We would be willing to give advice, also some other supporters groups are very friendly and willing to help. We had advice from Chicago and San Antonio
"Sandhu believes any potential new team should have a new owner, as he said Maciel’s management is part of the reason for the waning public interest in the Metros over the past few years." Good ol' Devinder. I'm sure he probably said more than that but it was cleaned up for the article.
If Nashville is serious about pro soccer - and the NPSL and PDL are not pro, though most of you know that - they need a committed owner with the financial resources to make a go of a USL/NASL team for several years and a commitment from the local/state government to help with a SSS. I think Nashville could be a decent MLS market if it was paired with other Southern cities, particularly Atlanta, which would be a great rivalry series. But till they show then can do professional minor league soccer, it's all a moo point.
mostly agreed... people always say that. but we don't give a f*ck about atlanta. pick another city...
Charlotte has always been thrown around, or St. Louis. Not sure they're much closer than Atlanta, though.
It won't be Charlotte, it will be Carolina in Raleigh-Durham. The queen city has enough sports in town (NASCAR, Panthers, Bobcats/Hornets). Question: could Chattanooga support a club that represents the state of Tennessee? I know they're just in the NPSL, but I hear they get good attendance numbers and have a strong supporters group. Equidistant from Nashville, Knoxville, Atlanta. Hell, they've already got a 20,000 seat stadium.
yeah, falcons/titans not a big deal, hawks/grizzlies not a big deal, when they had the thrashers in the NHL the preds/thrashers amounted to nothing. Indianapolis? seriously, the titans/colts rivalry is pretty big. no idea who the Nashville Metros(is that still their name?) have a rivalry against.
(All times based on going 70 MPH, non-stop.) Atlanta to Nashville: 250 miles, 3.5 hours. Indianapolis to Nashville: 287 miles, 4.1 hours St. Louis to Nashville: 310 miles: 4.4 hours. Columbus to Nashville: 379 miles: 5.4 hours. Charlotte to Nashville: 408 miles, 5.8 hours. Raleigh to Nashville: 538 miles, 7.6 hours For better or worse, Atlanta is the closest city to Nashville in terms of having a likely geographic MLS rivalry, though I wouldn't dismiss Indianapolis and, I suppose, St. Louis. And while geographically, Nashville is more Midwest than Southern, culturally it certainly feels Southern and thus has more in common with Atlanta than it does with St. Louis or Indy, both of which feel very Midwestern in their values and lifestyles. (Not that there's a huge difference between Southern and Midwestern.) My hunch is if Atlanta comes in - and MLS wants that because it's a Top 10 market and largest in the SE - that MLS will want them to have a geographic rival and Nashville and Charlotte are the best bets for that so it behooves Nashville to play up its Atlanta rivalry.
I wouldn't say the Metros ever really had a great rivalry against anyone. The Metros and Silverbacks used to have a cup that they competed for, but I think the matches between Nashville and Memphis were probably more of a rivalry. There are a few reasons for the lack of rivalries for Nashville. One is that clubs come and go. While the Metros lasted over twenty years, Memphis was only around for a few. Another is that they were initially PDL (or USISL in the old days), jumped to A-League for five seasons and then dropped back down to PDL for the remainder of their existance. That's where the little cup competition with Atlanta went away as when they returned to the PDL in 2002 they were no longer in the same league. (The Silverbacks did set up a PDL U23 side for a while, but that wasn't the same.) Lastly and probably most importantly, Nashville being geographically located where it is the club found itself in different divisions all the time as the PDL structured its divisions with the comings and goings of clubs. At any given year they were situated in divisions either with teams in the Mid-Atlantic and Carolinas or Louisiana and Texas or Florida. It's tough to develop a real rivalry when you do not play a rival club very long.
