Elias Sports Bureau has apparently becaome the 'official statistician' for MLS. I'm not a big stato, but would this be seen as another step towards mainstream acceptance of MLS? If this is old news, go ahead and delete it.
Well, you could certainly say that. But, caveat emptor if what Bill James wrote about Elias in the 1988 Baseball Abstract (his last) still has any validity today: Apparently when Elias took over as baseball's statistician in 1987, they quietly and gradually eliminated a bunch of categories and lists in their final statistics, and weren't particularly adept at getting the stats out in anything approaching a decent time-frame. Now, considering there's more competition and more methods of delivering statistical information now than there were in 1988, it's possible they've improved their services. But I've worked with both Howe Sportsdata (which does most of the minor leagues in this country and Canada, and used to do the USL and CISL) and STATS, Inc., and they wouldn't have been bad choices, either. Especially STATS, because they're based here in Chicago and I might have been able to hook on with them in their newly-created MLS Stats Department.