has there ever been, or are there now regional soccer leagues, much like there is in baseball?? Come explore my mind for a second take out a map and look at Illanois/Indiana. Put a D3 calibur team in each city with more than a few hundred thousand people. places like: Rockford Quad Cities Peoria Bloomington Springfield (Isatopes) Decatur East St louis (yes I know its a ghetto so any St louis suburb) Evansville Lousville suburb Fort Wayne Southbent Gary Anderson/Muncie Indianapolis also add naperville or some other Chicago burb in when the Fire get a real home you could get 10-12 teams out of those 15 cities minimal travel costs put player saleries in the 100k/team/year(suplimental income) range players will be sold to larger clubs(A-League or MLS) and fans will follow. sure attendance would maybe be something like 1000 or less per game, but the cost is low, so the margins will be close. local team, mostly local/regional players, local/regional advertisers, local fan base built in. people will show up just like they do for the local kids at texas league baseball games. and dont forget the beer, and the social life inpact on these often sleepy overgrown towns just some thoughts. there are many regions like this, this is just an example. however Ohio could easily be added to the league. same with Madison/oshkosh/milwaukee/greenbay wisconsin has this been tried?? wouldnt this help grow the sport in the minor leagues??
Sounds like the PDL. Just for your information though, the only city in Illinois with more than a few hundred thousand people is Chicago. Rockford (150k), Aurora (143k), Naperville (128k), Peoria (113k), Springfield (111k) and Joliet (106k) are the only cities over 100k besides Chicago. (This doesn't count the twin cities [Urbana/Champaign, Bloomington/Normal] and quad cities, which may be more than 100k put together.)
Re: Re: Curious: regional minor leagues Quad cities is 233k+ per 2000 census. The problem is that one (the USSF, USL, or whoever) doesn't just plunk down a team whenever/wherever it feels like it. Much like locating MSL teams, teams at other levels require an I/O (an owner, if you will, who's willing to shell out cash to get the thing going, the know-how to keep it afloat, and the interest in doing it in the first place) and a venue. Neither of these grow on trees. Rockford at one time (recently) had both a D-3 teams and a W-league team. They both have, sadly, gone out of existence. The life span of teams in the lower levels (PDL, D-3, W-1, W-2) is, in far too many cases, brief. (Remember the "Hive?") ps the Hive (Arlington Heights) has nothing to do with Rockford other than also being the site of some former lower level teams
Re: Re: Re: Curious: regional minor leagues Another problem with locating MSL teams is that the league folded in the early 90's. You could, however, try locating MLS teams, that is, if you don't mind outdoor soccer as opposed to indoor, and aren't picky about letter order.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Curious: regional minor leagues Which brings up a topic that is related. I'd like to see indoor teams seeded around the country. I don't much care for indoor soccer myself, but it's impact in producing players and maintaining the game professionally in the US is pretty much undeniable. And in most parts of the country, smaller arenas are all over the place. If you wanted, you could put indoor soccer teams into 5000-10000 seat arenas in about a hundred cities in the US without any sort of construction campaign. There seems to be a pretty good link between soccer and hockey fans (lots of crossover) and minor league teams with local ownership shouldn't be averse to putting some extra dates into their arenas, as long as they can pull enough people to break even. Unfortunately, the indoor leagues have had a pretty rough time of it financially.