I've been trying to walk to my local branch twice a week. Counts as exercise (it's about a mile and a half RT) and I get a couple of hours of reading in on random topics. My one quibble is that the book offerings are a lot fewer than in the past. One small bookcase of SF titles, for example. But I've read some fun stuff. Some mysteries, an autobiography of the Fonz, some military history books, some historical fiction, and I picked up a couple of travel books (Yosemite and Germany) for later trips. Most of my branch's travel section has been refreshed this year with new material. And Mrs KG found a coffee book on the Okevango Delta with lots of elly pix in the sale section. I was also able to do some work on a project that I just couldn't get off the ground at home (too many distractions--"Meow").
I’m about 95% sure that’s Grayson Kelly. Also, he went to work for the Columbus Public Library after he signed off from CD 101/102.5/92.9.
Crew/browns give away tickets as part of their stay in the game attendance thing (that does nothing). MLS gave away 500 tickets in a premium section for the ASG to some nonprofit. Imagine every league has a policy for a certain % of tickets to be given away. The price of a ticket (and any add ins) at any given moment is what a person is willing to pay for it.
My second favorite F word is fair and I have to be fair to the Crew marketing team who I've bashed all year. The backpack gift for renewing STMs is a legit good gift. It's unique and actually useful. More of this instead of cheap scarves, please.
Mrs KG said "mine!" when I brought it home.... The most useful STM gift I've gotten (all teams) were the Blue Jackets refrigerator grocery bags they gave out a few years back. We use them almost every time we go to Kroger. Second was one of the Blue Jackets pouches for wallets, etc. She uses that a lot (she also used the Crew one we got, but it wore out after a time).
So i've sold two sets of tickets now for credit... I can't seem to get it set up to go to my checking account (the $0.01 test never comes through). Just FYI, that credit does not show up in your account manager. Your rep (Member Services Manager) can see it on the back and and apply it though. Kind of annoying that you can't see it in your account online.
2026 renewals are coming soon, per today's Crewsletter from the FO. If the rumors about the schedule switch are true, will this be a shorter schedule with the "full" schedule starting August 2026 OR will the 2026 be a full schedule with the switch starting in 2027-2028? It'd be nice to know what the latest word from Applebee's is. Is the switch somewhere around 25-30% certainty or is it closer to 70-80% happening?
MLS said it wouldn't happen until after the WC. My guess is that the '26 season ends as normal, then there is some sort of special tournament or Leagues Cup or MLS is Back or something in the first half of '27 as a standalone thing. Maybe it's just a half season apertura/clausura thing. Then the 27/28 season would start in August or whatever.
Breaking from @MLS Board of Governors: The league will not adopt the proposed fall-to-spring international schedule format coming out of the World Cup next summer. A switch to the global calendar is still on the table but would not happen until the 2027 season at the earliest. More to come at @SBJ. This was a tweet like 2 months ago from Alex Silverman, who reports on soccer for Sports Business Journal.
What's more important? A few more thousand fans in the summer or the ability to totally observe international windows? If/when Montreal gets their dome fixed, that's Columbus, Montreal and Atlanta with domed stadiums. LA has a dome as well. The problem being that Texas and Florida may seem to us to be warm weather in December and February to us, but we're not Texans or Floridians outside in those months. For us, it's easy enough that the home opener and end of season games are in colder weather because those games are typically more important than mid-season games. If the calendar is flipped, I can definitely see a decline in LDC attendance. I wouldn't be surprised if the calendar is flipped because "observing FIFA windows" is important.
MLS is still dependent on gate revenue much more than other pro leagues. The Apple deal is solid but it's not making any of these owners rich like the TV deals for the NFL, NBA, and even Big Ten and SEC football. The economics of changing the calendar are upside down and would undo most of the progressive improvement in MLS' product from the past decade. Half of the teams will lose thousands of STMs and there will be tons more empty seats across the board in the second half of the season and into the MLS Cup playoffs from people de-prioritizing MLS over the postseasons for every other major sport in America. Most of these owners will then reduce spending on the roster in response to that lost revenue, which dilutes the talent and eliminates a lot of the parity. It will become like baseball where two-thirds of the league is consciously not trying to win.
I was thinking of the teams, not the cities. Will we never ever again play a game in northern Ohio? Call me a naysayer, but I doubt it.
I think teams would actually sign higher upside players and hope transfer profits would make up the difference.
That plus additional TV revenue with the playoffs happening during a more open time of year is the upside It ignores several other considerations that others and myself laid out endlessly. This summer's weather thus far has not been kind to proponents of keeping the schedule the same.
They will be doing playoffs at the same time as the NBA and NHL playoffs. They'll also be playing regular season matches at the same time as the College Football Playoff and the NFL playoffs. How is that going to generate new revenue?