For once I agree with Trecker.............

I wonder if he's any relation to "W"...

 

Damn, I knew shouldn't have read that sh!t.

 

Why do people insist on giving that idiot hits by clicking on his articles?

He hates MLS, he hates American soccer. Ignore him.

 

Only Trecker could argue that the start of school hurts MLS's attendance numbers, then suggest the league should ditch playing in the summer altogether. Huh?

 

Wouldn't making the Supporter's Shield a bigger deal (through prize money, spots in international tourneys, major official recognition) be basically the same freakin' thing? Yet, no one seems to give much credit to the Supporter's Shield. How does Trecker suggest that happen? Oh wait, he doesn't actually give that kind of detail. And, sure, many don't have a problem figuring out the regular season NCAA conference champs....that's very true, Jamie. But you also fail to mention that hardly anyone gives a crap about them either.....kind of like the Supporter's Shield winners. They are vastly overshadowed by both the conference tournament winners and the teams that make the Final Four.

 

As little fun as featuring a game during the afternoon July heat is, it's still better than starting up in the fall because during the summer the only real competition is baseball (yes there's the WNBA and AFL but they aren't competition). Once you get to the fall you have high school, college, and pro football, NBA basketbal, college basketball, and the NHL.

Having our own SSS will be great, but there are those that are going to still be in footbal stadiums (the Revs) for some time to come. So goodie, we'll get a whole season of gridiron lines. Not to mention the fact that there's very little precious airtime to go around. Since football started, how many games have been shown on ESPN Saturday's? Exactly.

Regardless of it may make sense or not, there's just way, way too much saturation during the fall to start the season. I would suggest starting the season earlier and ending it earlier. Start the first weekend in March instead of April and end up in September.

And I know, the biggest complaint with summer play is the heat. It's hot man. So hot. Soccer wasn't meant to be played in this heat. That's crap.

What we need are nothing but night games starting in mid-late June on out. That's definitely help. But there are plenty of leagues that play in the heat all the time. Exactly how cold does it ever get in Brazil? Any centeral american league plays through heat and unbearable humidity.

 

Many of us college basketball fans believe the conference tournaments have rendered the regular season meaningless. I used to watch every game my team played, now I watch FSC and hang around BigSoccer!

The problem with the Supporters' Shield is that everyone does not play the same schedule. This year, the New England fans have a legitimate point that the Quakes got to beat up on the expansion teams. New England, on the other hand, got stuck having to play extra games against a good KC team. Unless you go single table and everyone plays the same schedule, the best record is always subject to dispute.

The problem with a single table has always been logistics and scheduling. If everyone plays each other twice, you don't have a long enough season. If everyone plays four games, the season is too long and you end up having to play too many low attendance midweek games. I can tell you the SJ and LA fans would not want to play each other fewer times, and that's probably true for the other rivalry games as well. That's why we have the divisions that we have.

I think most everyone agrees that having playoffs where virtually everyone makes it makes for a lot of half hearted efforts in the middle of the year. Unless you are fourth or fifth, those games don't mean that much. You can feel both "safe" and "out of it" in third place, and that's not a good feeling from an entertainment aspect.

Expansion would help. If you have more teams, and don't add playoff spots, then a lot more teams have to worry about missing out. Seeding would probably also become more of an incentive. This is a problem that may solve itself as time goes by.

The only other thing I can think of is the way the Scottish league does it. If I understand it right, they play a round of home and away, then the upper teams play each other in another round in the second half of the season. That way, most of the time you get extra Rangers-Celtics and Hearts-Hibs matchups. MLS is already too complicated, I wouldn't want it to go that way.

 

Wonder why that is?

And yet, we're just sure that other European conventions would go over gangbusters here. The Supporters' Shield is an afterthought. I'm not saying it should be, but there are valid concerns about scheduling. The fact that the SS is an afterthought (like the President's Trophy in the NHL and any other "you did great, now let's see you do it again in the playoffs" type trophy) should be a clue that what many of us think is peachy-keen may not be accepted by the masses.

