How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent Clubs

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Include the first and second divs in the big five, you'll get to 100 right away. Add other prominent Euro clubs, and storied South American teams, and you're moving on towards 150. All before we get to the Crew or the Wizards!

Don't have the polling - but we do have the massive failure of a closed football league on a continent that regularly sells out NFL games to US military, ex pats, and a few Europeans..

Stop assigning the rest of the nation the norms in Cleveland, and we might make some progress here. What, did they warm up for Rod Stewart's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction?

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Our market, in total, dwarfs Englands.

And, according to one poster in here that staunchly defends the single entity and the closed league in which it is ensconsed, we have more soccer supporters.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Is this Alexi? Dude, what happened to "Alexis World" on Facebook?

Again, close your eyes real tight, and the whole argument goes away. Anschutz and Company is the soccer world.

One poster in here - a harsh detractor - just noted that we have more soccer supporters than England.

Is your attachment to the closed league based entirely on a cultural perception that doesn't exist - that American sports supporters simply cannot grasp promotion and relegation?

Dude, I don't need the Maalox, you need the Ex Lax.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

You're the one assigning "magic" to pro/rel. I cite a track record. Building up brand loyalty doesn't have to be done in a closed league. It can be done by empowering supporters of clubs by giving clubs access to promotion.

Again. Track record.

If the train hadn't already left the station, and the game could be bottled up in one dominant league, like NFL or MLB, you'd be right.

Run after it as hard as you can - that train is LONG gone. Dumbing down your own clubs to produce artificial domestic parity is just about the most assinine thing to do in a sport that thrives on international competition.

It's only going to produce brand loyalty with fans who either don't notice that the club game is better in every country with the same raw support numbers as ours, or don't care that the quality of play of our first division clubs are regulated from the league level, or are just so grateful that MLS has generously given us any kind of league at all.

In soccer, passion is driven by unlimited clubs, not exhibition leagues.

Whew, good thing this isn't just a clique of bloggers who believe in an incremental approach, and a benevolent league that will give us a better big mac, as long as we keep buying. Thank goodness that the number of Big Soccer blog attacks are not representative of the opinions in the real world.

All insults aside: Tell me how you get to pro/rel with salary caps, squad size limits, drafts, etc etc. Why would any owner subject herself to relegation in the engineered crap shoot of MLS? can you chart that incremental change out?

Funny that nobody has yet.

Fact is, threads about incremental pro/rel are filled with the same attacks and discredit that is heaped in this one, and are a lot easier to argue against than institutional change to a model with a brilliant track record in nations like ours.

Do you want to form a faux second div, in which profits are still largely shared? One that would further dilute the power of the first div clubs to build as far as their owners and supporters can take them? One in which the parachute payments of the EPL would become institutional cash handouts to second div clubs? Since the single entity is basically the same model Outback Steakhouse uses, how would they react to a system in which they had two divisions? Good Outback Steakhouse and Slightly Less Good?

You're right. Incremental change is nicer. It's easier to contemplate, and way easier to argue against. And once you are committed to it, anyone who suggests systemic change is a threat to your belief structure.

It's also playing into the hands of a league designed to absorb it, whilst still limiting our top clubs in every way, whilst still holding on to first div status entitlements with white knuckles.

Keep buying those big macs, and take your value judgments to someone who cares.

In the meantime, here's mine:

Your subscription to the hostage mentality in which MLS is the only thing standing between us and no first div soccer will always hold you back.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Great. For every lower division club we have now that is content with maintaining their status we can add a couple that do have national aspirations and supporters eager to join the cause.

Rochester, St. Louis, Bethlehem, Kearney, Fall River, perhaps?

We're forced into the open market in healthcare, for crissakes. Why not soccer, where it has worked pretty well for a century? Where nobody is denied care for pre-existing market conditions, or an ownership group who doesn't want to subscribe to extortion via franchise fee?

Because, as I've said a hundred times, the worst thing for the American sports establishment, and their entitlements, is a successful open league in any sport.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

There you go again, replacing debate with discredit. Yeah, the awesome record of open soccer leagues is pure hyperbole.

I only made fun of Ron Paul. I never bash. Might need him to stand up for the free market in soccer someday.

Not all advocacy groups are non profits.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Bears repeating:

Originally Posted by CleveGuyOH

football is about 4.76x as more popular in England as it is in the United States.

we have roughly 5x the population of England, and 6x the population of germany and spain.

Thus, we have more supporters than England, Germany, and Spain. I'm guessing Italy too?

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

My name is Bernie, and I run this blog from a small cell in Florida while under protective custody.

 

Re: How to Move the Beast? A Thread for Supporters of Promotion, Relegation and Fully Independent C

Funny that the documented facts are behind open league soccer.

I'm not saying Don Garber is a terrorist.