How much of this can we attribute to Rocco and Co. being unable to accept a loss? If I were an eccentric billionaire who doesn’t like being told no, I’d probably be willing to jerk around some small business owners to feed my ego.
You have no clue, Kenn. You haven't for several years now. Nobody I know takes your attendance database seriously anymore. I traveled to Little Rock for a Wed nite NPSL playoff match a few weeks ago and there were far more butts-in-seats at War Memorial Stadium than I'd seen at any USL Tulsa weekend match all season.... yet you sit there assuming that if most clubs from NPSL decide to not report their attendances to you it means they don't have anybody going to their games and can't be taken seriously... Well maybe they don't care to report anything to you because you BLINDLY and SMUGLY take whatever anybody tells you their attendance is.... so here ya go, jagov... "tickets distributed"... The final count for our attendance just came in and wow Tulsa, you guys really out did yourselves again! #TTID #SundayFunday #PartyInThePark pic.twitter.com/4WqsvDKLZf— Tulsa Athletic (@TTownSoccer) May 14, 2018
What is that attendance number even for? It’s not for the season and sure as hell not for a game. Are they gloating about the amount of tickets they sold over the years? If that’s the case that’s extremely lame.
Nobody? Really, nobody? The fact that all attendance numbers are derived from OFFICIAL team and league communications? I understand that you might have issues with Kenn on a personal level (hey, who doesn't? Amirite?), but if you can point to one instance where the attendance database has numbers that do not reflect officially reported attendance or if you have officially reported numbers that are missing from Kenn's database, then you should speak up. Pretty much everywhere he mentions it, he is literally asking for people to help him fill in the gaps and fix any errors that might be there. Making a run at Kenn for his opinions or analysis is fair game. But you're the only one immature enough to go after the attendance database. Seriously, how stupid or blinded by emotion are you?
This Only issue I have with Kenn is his apparent poor choice in college football team (the UF Gators). Seriously, his efforts to accurately capture attendance at all levels should be praised.
That is one hell of a trip to see all 5 teams. Let me guess what would be the 6th team to save money. San Diego. Maybe the USSF wants to get involved again and run a merged USL D3 and NPSLpro league, we all know that worked out wonderfully last time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_Division_III
So by this token, what's your take on the viability of USL D3? They've sure packed 'em in in Statesboro while in the PDL, haven't they? Does anybody think that D3 is going to pay anything near a living wage? If not, it kind of takes the teeth out of the argument that D3 will be the cream of the crop of PDL/NPSL and above given that I have a hard time imagining a large swath of college grads clamoring to share an apartment with 4 teammates for the privilege of not being noticed in Greenville or Madison. I can't see, in this scenario, how the overall level is going to be significantly higher than PDL/NPSL or if you've got outliers, how they'd remain at that level for long. Does your demand for a full season still apply? And if they do pay a living wage, how on earth are they going to make money? Or is this going to simply be a D-League, paid for with loanees from the upper divisions? Single A farm teams?
USL was only D3 because they were demoted from D2. They were actively trying to work their way back to D2 status, I don't think it's really the same.
I think the viability is actually up in the air. My guess is that the USL has two scenarios in mind (although this is completely a guess on my part): 1) The original teams take their financial lumps for the first couple years, but once they actually play a season, new teams will come out of the woodwork and you end up with a bunch of regional leagues, basically at the semi-pro level. 2) The smaller USL D2 teams and most of the MLS2 teams drop down to USL D3 making it a three-division league and the top 16-20 teams stay in a one-division league with much higher spending.
Yeah, there are a lot of possibilities. What's hard to reconcile with your first scenario is why the MLS teams would feel that what would effectively be "PDL Pro" is going to be better competition for their two clubs than the old reserve league was.
Wow. This ranting personal attack in no way fits the tone of the discussion that is taking place. If somebody addressed you in this manner, we all know that five seconds later, somewhere there would be a mod getting that sinking feeling...
I was thinking in the first scenario that the MLS clubs would stay at D2, at least most of them. In the second scenario, I expect the level would be something like what D2 is now, at least the bottom half. We're really not that far from that. 3 12-team regional D3 leagues and one 16-team D2 league is only 52 teams. Of course, you could also get the scenario where all the existing teams want to stay in D2 and there aren't enough teams to make multiple D3 leagues and so the third tier fails.
Oh, I see. I don't think a lack of teams is D3's biggest threat (at least, not directly) - it's economics: I am having a hard time squaring how they can be fully professional (and maybe that's a bad assumption, if your semipro scenario winds up being the case) and stay anywhere the black, or, if their wage bill is low enough to not hemorrhage money, how they attract (or keep) talent. If the economics don't work, a lack of teams would be the likely conclusion. Obviously, there won't be any answers to that until next year some time.
Length of schedule. PDL/NPSL seasons are way too short for developing players for MLS teams. Now I have my doubts that USL 3 will survive more than a year, but we will see.
Well Kenn is not the nicest of persons with some people, you can argue that Kenn has been around for a while and is sick of the same stupid arguments, so Kenn does come across as an old men telling people to get off his yard.
A few teams self-demoted after the USSF-D2 shotgun marriage season to join the bulk of teams that were already in the USL D3 Pro League. Let's not re-write history.
