Straus: MLS to expand playoffs again

I've run into quite a few of those people. Players getting homes for their family is allowable well within NCAA guidelines.

I know non-revenue "Olympic" sport athletes who got cars.

 

Hey.. Hey.. Those athletes need to be able to get to training and back home somehow.. If some kind, generous automotive company wants to donate their premier vehicle to the athlete, who are you to say they can't accept it???

 

I disagree with those people. I think SUC should have been burnt to the ground and the ashes fed to weasels.

But that's just me

 

They're all dirty, even the clean programs. The whole setup is counter to what our institutions of higher learning should be supporting.

 

I'm not going to say they are all dirty... But the higher a program is ranked, the higher the likelihood the program is dirty.

 

No, neither one of them is an issue in and of itself, they are just means to an issue. The issue, so it is claimed, is the correlation of regular season results to the likelihood of a championship. The problem I have is that the rewards for seeding has a far larger bearing on this issue than the number of teams making the playoffs.

So basically I don't believe the reasoning of the people who bring the issue up with regard to that number of teams, and who pointedly do not seem to make much of the far more damaging home-and-home, away-goals format that render the regular season far less meaningful.

 

In my opinion, the most insightful recent commentary on the NCAA was the "Crack Baby Basketball" episode of South Park from a few years ago.

------RM

 

That's interesting - correlation of regular season results to the likelihood of a championship is not my issue with an expanded playoffs.

Rather, its the lack of elimination in the regular season. The most exciting part of a competitive format is watching a team advance or a team be eliminated from the possibility of a championship. Achieving advantageous seeding or home-field advantage is a far inferior type of excitement.

If regular season elimination is substituted by a playoff format which is tilted too far in favor of rewarding regular season achievement, then there is less need to watch the playoff.

For example, you could say the regular season eliminates no teams, but that in the first round of the playoffs the higher seed starts out with a 2 or 3 or 4 goal head start. Whether its 2 or 3 or 4 goals or more depends on how well the two teams did in the reg. season. That seems to me like I would not be motivated to watch those games.

Better to let fewer teams in and then make it a comparatively clean slate for any of the few teams that made it in. If a team is truly the better team at that time of the season, they would overcome the minor disadvantage of one less home game or not having home-field advantage.

 

You mean that the playoff game wouldn't be very interesting to watch under those circumstances, because you think you know who's going to win. That doesn't touch the subjects that were being talked about, which is how likely we are to watch regular season games, allegedly because of the bearing they might have on the championship.

If all rounds were played single-elimination, at the home of the higher seed, the lower seed would have a 30% chance of winning. This means the lowest seeds, that play four rounds all on the road, would have an 0.8% chance of winning the title, but any given playoff game is hardly such a foregone conclusion.

And maybe that makes the play-in game itself uninteresting, maybe not, but again what this thread and every one like it has been raking over is how important the regular season is.

 

Where does the 30% number come from? Historical data from MLS? Historical data including other pro sports?

 

I have to mention the team that beat those Ohio schools was very different when it beat those Ohio schools than the team that was tied 0-0 at the end of regulation with Wake Forest... I have to. I do. I have to.







Spare Ohio State QBs, please play for the school in Blacksburg.

 

That's from MLS history.

 

i always say the same thing when this discussion comes around. if you're really the better team you'll win even without some notable seeding advantage. and that's what regular season is for. it tells you how good you are and who you can beat. not to mention that in mls there is so much parity that many match-ups are unpredictable in any case, and for those match-ups a big edge based on seeding wouldn't be fair anyway.
example: nyrb against new england. it was a toss-up series and it played out very nicely, in my opinion. too big an edge in seeding would have spoiled it.

 

But having a toss-up series doesn't make the regular season more interesting. Home field advantage is a real advantage, something worth fighting for as the regular season comes to close, but it doesn't penalize to the point that the game isn't compelling.

 

ok, but it's also a stretch to think that players and fans will put a lot more stock in a june game because of some bigger advantage put into playoff seedings. especially the fans, who at this point don't follow the league quite that closely. not to mention that the bigger the seeding edge you award, the less compelling the playoffs themselves become. it's all a trade-off.

 

In June the playoff picture is so fuzzy, that the games should feel important. I think SKC was in first or second place in the East last year in June, yet had to get good results in the final games to assure a playoff position. The games in June aren't the problem. It's the ones in September/October when you don't want playoff teams fielding reserve sides because they don't care if they are the first or fourth seed.

Homefield advantage is not a big seeding edge, and I can't imagine how one would make it smaller or bigger.

The two-leg series is designed to even things out, which really undermines efforts to make the entire regular season compelling.

 

to change how teams play in regular season you'd have to make the seeding advantage so great that it would detract from the playoffs. really the best way to make the regular season compelling would be not to have playoffs. but then the cure killed the patient, so to speak. i don't know, i've never sweated this issue. maybe that's just me.

 

I disagree. If there are two games left, and you are destined to either second or third place no matter what, a two-leg series makes those two games moot. If you are staring at a one-off in your place vs. on the road, I think there is a ton interest in securing second place.

I really don't see how a one-off game detracts from the playoffs.

 

Noted that Perth Glory of Australian/NZ A-League have been banned from 2014-15 playoffs for Salary Cap Breaches.

Have there ever been close/borderline cases of such happening in MLS in the past?

Does the league has any relevant rules similar to the following?

 

MLS handles all the contracts. If there are any rule breaches it is because they allowed it.

 

I see, so A-League do not handle contracts similarly as MLS...

The clubs handle themselves, base on the rules set by the league.

 

Right, arguably it's one answer to the question that has often come up (especially at CBA time) "what difference does Single Entity make if there's still a salary cap?" Single Entity makes that cap virtually impossible to violate, as MLS will just block the signing that would have violated it, where traditional leagues have to investigate possible infractions after the fact.

 

By the way, IIRC, also noticed that through the history of MLS, there have been no instances of teams failing to turn up for games or not paying the players on-time, resulting in docked points for the teams (& disqualifications from playoffs), which do happen from time to time in other leagues.

All these are down to Single Entity as well?

Well done...