A Labor Day weekend MLS Cup is way too early. There is still nice weather in September and early October to continue the regular season during these months. The regular season should begin in late February on President's Day and conclude the weekend before the annual mid-October FIFA Match Date. The MLS Playoffs would then begin the weekend after and the MLS Cup Final would then take place the weekend before the annual mid-November FIFA Match Date. By having the playoffs and cup final in between the Oct and Nov FIFA match dates, it allows the league to have 4 straight weeks without any interruptions, avoid the colder weather of late Nov and early Dec and avoid going up against the late seasons of College Football and the NFL.
Hate to break it to you but it doesn't matter if you are against week 1 NFL or week 17 NFL as long as you are going against the NFL you might as well not bother to have playoffs. Its never gonna get more than back of the sports pages coverage. August on the other hand is the deadest sports month on the calendar, do it then and you can get coverage. I don't question the ability to play in Sept. and Oct. but if you want to get wide spread coverage, you can't have your playoffs during those months. Its suicide. All it takes is a day watching ESPN to realize that in America September-SB Sunday is NFL. Even MLB playoffs get crushed by the NFL and now you are suggesting MLS go against the NFL, college football, and MLB playoffs (not to mention the start of the NHL season)? Again, suicide if your hopes are to truly break into the mainstream.
When are the amateur and PDL sides supposed to participate? For a variety of reasons they're mostly summer leagues, hence why USOC is played when it is. Your going to eliminate a huge swath of the competition?
Which is why it was a question...It appears most amateur teams qualify in March, would it be impossible for them to play earlier with qualifying the summer before? PDL teams play a summer schedule, how would it work for them if they made it to a final that is played in September now since many of them would be back in college by then? Again, it was just a thought. And the thought is only based on the idea that MLS would like to adjust its season schedule. I assume it will stay right where it is but figured this would be a good thread to split ball ideas about an adjustment since I do believe it'd be ideal to avoid playing the playoffs against the NFL.
Lets say MLS were to end the 2015 season with the playoffs and cup final taking place in the month of August. With 21 teams playing 34 regular season games each, you would need at least 35 weekends (assuming one team would have a bye every week) plus 4 additional weekends for playoffs and cup final. The season would then have to start in early February during even colder weather, possibly the first weekend, 2/6/15, after the Superbowl. If the league were to start that weekend they would have 25 weekends after that until the regular season's final weekend on 8/1/15. The playoffs would then have to be completed in the next 4 weeks because there is also a FIFA match date on the weekend of 9/5/14. Lets not forget that there are two more FIFA match dates on the weekends of 3/28/15 and 6/13/15 that will result in many of the leagues star players missing out on regular season games. I almost forgot there is also that little thing called the Gold Cup from 7/7-7/26/15 that will also result even more players being gone ffor up to 5 weeks of the regular season. A nice idea in theory, but it would not work. But you are you are right about getting any coverage. At this point in time MLS can's get any coverage against the NFL in week 1, week 17 or any other part of the season including training camp. But MLS can't get any coverage against MLB, NBA, College Football and Basketball, Golf, Horse Racing, Olympics,etc. either. I think MLS, first and foremost, needs to continue to improve the quality of it's players. Just as important as improving on field product, the league has to find consistent TV standard times, weekly fixtures and uninterrupted playoffs. Over time,with better players and a more consistent schedule, MLS will become ingrained in the sporting culture of this country and do fine, whether its playoffs are held in November or not.
This is something I simply disagree with. You can catch other sports but you are never catching football in the USA. Its just not gonna happen. If MLS played on weeknights instead of weekends it could work but they appear unwilling to do that for attendance reasons. I think MLS could get good coverage in August right now. And I had already brought up having to move in World Cup/Gold Cup years but the edge there is that you can use those as a lead into your stretch run. There is no ideal solution but playoffs in November is about the worst of the ideas, you're never gonna get traction playing weekends in November. Its just not gonna happen. Even sports bars that specialize in soccer aren't showing soccer on Saturday or Sunday in the fall. Seriously, the Timbers bar in my town (and lots of fans show because local cable doesn't get their games, its also ran by a guy who played college soccer and loves soccer) pushed the Timbers game to side TVs with no sound last year during the playoffs in order to show football games. That isn't gonna change anytime soon.
I do agree with you that November is not a good time to have the playoffs when its up against the College Football and NFL regular season and especially the colder weather. While August would be a better month to have the playoffs, since there is less competition that month duringnon-Olympic years, I still think it wouldn't make that much of a difference as far as getting more coverage. Baseball and pre-season football still get all the coverage during the month of August. Having the season end in August is just not realistic. There are two weekends that would be lost to FIFA match dates plus the almost 5 weekends lost due to the Gold Cup. There would be now way to complete a 34 game regular season plus 4-5 weeks of playoffs by Labor Day. While it's never been that popular here on bigsoccer, I believe that a better solution could be an apertura and clasura season. One season could go from July to November and the other could go from February to June. It's done successfully in Mexico and I think could work well here.
You can't at the open cup over the winter if you have an interest in the fourth tier and the amateurs participating.
While I do think a summer break would make more sense than a winter break (due to World Cup or Gold Cup 3/4th of the time), I don't think playing 2 seasons per year is a fit in America. But I am curious. Would you crown 2 champions? Hold 2 playoffs? Have a playoff at the end of the 2nd season with qualifying during both seasons? I do think long term Fall to Spring would be ideal. It gets your playoffs away from the NFL, avoids FIFA dates, while still giving you enough time for the season. I just don't know how you handle mid-December-mid-February. A break simply isn't an option and I don't know how the US Open Cup (which appears to need to be in the summer) could fit. MLS really is in a tough position with the American sports market and it isn't helping them that European leagues are starting to heavily push their product here too. One thing I do know, holding the playoffs during football season is not ever gonna be a good plan.
Again having the playoffs and MLS Cup end on Labor Day and before the start of the NFL may result in more media coverage, but it would require a very condensed regular season that would force clubs to be without their star players for a large part of the regular season. Also the offseason would be 5 months long. That is ridiculously long and probably longer than any league in the world. Maybe you could fill the offseason months with Open Cup play or CCL matches.
There won't be 5 months off. The season will end late May and resume late July or early August. Late July if MLS wants to clear most FIFA dates. The winter break will be just as longer. Early to mid December to mid Feb. And none of this will happen until Miami, Atlanta, Sacramento, San Antonio, and Las Vegas are in the league. They would result in the critical mass of non-freezing or domed cities where you could schedule openers in mid and late February.... We are almost a decade away from this.
The way we keep pumping carbon into the air, we're almost a decade from saying "You can't play a game in Dallas in July" in the same tone we use to say "You can't play a game in Montreal in February"
I think Mexico does it right. The league simply has two tournaments in a season, each with its own playoffs.
This system can only work if someone comes up with a better name for the seasons than Apetura and Clasura
We are all capitalists so the names will be (1st corporate sponsor) Season and (2nd corporate sponsor) Season.
If this is really how MLS wanted to do things, the league would have had a title sponsor long ago, it doesn't. The playoffs picked up a title sponsor last year, but it wasn't very intrusive.