detriment in some markets. Houston being an example that has been brought up in this thread recently.
That one he's not making up. It was the standard Minnesota United was being held to, complete with deadline. When the original Minneapolis site fell through, the MLS front office threatened to pull the franchise. If St. Paul hadn't stepped up, who knows....Sacramento Republic might be in their 3rd MLS Season.
I think his "Ha" was meant to be a "Hahaha" and was laughing at the Austinites. At least that's how I took it.