With Cleveland's expansion team looking like it will be pushed from 2005 to 2006 (or maybe pushed to "never"), MLS may want to take a serious look at switching to a single table format if Vergara is able to come through with Chivas USA in 2005. Using a single table format with 11 teams, every team would play each team in the league 3 times, hosting 5 of the teams twice and the other 5 teams once. And while this isn't perfectly balanced, of course -- teams will be a lot happier to visit San Jose once a season rather than twice, for instance -- it would be fairer than having 6 teams in one conference and 5 in another. Plus, instituting single table would throw a nice bone to the EuroSnobs and help distinguish our league from the other "Major League" U.S. sports. What more could we ask for? (besides promotion/relegation, or course )
I think that they would either bump up Rochester or get Oklahoma City running. Then there's the ubiquitous "surprise" entrant in the MLS ever evolving expansion saga: San Antonio, Seattle, Portland (if MLB places the Expos in DC), or any other city... who knows, maybe another Mexican team might be interested (GASP!!). EDIT: shouldn't this be in the Expansion boards, not news und analysis?
Perhaps. But realistically, Rochester should concentrate on putting its financial eggs in better order before moving up to MLS. The Rhinos barely managed to scrape together their share of SSS costs and I doubt they could come up with anything like the $10 million MLS wants as an expansion fee. And Oklahoma City/Edmond? Sure, the Univ. of Central Oklahoma seems to be making nice progress on their stadium but is there an MLS investment group anywhere in sight?
Um, I think you got it wrong... If you have 11 teams, the real problem is scheduling since only 10 of them can play every weekend. So you either have to schedule more games on weekdays, never a money-making proposition for MLS, or extend the season for more weeks. It's nothing to do with single-table, balanced schedule, or any of that stuff.
Re: Um, I think you got it wrong... Good point, but I don't think it's as big a factor as you make it out to be. With 11 teams in a single table, each team would have a "bye week" every 11th Saturday. And with a regular season as long as 2004's, for instance, that would mean that each team in the 11-team league would only have to play 4 to 5 midweek matches (not much different than the 3 midweek matches teams are playing in 2004)
There should be a single table anyway. I think it will happen one day. It's hard to be considered a great league when we just want to be different whether it be with the Shoot-out or Overtime or divisions. I think that in order to be considered a great league we need to adapt more of the traditional values of a big-time league instead of trying to look like every other sport in America.
Right. Because the folks that'll be attending our soccer matches, buying our merchandise, etc etc, will be those fans in other coutries who now follow those "traditional" "big-time leagues", and not Americans who, you know, live in THIS country and now follow "every other sport in America." Hey, man, while we're dorking it up and generally alieniating ourselves from mainstream America, why don't we speak Klingon and dress up as obscure Japanimation characters!
No but there are players out there who must think to themselves that this is just a silly soccer league that just tries to be American. They would rather play elsewhere. Therefore the level of play decreases if they think MLS is a poor place to play and that affects the people who pay for tickets and all that other stuff. I'm not saying we should do everything like the Europeans and such, but we shouldn't just try to blend in to be like any other American sport. To say that it would be alienating the American public by switching to a single table is a bit rediculous.
I can see rochester having to pay less than your standard $10 million franchaise fee. after all, they'll have a SSS to bring to the table come 2005. hopefully once this stadium is built they'll soon turn in a profit, like LA. in another note i'd like to see seatlle in MLS, cant see it happening for a few years however.
No more rediculous than claiming that MLS is doomed to a downward spiral towards oblivion if they don't switch to a single table and all that jazz. Given the way the level of play in MLS has increased over the years, I'd have to say that either there aren't any players that stupid, or even if there are, there are far more players of equal or greater soccer talent who aren't so idiotic. Sure, MLS is no EPL, but I dare you to show me any 8-year old soccer league that is. There's a world of difference between bastardizing the sport with idiotic rule changes (like shootouts and countdown clocks) and structuring the league to fit the realities of the nation in which you play. There's nothing wrong with Americanizing the sport, whereas there's plenty wrong with bastardizing the sport. (It really is a misnomener to refer to such rule bastardizations as "Americanizations" since they really did nothing to sell the sport to mainstream America...if America refused to accept such changes, how can they be considered "Americanizations" then?) I'm sorry, but I just get tired of seeing posters who otherwise seem to be perfectly intellegent (a rare and valuable trait around these parts) unable to make the distinction. You've got learn to seperate the stuff from the stuff.
A single table is how every other country in the world structures their league. I think it is quite ridiculous that we don't conform. It isn't a nationality issue, it is a soccer issue. Why should we - a novice nation in terms of soccer - decide another way to structure our league? It isn't that I'm a Eurosnob because nations around the world use single tables. So if you want to name call, call me a world soccer snob, which is fine. I enjoy world soccer. In fact, I think we should move to a division system and set an example to the other sports. I think major American sports - like baseball and basketball - could benefit from the excitement of promotion and relegation.
