I have an event to attend out of town on SAT. 9/28 and I was wondering what the likelihood would be that the Quakes would have a home match that day and if so would it likely be a day or night match? Any help or best guesses are greatly appreciated. I need to do some early creative travel planning.
Hard to tell, LDB, because of all the obvious stuff you already know about: who we're playing, travel arrangements, TV scheduling, etc. But there's a good bet we'll have a game that day if we're still alive, unless for some silly scheduling reason we're forced to have another Sunday night home playoff (like last year) that weekend.
SJSU has a football game on 9/28, so there's no chance the Quakes play that day. Quakes will probably play Sunday 9/29 if they start the playoffs that weekend.
All of the information below is speculation. A team will play a maximum of six playoff games between the end of the season (9/21) and MLS Cup (10/20). There are seven potential windows for playoff games, assuming they play mostly on Wednesdays and Saturdays/Sundays. Did I hear that there was going to be televised playoff games on Thursdays? So one game per week is on Thursday instead of Wednesday. Maybe for scheduling purposes they have to put one on Tuesday or something, but we'll just include Wed-Thu and Sat-Sun windows. Assuming that the Wed-Thu window before MLS Cup won't be used so the teams will have a week off (unlike last year, where we beat Miami on Wednesday and then played in MLS Cup the next Sunday). So here are the windows: September 25-26 (Wed-Thu) (higher seeds home) September 28-29 (Sat-Sun) (higher seeds away) October 2-3 (Wed-Thu) (higher seeds home, if necessary) October 5-6 (Sat-Sun) (highest remaining seeds home) October 9-10 (Wed-Thu) (highest remaining seeds away) October 12-13 (Sat-Sun) (highest remaining seeds home, if necessary) Then there's other factors, like if two teams sweep their first round games, do they move the next round up, that kind of stuff. But given that five out of the six playoff series last year went to three games, probably not. So based on this, and assuming we win the West (we should, we can beat DC twice and then beat Dallas or Colorado or Columbus and take 1 of 2 from LA and pretty much clinch it) I would guess that the Quakes will be at home for two Wednesday games in the first round and two weekend games in the second round. And this happily coincides with the SJ State football schedule.
Thanks Bill and Noah! I should be ok on the 28th according to your info.....good call checking the football schedule!
This thread has perfect timing. I also have something going on 9/28 that I can now confirm since I know that the Quakes will not play a double header with SJSU's football team. TRANSFORM MARI
Have you all seen the latest TCS. They talk about a new proposal that may be out there to change the play off format. http://www.mlsnet.com/content/02/tino0808palace.html "It has been reported by Craig Merz in Columbus, and TCS has it from another very solid source, that there is indeed a playoff proposal that has been put forward that would take the top team eight teams at the end of the regular season and put them into two groups. The format would be a around-robin, a la the World Cup, with the top two teams in each group going through to a knockout phase. Besides just being kinda cool (TCS can't stand this 5-point thing they have now, just give us a home-and-away), it would also mean the playoff schedule could be solidified at the end of the regular season, giving team front offices a chance to really sell their dates ahead of time and attract some decent crowds, as well as lock up TV dates. Soccer fans are used to the format from World Cup, UEFA Champions League, etc., and it would make for a fresh look to the post-season." I kinda like this idea. Does anyone know if they mean this season? I assume they do from the last part there about the dates.