News: MLS SuperDraft reduced to 2 rounds, in KC, Jan. 12

Brian Straus is wrong. The SuperDraft is being "reduced" from 3 rounds to 2 rounds, while the Supplemental Draft is being "increased" from 3 rounds to 4. All in all, there is no change in the number of rounds in the overall draft, just a reduction of rounds that will be televised on ESPN2.

 

seems to be the route they are going...

 

Could someone elaborate (speculate) why they're doing this?

 

Wild stab is that they weren't able to fit the SuperDraft into the time ESPN allotted for them, so the way around that was to move the last SuperDraft round to the Supplemental draft.

 

Are there any actual differences? Are there players who are eligible for the 'super draft' who are then removed from eligibility for the supplemental draft (or vice versa?)

Or is this just an arbitrary naming convention-based division?

 

Just don't bring Kc BBQ into the room, Sigi might eat it all

 

Wasn't it four rounds before it got reduced to three rounds, and now it's two?

I think college soccer plays an important role but that's not the greatest trajectory....

 

I really think its semantics If each of the 4 rounds were called by the seasons rather than Superdraft or Supplemental Draft would it really matter. Aside from that based on the evidence 4 yr college soccer players are becoming less of a factor in MLS. International and Homegrown are taking up more and more of the rosters. I think the skill level is bypassing the 4 yr college player. Even if they got rid of the draft they could still sign based on individual tryouts.

 

I thought there were other difference(s) if a player (maybe internationals) were taken in the Supplemental instead of the SuperDraft.

I could be wrong though.

 

Well, one thing that'll shake out from this is that GA picks will change the calculus of the draft.

A second thing will be that inevitably some teams will end up having no picks in the SuperDraft (after trades)

MLS only signs players to GA contracts after receiving guarantees from at least one team that they'll pick the player if nobody else does.

I'd have to go back and look, but a couple of years ago a GA signee had a horrific combine and fell to the fourth round where he was picked up by Houston.

If that happened this year, Houston would be forced to pick him in the second round, or possibly in the first round if they no longer have a second round pick.

Obviously that's unless MLS changes the rules to allow GA players to fall into the Supplemental Draft.

 

I think you are thinking of Sean Johnson who was picked up by Chicago in the 4th round in 2010.

 

That's another one. It was a year or two before that. I remember Sean falling (after MLS had me do a bunch of "cover" shots of him and Jack McInerny - that then got buried because of Sean's woeful Combine).

EDIT: I was thinking of Danny Cruz, who was taken 41st overall (3rd Round) by Houston in 2009.

EDIT2: Here are the latest GenAd players taken by SuperDraft:
2011 20th (2nd) Michael Tetteh by Seattle
2010 51st (4th) Sean Johnson by Chicago
2009 41st (3rd) Danny Cruz by Houston
2008 19th (2nd) Eric Avila by Dallas
2007 14th (2nd) Fuad Ibrahim by Dallas
2006 23rd (2nd) Willie Sims by New England
2005 34th (3rd) Quavas Kirk by Los Angeles
2004 36th (4th) Michael Bradley by MetroStars
pre 2004 was Nike Pro40
Maybe someone can help me but the current "must draft" rule came about after the league signed a goalkeeper that went undrafted - then spent a couple seasons playing games with the MLS P40 team in the A-League as well as being a "league" emergency goalkeeper who suited up (and sat on the bench) for several teams. After that fiasco, the league stopped signing players to Pro-40/GenAd contracts without a "team of last resort"

EDIT3: It might be Matt Napolean in 1998 that I'm thinking of. He was undrafted and "placed" with Miami - but since Miami was an expansion team that season, that might have been some other mechanism than just being undrafted.

 

Once upon a time, there were a couple of separate drafts -- a specific "college draft" and a "supplemental draft" that featured A-Leaguers and even a few people who had been sitting around since their previous MLS clubs had released them. The Project-40 (now Generation adidas) players were allocated through an opaque process that drew a lot of criticism.

In 2000, they merged everything into the "SuperDraft." Everyone eligible. An A-Leaguer went in the first round, as did a young Project-40 kid named Bobby Convey.

The Supplemental Draft quietly came back a few years later when rosters expanded to include developmentals/reserves.

And yeah -- at this point, the Supplemental Draft is a de facto continuation of the SuperDraft.

 

The real turning point, from a marketing perspective is when the SuperDraft moved out of the hotel in Fort Lauderdale (after the Combine) to being co-located with the NSCAA Annual Convention, starting in 2003 in Kansas City. Where the Wizards promptly traded their #3 overall pick away (for Chicago Fire), leaving a very pro-KC crowd (with a FSC TV broadcast/MLS webcast) stewing in their seats for several hours until Kansas City finally made a selection in the fourth round (#33, Taylor Graham), thereby missing a huge marketing opportunity with all the local news media present.

The weird thing is that they kept the trade with Chicago under wraps until shortly before the draft. They should've gone ahead and drafted the pick for Chicago, then done the trade for Wolff immediately after, so the local news had someone at the podium in a KC hat and jersey and the fans had a chance to go wild.

It really gained steam in 2004 in Charlotte where a contingent of DC fans made the trip down for the coronation of Freddy Adu.

 

While there are obviously exceptions, anything past the second round is generally as much a camp invite as anything. Only about one-half of last year's third round made rosters, and only Plata and Anor made more than a handful of appearances.

The real cut is the de facto 7th round. Only two guys (Andy Adlard- Columbus and Andrew Sousa- New England) from that even made a roster. Adlard was released in June, and Sousa didn't make a league appearance all year. Three teams (DC, Houston, New York) didn't even bother making a last pick, presumably to save on flying a guy into camp just to cut him.

 

The NBA reduced its draft to only two rounds, I believe, as part of CBA negotiations. In effect, it gives the longer shot players a better chance to find a team that could use them than to tie their rights up with a team that may just draft them for a look-see, or defensively to keep another team from having them.

With more and more players coming up through the team academies, I expect the draft to steadily shrink.

Eventually, we could see something similar to baseball's Rule V Draft or Mexico's semiannual draft of players from other teams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_V_Draft

Teams taking players via Rule V must keep the player on their 25 man Major League Roster.

 

I believe the latest pick in a draft to become more than just a MLS role player for a couple of seasons is Jeff Larentowicz, who was a 4th round supplemental pick. Other players way down there have been Chris Wondolowski and Kosuke Kimura.

 

And there are still players who go undrafted like Rafael Baca did this year. For those of us who follow college soccer, it was a bit of a mystery how he got overlooked.

 

2005 was a fun year. The last round of the supplemental draft saw Larentowicz, Wondolowski, and Dan Kennedy picked. That's quite a bit of talent (and pretty much all of the talent from that suppelemental draft). Curiously, Wondo and Kennedy (and to some extent Larentowicz who was quality with New England but took off in Colorado) were late bloomers

 

You never know when a thread will be chock full of interesting information. Thanks, all!