 

Agreed. As long as you are going to use the regular season as some kind of seeding basis for another competition......and a qualification for that second competition (i.e. some teams don't make that competition due to their regular season standings)......the regular season will always be seen as secondary in the US. If you had a regular season champ and then did a secondary competition with ALL teams and random draws then maybe you could restore interest to the regular season....maybe.

 

Well, you really can't disagree with most of what he says here. But I always get the sense of a man who hasn't thought as much about the issues as the average BigSoccer poster.

OK. So we ditch the playoffs. Personally, I'm neutral on that idae, but anyone who advocates it needs to take into account that we don't have relegation or or European places at stake. What does that do to the regular season?

And Trecker catches on one fact (that there isn't enough lead time to sell playoff tickets) to mean that MLS can't sell games when school is in. Erm, no. MLS seems to do pretty good, actually, after August. He fails to take into account, too, that playoff attendances-- while on paper less than regular season attendances-- usually come far closer to tickets actually sold. The "butt-in-seat to ticket sold" ratio is higher, the hardcore support is better. MLS may actually make money on the playoffs (which would explain their reluctance to reduce the playoffs).

So, I don't think Trecker's advocating anything stupid-- but I don't think he's really considered his points very well.

 

Don't be insulting.

To Trecker, I mean. The man has suffered enough.

 

But I was serious. He's got a few good ideas in there, but he hasn't followed through on those ideas as much as the avereage thread on BS. He likes to take credit as a dispassionate and objective eye on soccer, trained by years of expert observation, but that's no substitute for actually using the ol' noggin.

 

Well, at least I agree with the headline. It's something that gets discussed year after year as playoff game attendance is not spectacular and tv ratings aren't great.

Which brings me to my pet solution.....

Have a playoff of the top 4 teams. Take every single penny saved on advertising, tv production, stadium rental, etc on the first round and split it between the two top teams at the end. That should amount to a nice incentive for the winners.

 

You do realize that there'd be some savings, but there'd also be some loss of revenue, right?

 

I didn't want to give the guy credit by clicking on the link. Is he saying that the US should adopt the year-round European school schedule now?

Hey Europe is better, right?

 

Yeah, the SPL splits into a championship and relegation group: Top 6 play each other home and away, as do the bottom 6. SPL has 12 teams just like MLS.

But I don't think that will work here given that a) there's no point (unless you consider the extra games among teams battling for the final playoff spots reason enough) and b) MLS has enough problems when it comes to scheduling in the stadiums it doesn't control.

 

This may be the most boneheaded argument for a single-table-no-playoff league I've heard:

"Second, the argument that fans can't/wouldn't follow a unified league table that crowns the team with the best record as a champion is nonsense. Those of us who follow NCAA hoops have no trouble figuring out which team is conference champ. MLS should go to a straight twelve-team table, and crown the winner."

Yeah, clearly we can firgure out who the conference champion is, but we don't really care. What do we care about? What happens in the conference tournament and who goes to the NCAA Tournament and what seeding they get (in other words the playoffs). Americans like playoffs. (most) American soccer fans like playoffs.

 

You actually might agree with Jerry. This is Jamie's father and he writes all his articles.

 

Indeed. And, this equation is shifting over time as we get our own venues. Consider also that more playoff games drive average player salaries per game down, b/c the playoff bonuses are usually smaller than the weekly salary is.

To throw in a little paprika on that, DCU at least doesn't seem to have much trouble drawing in the playoffs.

 

Yeah, I get that. My guess based on league playoff attendance and reports on tv ratings, makes me guess.... just a bigsoccer hunch... that there'd be a net savings to be applied as a bonus.

 

Even less fans would come out in freezing wet late November. Summer nights at RFK on the other hand are a very pleasant thing. Until there is much better attendance and more people care about the actual results, MLS can't play during cold months.
However fans in DC have begun to care about playoffs. 21K last year, I'm going to guess if the weather's OK next Saturday we'll get that again. There's some anticipation. It will take time though.