The merge idea was meant in the context of soccers version of what happened in the NFL/AFL, NBA/ABA,WHA/NHL. Does anyone know the quick history of those mergers? Meaning did the more powerful league simply take the best of the lessor league and then the other franchises died? Who had the upper hand? How were the idea of the mergers even come about ? How did the money get handled? This is soccer, so can't see the money as big as some of these other mergers. It seems MLS, along with its ally USL, it picking NASL apart piece by piece.
My NASL check list if I were sitting in the MLS/USL war room: 1/ Puerto Rico- small market, out of country, stadium I think was renovated, but sure if suitable in MLS minds 2/ Miami- if David is having problems, surely don't need a second team there. 3/ Ft Lauderdale- Not sure how still survived all this time and if Miami MLS really gets going, why another in market 4/ Tampa Bay- was tried as MLS before, playing in baseball stadium- Orlando is enough in the area 5/ Atlanta- writing on the wall- if MLS Atlanta ticket deposits are real, no need for second team in market 6/ Carolina- has a nice basic SSS, but I think MLS would go with Charlotte if choosing between the two via USL. 7/ NYCosmos- not sure league would go with a 3rd team in NYC (we are not London or Buenos Aires yet) 8/ Ottawa-may not be big enough market when you have CFL &NHL- not thrilled with the stadium 9/ Indy- maybe makes it if proper stadium downtown- I would think needs another investor to push along 10/ Minnesota- already jumped ship 11/ San Antonio- making the moves to jump ship via USL 12/ Edmonton- to me a small, remote market, competes with NHL & CFL, stadium not good,travel is long. 13/ Jacksonville- a little too close to Orlando or Atlanta if you are trying to spread to cover the south 24/28 teams. 14/ Oklahoma City- Another city that doesn't need a second team. If it comes, it comes via USL To me, once you take what I think are the best for MLS (Minnesota, San Antonio and maybe Carolina/Charlotte), the rest of the markets could fall into USL , PDL or be gone altogether.
Personally, I think an independent (i.e. unaffiliated with MLS) league is good for the game. However, I think that's the future for the NASL. The strongest groups will move up to MLS, while the weaker clubs will either join the USL, step down to pro-am status, or fold.
The NFL/AFL is the only one that was actually a merger. All of the AFL teams joined the NFL. AFL teams in the same market had to pay a fee to the NFL team but in most regards it was a joining of equals. Teams kept their records and histories. The NHL/WHA and NBA/ABA were not really mergers. Both of the upstart leagues were failing with lots of teams folding in the years before the "mergers". The WHA had went from 14 teams to 6 by the end. The ABA had started with 11 but by the end only had 6 left. Only 3 teams had survived all nine seasons without folding or moving. In both cases the senior league only took 4 teams. Those teams were treated as expansion teams that had to pay fees, and got no TV revenue or any vote in league decisions for a few years. Their prior histories and records were wiped clean. The players on teams that were not accepted went in to a dispersal draft to the existing teams. The current soccer situation is very different that what led to those "mergers." For the most part the new leagues got started because the established leagues were expanding very slowly. The NFL had added only 3 teams from 1951 to 1965 prior to the merger. The AFL had started in 1960 in response that lack of opportunity. The NBA was at 10 teams when the ABA was formed in 1966. Hockey is probably the most similar. The NHL had expanded quite a bit adding 8 teams in the late 60s but still only had 14 teams after having only 6 from 1926 to 1967. And that league was really concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest of the U.S. There were only 2 teams in Canada at that time. The WHA was really born out of an attempt to spread out to other cities in Canada and regions of the U.S. If the NASL is hoping for a merger like in pro football, the key is to really compete. The AFL was signing away known players, drawing big crowds, had a national team contract, and their teams were very stable. So they had leverage to come in as near equals. The ABA and WHA? Not so much.
As usual, you can tell when folks have no idea what was going on with the otherr leagues when they discuss their mergers. Nice that yoi had the will to point just some of the issues out, you can go much deeper, but I have lost mine Facts just ruin any shreds of hope they may have.
