As should be apparent to anyone who's been following the MLS standings and the "play off" table, MLS needs to continue their slow yet steady process of getting in line with much of the rest of the world when it comes to league tables. Emulating traditional American sports with fragmenting the league into divisions is not the way to go. The divisions have been an eye-sore this season, considering the inequities of the two. Seeing the #1 Eastern conference team in the #2 position on the playoff table for the better part of the last couple of months now is especially awkward given that all of the Western teams have been ahead in points for nearly all that period. And despite the attempts at "parity," the league has been following the natural order of things: some teams will do well (SJ), and some teams will suck (DCU, NE). Instead of having divisions and making some teams play each other more times than others, just put the league in one table and let the chips fall where they may. Let the divisional play phenomena fade into the past along with the Shootout and the backward clock. Discussion?
Not a valid reason – Is KC saving any money by flying to LA and SJ more than other teams? The official reason for the divisions in the first place was to foster regional rivalries. In a nation as large as ours, with the teams so spread out, this idea is absurd -- especially when you consider the history of the teams which have been placed in divisions based less on geography than pure arbitrariness.
Just because you're in the middle of nowhere and have no nearby rival, doesn't mean that Chicago-Columbus isn't a big deal to those fans, or that DCU-Scum isn't a big deal to them. I'll tell you what is absurd...the notion that proximity has no effect on fostering rivalries.
Rivalries foster themselves. Artificially gerrymandered divisions have little (at best) or nothing (at worst) to do with fostering rivalries. I think you are misunderstanding me -- I never said that "proximity has no effect on fostering rivalries." What I'm saying is that it's absurd for the league to say "regionial divisions are there to promote rivalries," when the divisions do not reflect clear-cut geographical regions. KC playing against LA and SJ more often than KC playing CHI and C'bus does NOT reflect a desire to have stronger regional rivalries. I'm not sure what it reflects other than some form of psychosis. However, that was only a side issue of the original post. Do away with the divisions and have each team play each other an equal number of times, and keep one table for tallying the points. Get rid of any talk of "weak" or "strong" divisions. Let the chips fall.
The playoff structure is obviously flawed. If a team like Colorado (who has played some of the most entertaining games this season) is left out for any of the eastern teams, it would be a travesty. PS - WTF New England??? They should use your defense for the All Star game...
History fosters rivalries... period. MLS shoudn't try and rush them. They will come if MLS can survive.
MLS is a league with only 10 teams. Of course a single table makes sense. Still, you need to watch out for creeping eurosnobbery. Just because England has 20 teams in a single table, that doesn't mean that it's a good idea. They get away with it because they have pro/rel and competition for Euro slots to maintain interest across the breadth of the table. We don't have those enticements in the U.S. and probably never will have. The American way to deal with the mid-table blahs is with playoffs and championship games, and there's no reason MLS can't use this effectively. They just haven't done so thus far. Personally, I agree with you. At least for the time being, a single table makes the most sense However, assuming the league expands, as early as 12 teams and no later than 16 teams the league should have some sort of division and playoff system. Charlie in South Jersey
I think you're kind of off base on this whole rivalry thing. The best rivalries are actually created within divisions--gerrymandered or no. Proximity of the teams doesn't mean as much. In this day of air travel the distance between teams doesn't alway mean that much, but it is tough to have a rival you never play. That's why in the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys' biggest rival is the Washington Redskins, not some team closer to home. That's why some of the fire went out of the competition between the Dallas Burn and the Chicago Fire this year. If you want to build strong rivalries in MLS, you need relatively small divisions where the teams play each other a lot. Charlie in South Jersey
But San Jose and LA are real rivals, and any single table will mean they will play each other less. Just because KC is in the middle of the country does not mean that, overall, there isn't a large savings in travel costs by having divisions. California alone is almost twice the size of England. Divisions make sense in large nations like ours or Mexico.
no, but i'll bet you new england would rather fly to SJ once per season rather than twice. but yeah, this year it's really confusing. if Columbus (2nd in division, 8th in league) wins one game, they'll pole-vault to the 2nd playoff spot. So there's arguments for going bothways, but it's staying in two divisions. The reason why England has one division is because it's really really really really small compared to the US.
Re: Re: MLS: One League, One Table When driving 4 hours to an away match is a really long trip, then you know you're in a relatively small country. And again, proximity alone rarely makes rivalries in the US. The Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians never had a rivalry despite the fact they are similar types of cities in a fairly close proximity. The fact is that they've never been competitive at the same time.