Nashville's big selling point IMO is that it's by far the best pro sports town in the southeast (other than maybe New Orleans). The Titans do very well and even the Predators have much better support than any of the other Sun Belt NHL teams (unless you count San Jose). They've also gotten good crowds at LP Field for international games. Additionally, if you're only planning to put one team in the south (Texas/DC/Florida don't count) Nashville is one of two possible locations--Atlanta being the other--that could truly claim to represent the entire south and draw out-of-market fans from all over the region (who obviously won't attend every home game, but will still watch on TV and buy merchandise). And you've got not one but two suitable places for them to play for a year or so while getting their own stadium built. Incidentally, I favor Tampa over Orlando and Miami for the Florida expansion team for the same reason (better track record of supporting sports at the pro level). The fact that Nashville and Tampa are by far my favorite cities in the south and in Florida respectively is pure coincidence!
Floyd Stadium in Murfreesboro would be the right size for an MLS team to play in a temporary situation (30k) and has soccer dimensions. But you would have the problem of it being 35 miles from downtown, and 25 miles from the SE edge of the city itself, plus evil I-24 traffic. And I'm not sure that MTSU lets you sell beer on campus.
they don't. and I-24 traffic isn't any more evil than I-40 or I-65 traffic... and it is mostly 4 lanes to the 'Boro....
Chattanooga is a city of 170,000 people, so I seriously doubt it. The reason Grizzlies-Hawks, Falcons-Titans, and Preds-Thrashers aren't/weren't big rivalries is because they play(ed) in different conferences. The Predators are in the West and will continue to play Midwest teams like Chicago and St. Louis (which are probably closer than the Florida teams), and the Grizzlies are also in the West, meaning they head out to Texas and California for a lot of their games. How often do the Titans play the Falcons? Once every two or three years? Come to think of it, I don't believe Nashville and Atlanta have ever been in the same conference in any sport. I suspect putting them in a position where they play each other three times a year on a 35-ish game schedule would foster a rivalry fairly quickly, although we don't really know what might happen. I think Nashville could be a really successful market for MLS in the vein of Salt Lake City or Kansas City. They could conceivably play at LP Field while a more specialized home is under construction. It's a matter of finding MLS money, though, and that might require climbing the ladder through the USL and NASL, which is what a lot of other potential expansion markets are doing and have done.
Hey, Chattanooga's 2 hours away from just about everywhere. If fans were willing to drive for soccer like NFL fans do, then Chattanooga's market would include Atlanta, Knoxville, Nashville, Birmingham, Huntsville... and of course Chattanooga. It'd basically be a way to combine the Atlanta and Nashville markets.
https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/chattanooga-f-c.1990972/ any chance you went to VA ? is there any kind of stream for it?
NFL teams play 8 home games a year plus a maximum of 2 more in the playoffs, almost all of which are on weekends (mostly Sunday afternoons). MLS teams play 17 home games a year and up to 3 home playoff games, plus the Open Cup and international friendlies (which the teams tend to take a lot more seriously than NFL teams take preseason games), and many of these games are on weeknights. Any market going for an expansion team needs to be capable of supporting the team on its own without relying on other neighboring cities.
There really is no precedent for this. Generally, successful sports teams are in large metropolitan areas, not between them or on the fringes of them. A team in Chattanooga trying to play in MLS on the off chance of drawing from several markets two hours away would very quickly find itself in the same territory as the Phoenix Coyotes; that is to say, broke, poorly supported at the gate (which is bad in a gate-driven league like MLS), and likely playing in another city before long.
The south is Football and Nascar country. In the South these sports matter 1) College football 2) High school football 3) Nascar 3b) NFL football. Soccer probably in the South is considered "foreign, un-american, pansy etc). Other then Texas which is different in my opinion then the southeast proper and Florida I don't see MLS surviving in the South. Just look at Southern teams in the NHL and NBA they fare poorly.
Yes, the South is very much about football (primarily college and NFL to a lesser extent) and NASCAR, but that does not mean other sports cannot be successful. It may have taken a while, but the Predators have now become a franchise where we can expect sellouts more often than not. But that having been said, there are only two markets in the South that I think could possibly succeed. First is Orlando. I have been quite surprised how well Orlando City has garnered such support for a third division club. (Winning a lot certainly helps.) The other is the Triangle in North Carolina only because of the tradition of local college soccer teams and because it is a smaller market where it wouldn't get swallowed by other teams in other sports. I don't know if that would translate to MLS success, but it can't hurt. I would bank more on that than what some people always want to insist will work, which is immigrant populations. Sorry, that just doesn't work.