There were two different MLS Reserve Divisions. 2005 to 2008(?) that kinda sputtered to an end as the resources and roster spots really weren't available (much less the technical staff) to keep teams fully bought in. And the latter one which was steadily converted into the mix of USL "2" teams and affiliates we have today. The Reserve Division wasn't a short season in the sense of the amateur leagues like the PDL/NPSL. But it wasn't as long as the MLS season in much the same way that AAA Baseball isn't as long as Major League Baseball. The Reserve Division players were first team players, MLS rosters during the latter Reserve Division were 28-30 players and the games were a formalized way to get players some non-scrimmage run outs. Something that was less desirable at the tail end of the season as injuries and fatigue begin to limit how many of the 28-30 are really match fit any given week.
Unless the new USL-D3 is a three month short season, it's a no brainer. The major issues with the original Reserve Division, but also an issue to a lesser extent with the latter - and why clubs around the world in leagues with reserve divisions still send their future prospects on loan instead of playing in the reserves - are: 1- The Reserve Division is basically a formalized scrimmage league. The idea is to keep the players at the end of the bench in some semblance of match fitness. It does not substitute for real competitive play. 2- Because of limits on player minutes in a given timeframe and the fact that teams are drawing for MLS games and Reserve Division from the same limited pool of players, teams end up having to find short term substitutes to fill out gameday rosters. If a team has a trialist, great. Otherwise, you would occasionally find the guy in the front office who played NAIA college soccer five years previously, or the 38 year-old assistant coach or team color commentator filling in. The real breakdown of the original Reserve Division was teams increasingly over the years, and especially later in the summer abandoning all pretense of the Reserve Division being a standalone competition instead of a glorified scrimmage system. 3- The second Reserve Division was never intended to be a permanent thing. Many clubs around the world have minor league teams. Many teams in Germany and Spain, for instance, maintain full rosters in the lower leagues. After Red Bulls (I think) started the first 2 team, the league restarted the Reserve Division with the idea that all teams have somewhere to grow their asset bases with the Reserve Division being a temporary thing as teams either launched their own 2 teams or affiliated and loaned players out. The current situation is a natural outgrowth of MLS Academy teams and Homegrown Players. It is increasingly hard and rare for a college or high school player to jump straight into MLS. The level of play goes up every year. On the other hand with the MLS Academy teams and programs and the Homegrown system which incentivizes teams into developing players, the number of players with future potential but not ready to take a place in an MLS starting XI is increasing at a rapid rate. MLS teams need the extra roster spots the 2 teams provide to stash players and give them a place to get real professional development and minutes. Minutes they wouldn't get at the end of the MLS bench. Whether that pro league is D2 or D3 is less important than the outlet it survives. If you can draw a distinction between short season (College wood bat summer leagues) and A League baseball - which is two months shorter than MLB, I would think you would be able to understand an April-October D3 pro league is a completely different thing from the May-July PDL/NPSL college summer leagues.
This is a really good primer, thanks for writing that up. I wasn't referring to the short season, though, but the probable quality of competition. It feels like the MLS 2 teams would absolutely dominate any league that is full of players that aren't good enough for USL (offer not valid in the Toronto area) which is what I thought the issue with the reserve league was. But you've cleared that up.
The real issue is keeping the players coming out of the Academy teams under contract. The original limit of 2 Homegrown Salary Budget protected player spots per team roster lasted less than six months as teams suddenly had to try and figure out which two of ten potential future starters they had developed were most likely to be starters or better in five years. Which 17 year-old is Memo Gonzalez and which one is Aphonso Davies. The correct answer is "don't decide" - Sign them all. As MLS teams work on solving the problem of lack of professional track player development in the United States club/college system, the natural result is that they suddenly end up with a bunch of prospects. Better to sign them all to professional contracts now rather than be artificially forced to limit how many a team can sign - and potentially let a future international star or long term team and hometown hero starter walk away for nothing.
Wow. Just wow. "limited emotional and intellectual capabilities" -- really? How many of you are there who believe that?... ten? twelve? a baker's dozen? It's become crystal clear to me that most "nonsense" on Bigsoccer emanates from a relatively small clique of arrogant know-it-all posters who snidely belittle, ridicule, and attempt to regularly marginalize those of us who believe American soccer's best path forward includes pursuit of an open system with promotion and relegation based on field results... ya know, kinda like the rest of the world?
That's all fine and dandy for OFFICIAL team and league communications... I've always admired and used the Kenn.com attendance database to reference attendance stats for old NASL teams, old MISL teams, USFL, etc etc etc for well over a decade now. Hell, I've even cut-and-paste one of his YouTube clips on a regular basis. But it should come as no surprise to anyone that many individual NPSL clubs have little desire to seriously communicate with someone who's been so perpetually anti-NPSL for many years now. (And here's an example with my lengthy response... including a rather prophetic snipped quoted below) The biggest problem(s) I have had with Kenn over the years has been his consistent bias against any clubs who don't report their attendance figures to him. And the league(s) they belong to... Seriously, after Kenn once asked me how bitter I'd be on my death bed when there's no Pro/Rel, I am mature enough to question his database anytime I believe it to be apropos to the discussion. Comparing Chattanooga FC's reported attendances to those of all the USL teams still skirts the issue... when so many of these USL numbers are dubious at best.