God, I can't believe I'm actually responding to this thread. Rivalries are created by history, proximity can help, but the best rivalries tend to not be close to each other (Chiefs-Raider, Cowboys-Redskins, Avs-Redwings, etc...) Divisions are neccesary to cut down travel expenses. Someone said "Not a valid reason – Is KC saving any money by flying to LA and SJ more than other teams?" Yeah geniusm pick the team in the middle of the country for your arguement. The western conference is more scattered than the eastern. DC saves a lot of money by playing NE, NY, C-bus, and Chicago, rather than flying to the west coast more. But as of now there's not a lot of money that is saved for the whole league on travel, but when the league grows there will be a lot of money to be saved when KC is in a division with St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Milwuakee, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, etc... But creating rivalries shouldn't be any of our concerns, if you want a true rivalry, it just happens. We shouldn't do anything solely to encourage them or discourage them, just let them happen while creating our league to be the best it can be in America. Rivalries shouldn't even be an issue in this discussion. And want to know something else that doesn't even belong in this discussion? Europe. Single Table is boring, and as I always say, just because Europe does it doesn't mean that it's the correct way to do it. I cringe every time I see "We should be like Europe. They do this, they do that. Soccer flourishes there so copy they're system." Bulls**t. Should we have more in common with Europe because we are a soccer league and soccer is more popular over there, or should we have more in common with the other american sports leagues because we are an AMERICAN sports league and we should do what works best over here. Why should the MLS adapt to the Euro sports league system more than any other american sports league? NFL Europe uses single table, which is the Europe norm, just like MLS uses divisions, which is the American norm.
At the top level maybe. Regionalisation does occur lower down the pyramid to cut down on travel costs, and there have been proposals to raise the level at which this split occurs. Same pretty much anywhere else, happens higher up pretty much everywhere else due to a larger country (Italy, Germany and Spain only have two national divisions, France three and England five). As for distance involved, smaller clubs towards the edges of a region/country are heard to complain more about travelling than those more conveniently placed. To be fair though, surely having two divisions of three really would be daft, especially they'd presumably all play each other the same number of times. If they doubled the number of teams surely it'd be expected that they'd divide up.
Not helping... Single-table has helped WUSA tremendously. But if MLS had a single table, maybe they could try promotion and....ah, screw it.
I Don't Get It Teams have trouble drawing during the playoffs, especially for the weeknight games. That means they lose money. Interest is on the wane because baseball has their playoffs, the NFL and College Football are getting started and NHL and NBA are getting ready for their seasons. So why are there so many playoff rounds? Why have 8 of your 10 teams qualify? Why not just call the regular season the "exhibition season", disqualify the Revs and pick one other team out of the hat to sit out and just play a 3 week season with the 8 teams? It's totally moronic. Just because all the other sports have diluted the importance of their regular seasons doesn't mean MLS has to follow the crowd. C'mon guys, wake up. Have your regular season mean something. The top two teams make the post season, that's it. And it's just one game for the Championship at the home field of the first place team. If you're concerned about too few games, lengthen the regular season. You'll make more money because you can add them to your season ticket package. If the playoffs were profitable it would be one thing, but they're not, no one knows they're going on and none of the games are on regular TV so no one's going to know what's going on. Are we sure the Revs management isn't really running this league?
I hope you are kidding. I wasn't even alive, but I know that it all started in the 60's.....The balloons are still in the rafters...... They changed the league setup to accomodate those who liked the single table. The East or West winner is likely to have done well against the other teams in their division. As Hala's weekly post shows, it is basically a single table league. The problem is the 8 out of 10 in the playoffs.
2002 MLS Standings (as of August 1, 2002) P W D L F A PTS DIF 1 San Jose 21 12 02 07 34 20 38 +14 2 Kansas City 21 08 07 06 31 30 31 +01 3 Dallas 20 08 07 05 28 27 31 +01 4 Los Angeles 19 09 03 07 27 26 30 +01 5 Colorado 21 09 03 09 31 36 30 -05 6 Metrostars 21 09 02 10 35 34 29 +01 7 Chicago 20 08 04 08 30 25 28 +05 8 Columbus 21 08 04 09 30 33 28 -03 9 New England 20 07 01 12 35 42 22 -07 10 DC 20 06 03 11 19 27 21 -08 (Or how the West has won.) Now why would the Eastern Confernece Champs (e.g. Metros) be the second seed instead of the second place team (e.g. Kansas City)? This I don't get.
Some rivalries in this country have developed because of how good the teams are and because of their closeness. Oregon/Oregon State college fball rivalry is huge and these teams sucked big time before the past few years, but college sports is where most of the regional rivalries occur. And any No Cal team vs. So Cal team is a big rivalry regardless of how good the teams are
Don't you guys GET IT?!?!? If we just change to a single table, MLS will be profitable. Surely there are more pressing issues...
Probably. Check the other threads. Maybe someone is talking about more pressing issues in one of them.