This is an excellent analysis and I cannot begin to rep it enough. Yes, indeed, only the NFL/AFL merger was a true merger in every sense of the word. I think it was the national television contract with one of the big 3 broadcast networks and the signing of big name players like Joe Namath that finally resulted in the merger. Interestingly enough, when the league was integrated and reorganized in 1970 two of the three teams from the old All-American Football Conference were assigned to the new American Conference. The AAFC was a rival to the National Football for three or four years after World War II. The NFL wiped out the AAFC by accepting the Cleveland Browns, the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Colts into the league - and the AAFC collapsed.
Excellent analysis ... the one thing I'd add to AFL part is that they also had owners with deep pockets (like Lamar Hunt) who were going to be able to compete with the NFL for years. They could sign marquee players like Joe Namath and garner publicity. If the NASL were on an equal footing, maybe they could force a merger. Unfortunately, they seem to want to go the litigation route ... which worked so well for the USFL.
They did not, though the ABA and WHA did have things the older, established leagues wanted. You can start with Erving and Gretzky, but the ABA and WHA did have markets the other league saw as desirable and did poach players from the older league and got some others before they could get to those leagues. (The AFL was able to do this, too.) The inevitable salary inflation was also an impetus to those two mergers, even though, as you rightly point out, the ABA and WHA were nowhere near "equal status" like the AFL was by the time Tex and Lamar were meeting under the statue of the Texas Ranger in the airport. As to your general point of all this, the NASL - were it really intent on a merger - would have to do all of those things (and probably a bit more). They'd have to spend enough to lure some quality players from MLS. They'd have to poach MLS draft picks (and not just the Andre Lewises of the world) and sign their own "designated players" (regardless of what they called them). They'd probably have to lure some coaches (and not Tony Meola-types) from MLS or elsewhere in the world and they'd have to upgrade their stadium situations (and training facilities - part of the un-discussed costs when prawns talk about "just spending more on players" and competing that way) and about triple their current attendance in most places. They'd have to get on actual television and their ratings would have to be comparable to MLS'. I see no reason to believe ( a ) they want to do this or ( b ) have the ability to do this. The amount of money it would take to actually compete with MLS would be far outside of the abilities of their ownership groups as I understand them. You would literally need several very cocksure and not-terribly-bright billionaires to foot the bill, and even then, I'm not sure you could accomplish the task. Because - as has been proven time and again - you can spend all that money in a (likely fruitless) competition or just pay what it takes to get into MLS and be done with it. An Al Davis-like all-out war (with player raids and all that) would be very, very hard to pull off. (And even Davis was outflanked by Schramm and Hunt.) Regardless of the level of sanctioning the NASL has from USSF, regardless of where they sit today, there's really nothing stopping the NASL from becoming as good a league as it can possibly be, no matter what strongly worded letters from lawyers might say. But the ceiling on that is probably not MLS-level in most of their markets. That's. Just. Reality.
And, as I'm sure you know, the best thing the AAFC had going for it - the Browns - was, oddly enough, a contributor to their demise. They'd lost exactly two games in the last three seasons of the league and Paul Brown was so far ahead of his contemporaries and the Browns had such a decided advantage over the rest of the AAFC teams in terms of talent and depth and vision, that it was hurting the whole enterprise by making it a non-competitive situation. (And, again, we had the inevitable salary inflation which Bert Bell's side surely didn't want.) The AAFC was down to seven teams by 1949, and was receptive to a merger by that point. They knew the LA Dons and Chicago Hornets and New York Yankees and Buffalo Bills weren't getting into the NFL.
