SportsNation: The Ultimate Standings Just heard about this and thought it may be interesting. ESPN ranked 121 teams using 4 of the 5 major sports (mls not included) using varying categories. One needs to see it for themselves to understand it. I have not looked at it at all.....only long enough to see: overall standings (of 121): 16. Pats 42. Celts 81. Bruins 89. Sox "bang-for-your-buck" category (of 121): 40. Pats 64. Celts 82. Bruins 92. Sox One of the lines the Revs used on me when talking with them was "hey, look at the other teams in this town.....regardless of how expensive it is compared to the rest of mls..its still an inexpensive alternative." Well, maybe they need to rethink that a bit given the "b-f-y-b" above and what the other teams are doing to their fans. any thoughts as to where the revs (and other mls teams) would place in these rankings? Have to walk the dog now....."twalk amungst yaselves." p.s. The method to our Ultimate madness
maybe i shouldn't have put (NRC) in the title....i'd have thought this would garner a bit more interest since our revs owner/investors ranked pretty low, with regards to the pats, in categories that many of us find important here on the bds? 40. Bang for the buck 13. Friendliness: ease of access to players, coaches and management. 12. Ownership: Honesty; loyalty to players and city 52. Affordability: Price of tickets, parking and concessions 24. Stadium Experience: Friendliness of environment; quality of game-day promos 16. Players: Effort on the field; likability off it 6. Coach: Strong on-field leadership 6. Championships: Titles already won or expected -- soon personally, i find it interesting that for a super bowl champ in a new stadium....bftb is in the 2nd 3rd of the 121 teams, affordability is below that, and stad. exp is 24. i'd have to say for the revs the following would go up/down compared to where the pats fell (and i'm comparing this really to the place that soccer has in the u.s. sports landscape right now, basically what one should expect for a "new" sport) Bang for the buck: worse Friendliness: at or better Ownership: at or better Affordability: WORSE Stadium experience: at or worse Players: worse....really only 'til last season Coach: better Championships: worse
I'd give ownership a solid worse. The Krafts would rather save money than upgrade talent 6 days a week and twice on Sundays. I'd rate the players the same, right now. I'd also rate them the same historically unless you're careful with your Pats window.
When have the Krafts EVER skimped on money to improve the team on the field??? Specifics, please. Is there a coach/GM they could have gotten with more money? Have they ever remained significantly under the salary cap when they could have spent more to acquire a player? Have they ever refused to send the team for off-season training wherever the coaches wanted (i.e., Italy, Brazil, etc.)? Did they decide not to open their facility for US Open Cup games when it was clear they would LOSE big money? Have they not provided the team with the BEST playing surface in the league? Have they not provided the team with training facilities the equal of anyone in the league? Have they ever decided to keep a coach rather than eat his salary to improve the team?
Most of the people on these boards feel that our experience at the big razor isn't what it could be, and a lot of that is due to the Krafts trying to save some coins. Also, there were a lot of rumors on bigsoccer boards about how St. Phil and Lamar want to put a little cash into the league for improvements but Kraft and Horowitz were against it. I consider these things when I try and figure out why the Revs do what they do. If you want to believe that the Krafts will spare no expense to put a better team on the pitch, I'll have to disagree.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Revs trade a draft pick to SJ last year that essentially allowed them to go over the cap? Doesn't sound like they were too concerned with saving money to me.
even if that were true, i don't think you could say the same for most of the people that visit the razor. of course, like you, i don't have anything to back that up.
How much money do you think that it was over by, signing Kante and Griffiths for 1/3 of the season? But you bring up a point. I would assume that, since the league signs the players to contracts, that it really only costs Kraft a small portion of what he goes over the cap by. On the othe rhand, we're talking about going about $25k over the cap. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that most teams are more than 10 times that over the cap.
You might be right. I was talking about my impressions which cause me to be suspicious of the Krafts being cheap on the soccer side, backed up (rather weakly, as you pointed out) by other posters.
I know there are lots of complaints about the stadium, parking, game-day experience, etc., but when it comes to producing a winning team, I don't think the Krafts have spared expense to make it happen. Needless to say, there have been MANY mistakes in that pursuit, but I haven't seen anything to suggest it's because of lack of investment.
How many of the original MLS team owners are still around? I count 3, and am willing to stand behind the Krafts on that alone. Yeah, things could probably be better, but they could also be a lot worse.
My first post in this thread was in response to Rev-eler, who felt that our ownership would be rated as good as or better than the Pats ownership. I disagreed, because I felt that Kraft was much more interested in whether the Pats were winners than the Revs, and that he'd be more inclined to assure that the Pats were competitive than the Revs. I still feel this way, but this isn't a thread that I started in order to attack the Krafts. I don't expect Kraft to spend the same amount of resources on the Revs as he does on his franchise whose value is probably as far beyond the Revs as it's payroll. I do, however, think that the resources he expends on the Revs should be similar to the resources expended on the Burn or the Metros or the United. I think that other teams go to more effort and expense to get quality players from outside the MLS. Either it's because the coach and GM are better than ours or the owner shows a (slightly) higher level of commitment.
Kraft likes to see the Revs win, but that's a nice little side benefit to lining his pockets. He'll throw around words like 'synergy' and other claptrap without realising that it's a known fact that that this is a chicken and egg situation: He won't properly invest in the Revs so they can grow, and because there isn't a lot of potential for growth, what is the point of investing. The question of whether we should be spending roughly the same as other clubs is a good one. The difference between us and the Anschutz clubs, where there is a limited amount of attention to go round to several children, at least they are treated with the respect they deserve. Like being from a loving family who are not financially well off, but still know what's important when it comes to raising their kids. We, on the other hand are the only child of a bored, rich couple, where daddy is too busy with his business deals (paper bix) and his mistress (Pats) and mommie is a bored housewife who spends her time drinking martinis at the country club, whilst the kid is being raised by the nanny. In this case, Ron Imbriano is the nanny, but he's like the trailer-trash daycare centre with 50 screaming brats in a 15 x 15 square room. And won't that kid have some stories to tell his therapist when he's 30 ! Cheers, "Red"