What's surprising is that with all the former NFL people running around at MLS, it apparently hasn't occurred to anyone that not many people cared too much about the NFL's screwed-up geography.
NFL TV deal just renewed only the Fox and CBS part at $8 billion. And they took some game away to do a Thursday night package. Hence no one gives a crap about travel costs. In MLS it does matter. Just ask Bobby Hammond he can lay out the numbers for you. It's also one of the reasons why baseball never went to a balanced schedule... And the rangers don't get a better TV deal than they do becasue of all the late night west coast games. It's why they wanted to be in teh AL central. (They stayed west for the guarentee of a Astros interleague game each year)
I think not. Like Buzz said, follow up with Bobby if you doubt me. Let me put it this way - I was shocked when I was working for the Toros at how much the travel expenses were. And when you have little if any revenue to work with, that is a problem. MLS v. USISL? While the budget might be bigger, so are the costs. MLS players aren't going to ride for 12 hours in a 15-person van to play Friday/Sunday. And traveling 28 instead of 16? That sure as hell is going to be more expensive. And to add to what Buzz said - another thing is that each of the teams (or the NFL collectively - I'm not sure which) has a travel sponsor. Seen one of those for MLS? Didn't think so. So a few games might not mean that much on the surface, but you're probably talking a decent chunck of change per game.
KC in the east means we must make the road trip up there as they will be the closest away team this year(hopefully the last year without a Texas derby)
Wrong. The American League had a balanced schedule for nearly 20 years. 13 games against each team in your division (13*6) 12 games against each team in the other division (12*7)
Players in all sports have said it is hard to cross so many time zones from West Coast to East Coast and back or visa versa.
The American League West has only 4 teams. So (13*6) is certainly not right. unless you mean in the past prior to the Wild card era. And the NBA and NHL don't play balanced schedules. Neither does the NFL.
FCD offically requested Chicago for the 05 home opener... so I don't know why you say you aren't playing FCD.
I think he wanted it for the season opener. Since I got the impression that GE requested C for the ULHOWA opener, I think that you're both right.
I was hoping for Dallas to move to the East and for us to open the season against each other on ABC. :-/ I'll be there for the first game against us regardless ^_^
Then how would the Wizards end up in Rochseter when the Rhinos are ones building a stadium using some public money? Would Hunt buy the Rhinos then and merge them with the Wiz? Because no team is going to Rochester without the Rhinos being involved some way.
Relatively speaking, the difference between this proposed alignment and the one that we think that they're going to adopt IS marginal. The difference for Eastern Conference teams is that instead of making two trips apiece to Chicago and Kansas City and one trip apiece to Denver and Salt Lake, they'd be making two trips apiece to Denver and Salt Lake and one trip apiece to Chicago and Kansas City. Either way, you're paying for six trips. So the cost difference per person over an entire season would be... (2S + 2D + K + C) - (S + D + 2K + 2C) = 2S + 2D + K + C - S - D - 2K - 2C = S + D - K - C ...where S = the unrestricted coach fare to Salt Lake, D = the unrestricted coach fare to Denver, K = the unrestricted coach fare to Kansas City, and C = the unrestricted coach fare to Chicago. To put it in to real money terms, this weekend on American Airlines, the unrestricted coach fares from Boston are $1327.90 to Salt Lake, $2371.40 to Denver, $1704.70 to Chicago O'Hare, and $596.36 to Kansas City. (As an aside, those numbers by themselves should tell you by themselves that travel expense has little to do with distance.) Plug those number into that equation, and you get $1398.24 per person over the entire season. Multiply that by the 20 people that are on most road trips and you get an increase of $27964.80 over the course of an entire season for the Revolution. OK, I'll grant you that that's $28,000 that they would otherwise not have to spend, but they're just one team. Other teams might see lower expenses in this realignment. For example, by making two more trips to LA, one more trip apiece to San Jose and Dallas, and one fewer trip apiece to DC, Columbus, New England, and the Metros, Chicago would save $601 per person over the course of an entire season, or about $12,000, given a 20-man traveling party. Kansas City would also save on travel expenses in this alignment. To get an accurate measurement of the travel costs involved, you'd have to run the numbers for all 12 teams (really, just 11, since the Galaxy and Chivas USA would more or less have the same travel expenses). But I'm guessing that league-wide, the difference in travel expenses in this alignment is not substantial. I'll leave the exercise to the reader, but to make life easier on you, here are the four groups of teams to consider: Group A (Kansas City and Chicago) - Makes two more trips to LA, one more trip apiece to San Jose and Dallas, and one fewer trip apiece to DC, New England, Columbus, and the Metros Group B (Galaxy, Chivas, San Jose, and Dallas) - Makes one more trip apiece to Kansas City and Chicago and one fewer trip apiece to Salt Lake and Colorado Group C (Salt Lake and Colorado) - Makes one more trip apiece to DC, New England, Columbus, and the Metros, two fewer trips to LA, and one fewer trip apiece to San Jose and Dallas Group D (DC, New England, Columbus, Metros) - Makes one more trip apiece to Salt Lake and Colorado and one fewer trip apiece to Kansas City and Chicago. We already know that Group A is making out better. My impression is that Group B will make out better than Group D, since unrestricted fares to Kansas City are relatively cheap.
Another great analysis by Dustin albeit long. Another issue related to playing in different time zones is tv and radio ratings. Even though MLS barely registers on the chart, the difference between playing a game at 7:30 versus 9:30 is significant for that business. I recall this being an issue with the Stars and the Rangers both being aligned in the western most divisions.
Actually, that is probably times at least 24 people, not 20. With the reserve teams, they can't make any players play two 90 minutes games in two days. And yeah, $35,000 is another player, or two front office staff people (if they are on commission), or a good bit of advertizing.
That's actually not too relevant, since the teams that would be saving money in this alignment would be saving proportionally more money as well. Unless, of course, you want to argue that the Revolution (for the sake of example) have more people travelling than the Fire or Wizards.