================= Very nice summary. I never really followed basketball and the other mergers happened in my youth. I guess the other thing that makes soccer a little different, IS the multiple leagues we have. If it were only MLS & NASL, that is one thing, but we have USL, PDL,NPSL etc. In that sense, kind of like baseball with AAA< AA< AA, but the pyramid still is not a clear path. We are getting closer, but each team is doing it themselves. You could have your academy teams U10-12-12-16-18 etc, move on you your PDL U23 team , then on to your USL reserve them, then finally the big show, MLS. How all this plays out over the next several years will be very interesting as MLS continues to expand.
Now just replace "Browns" with "Cosmos" and "AAFC" with "NASL" and it's easy to see why the powers that be within NASL/among NASL fans are hoping for something as graceful and fruitful as a merger as opposed to being left to wither on the vine.
And yet, some soccer fans have told us for years that Superclubs are necessary and attractive and they don't watch MLS because there is no dominant club. All I have heard for the last several years is that the appeal of the NASL is that clubs are free to go and sign their own players, own their own players and build a team without the constraints of MLS' machinations and salary cap. So how come only one team has taken advantage of that? (Well, now Tampa Bay is apparently spending money and Fort Lauderdale is signing people like Kleberson.) If there is nothing stopping anyone from spending what it takes to have a Superclub, how come they haven't? Is it because the market won't bear it? Because teams in the league that's totally Division II in name only can't generate enough revenue to make it make sense? Even though many of these same people have spent most of the last 20 years telling us if MLS would just spend 3x the money on players, they would totally get that money back, you guys, because revenues would go through the roof? MLS teams don't because they have a salary cap (with more workarounds than they used to have, but still). What's stopping the other NASL teams? And Ottawa won the Fall season last year and the Cosmos beat them in overtime. New York is not a great analog for the Browns. The other AAFC teams weren't within a country mile of the Browns (except the 49ers on a good day). New York has won two out of three finals by the odd goal. They're good. They're really good for Division II. But they are not choking off the league. Yet.
No, they were just that good. And in 1950's opening game, they kicked the shit out of the defending NFL champions. And went on to play in the NFL title game every year from 1950-1955. The rest of the AAFC went from pretty good (San Francisco, New York) to okay to pretty bad (Miami/Baltimore, Brooklyn). It was post-war America and, to be honest, the tail end of the NFL was no great shakes, either. The other thing that happened in the AAFC was that Cleveland's dominance even turned off Cleveland fans. The Browns went from drawing 57,000 a game in 1946 to 45,000 a game by 1948 to 31,000 a game by 1949. We are not seeing that effect in New York. People aren't staying away because the Cosmos are too good, they are staying away because America's Greatest Soccer Brand EverTM isn't as magic as some believe.
And if the Cosmos and the Rowdies do spend the cash to make themselves the two "superclubs" of the NASL then they will be in a 2 team league. Not only figuratively like La Liga but literally because the other teams won't be able to compete and it will either drive fans away from the teams or the teams away from the league. Teams like the Browns and the Raiders can suck for decades and the fans will still go to the games and buy the gear because it's their team, it's always been theirs, it's ingrained into their history. FC Edmonton doesn't have that luxury. Soccer in the US and Canada is a new thing for most places, professional wise at least in the capacity it is today. Teams can't endure decades of losing without losing fans in the process. At the current time soccer needs parity in this country. It's the only way the sport will grow and prosper here is if fan bases go into every season believing their team can lift the trophy each year instead of who is going to finish third.
The days of league mergers has long since past. MLS is on a whole other level than NASL. They can simply pick and choose the markets they want and find top money investors to buy in. MLS is already poised to hit 24 major US markets and even go to 28 in another 6-7 years. Once they hit that coverage level, the time for any "merger" is already past. They'll be in most of the top 50 markets. They'll be working cable sports regional deals in those markets. They'll have a national presence to garner more national TV contracts. They won't need to merge with anyone. They'll pick out a NASL market and just steal it if they want to.
Stealing is the wrong term. The recent past has shown that teams and investors now come to them and want in precisley because pf the MLS model. A small tiny fact NASL heads ignore.
He'd have gone broke buying the fuel from overseas and the munitions from the white man he needed it to fight.