Supporter's Summit?

Let's wait a bit and see what, if anything gets passed along. I mean, the match hasn't even been finished for 24 hours yet

 

Actually, it was the Cows' GM who co-opted it and hired a bouncer with arms bigger than my legs to guard the door and keep out the riff-raf (i.e., anyone wearing a jersey, scarf or cap of an MLS team), while he served champagne and caviar to his "booster club" of See No Evils who helped them sell corporate sky-box subscriptions.

Or so I'm told...

 

They had one on Saturday afternoon and a party on Saturday night...

 

I haven't been issued my decoder ring. What the heck are you guys talking about?

 

Annually at the MLS Cup there is a gathering of the league's supporters, and representatives usually of most if not all of MLS' supporters clubs that meet with the Commissioner and some other MLS HQ types to discuss the league, supporters issues, etc. It also 'traditionally' has been the time when the MLS Supporters Shield has been transfered or awarded.

The MLS Supporters Shield is the award given out for the team with the best regular season record in MLS. It was an award created by a group of MLS fans in it's nascient days, and recently has recieved more recognition from the league and teams as a whole. This years' winner was Columbus as they finished with the most points.

 

i think its pretty darn lame that the funny yellow fans got so outraged on their board over the handling of that trophy (rightly so)....and lots of other teams' fans went over to express support and disgust over the whole thing as well.

after....not only did people fail to 'publicly' (mess bd) follow up any discussions they may have had with the front office on how and why it happened......now there's been a post over there, from one of their own, that's gone unanswered for 24 hrs....simply asking for a summary on how the transfer went.

really, its no wonder that it seems there's a fair amount of division between their own hard core support and seemingly no semblence of a bond between whatever end zone fans they have and the front office.

honestly, if you're going to 'publicly' call the woman who accepted the trophy from the crew all kinds names, and 'publicly' accept the support of fans from other teams.....then you should have the spine to call up the organization to find out WHY this was handled like it was [and publicly post the results] and 'publicly' explain how the transfer went down and how its going to be handled from here on out.

lord, have you ever seen any group of people get so 'publicly' incensed over some issue and then seemingly crawl into a hole a day later?

man...some called this innocent woman a 'fat cow'....and then in the end they come off looking like the victims of some 'cow tipping' prank by the front office. pitifully ironic.

 

holy cow! 9 am wednesday.....now that thread with the question has actually been DELETED from their boards!! was the c.i.a. at the supporters summit meeting and shield transfer as well?

mont, if you're involved...i think i'd be afraid that this trophy is going to disappear altogether about as fast as their outrage over the issue and their enthusiasm for their team and their desire to keep hardcore fans in touch and interested in joining their cause.

at this point....is there a way to revoke this thing for improper conduct befitting a supporters organization and hand it over to kc? (who was tied on pts)


hey m, this soap opera has really piqued my ire/interest.
anything to add...info-wise?

 

Just to clarify for the uninitiated. The Supporters Shield in the past has been given and handed to supporters groups, it essentially was their responsability. This is an issue of great pride for people because it all is a very organic thing. Recently however, the Shield has become a little bit more corporatized by MLS HQ and in this case Crew HQ who presented the trophy on the field essentially to some random fans. This upset the Crew members on these boards, although it seems that it doesn't take much to upset them. However, Rev-ler warns about the actual physical shield disapearing. While that may sound odd, the shield itslef was actually being held in defacto hostage after a supporter of one of the contracted Florida teams wasn't too keen on participating after his team had been axed by the league.

 

generally, what happens to this thing during the season?
does the supporters group tend to present it to the organization for safekeeping and display....then when its time to make the transfer it goes from organization to supporter group, s.g. to s.g., and over to new s.g.'s organization?

why is the moderator of that board so keen on supressing info and deleting messages about it? i've had some p.m. conversations. he knows what the real deal w/the organization was and refuses to post it. then 'may have' turned around and deleted a question by a prolific crew poster dealing with the issue (probably choosing to deal with it over pm's again, if at all).

what the heck?
why is this so hush hush....?
it'll probably be sitting around in some crew yokel's bedroom for the next 360+ days. isn't it a common courtesy between all fans/supporters groups to let the public know how the trophy is being kept safe over the next year?

 

Well, when it's been in the custody of Chicago, it has been in the display case at Fire's offices.

Not sure what happens to it in other places. It was never actually possessed by anyone from Tampa, given that it was awarded post hoc as it were.

IIRC, the return from Miami was a real fiasco. The item was actually broken in the process, and they unilaterally added a plate memorializing the contracted teams. I believe that has been removed.

 

The irony is that the big beef that Crew supporters had was that MLS HQ was taking too much control of something they thought should be exclusively in the relm of the supporters groups, and we have another situation where possiably this trophy is in a percarious position. One reason it might be nice to have this thing being taken care of by the Powers that Be would be to keep the sheild safe and accounted for, instead of having the possability of the thing being stowed away in some mouth breather's basement.

 

yet again, someone is asking what happened at the ss on the crew bds....and the exact response i posted over there is below you now. wouldn't shock me if it got deleted.

 

from what it sounds like....one crew fan went to la and collected it.
(well its being shipped back from la on its own)
superficially sounds pretty uneventful.
i think they like to keep all info 'underground' because they can't seem to agree on much between themselves. the whole lot seems pretty cliqish (sp?) and doesn't seem like they disseminate info amongst each other with a lot of trust. who knows? don't know them.

a little 'above board' pr on the s.s. wouldn't have hurt them.
looks like the way they handle semmingly all things....is really going to hurt their ranks in the future. if it hasn't significantly already.

 

I don't know the people involved in Columbus, LA, or wherever, but the thing that people in these situations need to realize is that regardelss of how they see various fan-relations issues, the Supporters Shield is bigger than any of them, than any group, than anyone's individual ego.

Sure, you will always find people with their own agenda, but the SS belongs to all of us, the supporters of every MLS team. I don't know what went down at the meeting (nor does it seem anyone else does either), but there is a responsibility of all involved to Do The Right Thing for the good of the sport in this country.

The host team's supporters group needs to plan the summit appropriately. This means having a place to meet, an agenda of issues, contacting people who can represent those issues and speak for their organizations, and anything else that needs to be done. I would suggest that the good people in Dallas look no further than how the 2002 Supporters Summit was set up for an example.

The outgoing supporters shield winner must have a representative available to present the trophy to the new SS winners. Regardless of rivalries between teams or whatever agendas are present, this shoudl be done with dignity, unlike the fiasco of the Miami Mess of a few years ago.

The incoming supporters shield winner must also have a representative present to accept the trophy for safekeeping until the following year. In this case, I can understand how Crew folks must not have been happy with how their season ended and how their front office made a mess of the whole thing, but let's just hope that next year, someone from one of the Columbus supporters groups will be able to wrestle the shield away from the front offoce and make it to Dallas to hand the trophy over to Monty

Tom

 

Which I think is part of the reason that things have gotten the way they are now.

Maybe the summitt has outlived it's usefulness? We're all online, and we can't seem to collaborate on common fan issues even in that sterile environment, let alone in a room.

People have plenty of venues to see and interact with the various team managers etc locally and with the league as well, much more so than in the past, even if some teams are still better at it than others.

I think the fans of the teams that are in good hands are fat and happy, and the others are so concerned with their own problems, that they're not interested in what other people are dealing with.