Italy... Spain... England... Brazil... Argentina... Germany... shall I go on? Those are the countries we should be modeling. Mexico? Chile? Columbia? Who cares? What have those leagues or countries done?
So, "every other country in the world" has been whittled down 6 countries? Get your argument straight.
The point was that your initial argument was totally false and you were posting dumb, wrong stuff. Just in case you were to ignorant to figure that out. Watch what you write next time and you won't have to remove your foot from your mouth.
Go on to cheaptickets.com. Find the price of a flight from D.C. to Columbus. Then find the price of a flight from D.C. to San Jose. Notice the difference? One of the big reasons we are stuck with divisions is that it keeps travel cost down. Until the league is making money I don't see a single table.
Personally, I'm not too concerned whether MLS is single-table or division right now, I'm glad that the rules on the field are more in line with world standards though. Not completely, but for the most part. I think once the league is making more money, we can consider whether to keep or get rid of the division format.
Perhaps slightly off-topic, but that's never stopped me before... I've seen this in the pantheon of MLS complaints for two years now, but never understood it. For real -- what's the difference outside of sports-page aesthetics? How does it change the game to have a single-table, especially if we continue to have a playoff to decide our champion? Perhaps one of the Single Table proponents could convince me, but right now I don't see the difference in relative beauty of either system.
The people who bring up the single table issue are kind of talking around their real beef, which is that MLS teams don't play each other (a) the same number of times or (b) equally home and away. Having a single table is just a thumbnail way of saying that the teams should play all other teams an even number of times home and away. The degree to which the schedule of each team is similar to the schedule of all other teams reflects how accurate the ranking of teams at the end of the season is going to be (ie, some teams don't get a points advantage by having an easier schedule than other teams, at least not on paper, in real life, teams will play better or worse and add players during the season, so this is going to be eroded by the facts of life). The ultimate common schedule would be to have two divisions, and each team within the division plays all teams in the other division three times at home and three times away (three is arbitrary, it's just chosen in this instance because 5*3*2=30, which is the number of games that MLS plays in a season). Then they have an identical schedule to the teams they are "competing" against in their table. Then you would have the winners of each division play off against each other. This has actually been done previously in one of Europe's smaller leagues.
A single table would keep 9th placed teams such as the Galaxy out of the playoffs. That's reason enough for me...
Oh dear... a Burn fan running smack. How precious. Enjoy not being in last place for the time being? Don't let it get to your head. The playoff system that was in place in '02 would have solved this as well. But folks were still clamoring for Single Table. Jeremy's explanation made some sense, but that solution referenced at the end sounds godawful. Imagine not competing against the teams against which you're competing.
Yeah, well, our old playoff system did that too. Then: Two divisions, top overall finisher is the 1st seed, the top finisher in the other division is the 2nd seed, remaining six seeds drawn from the next six best finishers, 9th and 10th finishers don't qualify for the playoffs. Playoff matchups are determined by the first team to win 5 points in a three game two-team mini-league. If one team wins both of the first two games, then the third game is not played. If the third game ends and each team has four points, then a mini-game will be played as if it were overtime of the third game, and the winner of that overtime, or the penalty kicks to follow it, will be determined to be the winner of the series. Matchups are 1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5, three games, with the higher seed hosting the first and (if necessary) third games. Winners of these series are pitted against each other, with the highest remaining seed playing against the lowest remaining seed, and the two middle remaining seeds playing each other, highest remaining seed in each match hosting the first and (if necessary) third legs. Winner of each of these series plays in a single final game at a predetermined site to determine the league champion. Now: Now we have two divisions, and within each division, the top four finishers are seeded 1 through 4, with 1 and 4 and 2 and 3 playing off home and home, higher seed hosting second leg. Winners play off in a single game, with the highest remaining seed hosting. Winners of each divisional playoff series then play a single game at a predetermined site to determine the league champion. Comments: First to five was pretty dumb, but the 9th placed team couldn't qualify for the playoffs after contraction. There's nothing stopping them from using that same matching structure now, except that the new schedule is constructed so that teams within a division have a higher degree of common opponents than under the old scheduling system (where a team played the same ranked other division team from the following season home and away as bonus scheduling games instead of all the otherly ranked teams either at home or away as bonus games).
You're competing against them, just not playing them. It's more like the competition involved in a timed race (downhill skiing for example) than the competition involved in swimming (where you have people competing head to head against each other). You all have a common "course" that you are competing on, and then you're ranked based on your ability to negotiate that "course." But yeah, it is a bit bizarre.
a lot is made on these boards about how unnecessary costs could scare off investors. As currently MLS teams seem to be at best breaking even, doesn't charging somebody $10 million for the chance to possibly break even sound like the kind of thing that might put an investor off?