This feels circular: USL isn't at a level for pro/rel with MLS but there's no sensible reason to commit to that level of investment unless there is pro/rel with MLS which we're arguing isn't going to happen because USL isn't at a high enough level for it.
But if USL is to justify pro/rel with MLS someone needs to take a chance and make an investment. Louisville and Indy (maybe) are building D1 stadiums.
I'm not sure I understand your angle here: there is zero point in spending 1 penny more than whatever it takes to win the USL-C championship game. Spending anything more than that is a waste. And since there's no influence on competition coming down from MLS, the league's ceiling is just wherever it lands. Yes, Louisville has built a very nice stadium. I doubt they plan on losing a lot of money in that investment, though. Malik is planning on doing the same thing in Raleigh. The stadiums are a means to leverage larger real estate development plans. It's not really a viable option for every club, though, and not sure how it gets USL any closer to MLS's level in anything but the most superficial sense.
For an ambitious team, it's actually not even worth investing specifically to win the USL championship. Far better to throw everything at getting one's cartel membership fee accepted.
Obviously I was referring to a USL team wanting to get "promoted" to MLS and thus the MLS cartel membership fee.
There are plenty of teams IN pro/rel set ups not at a level for the next tier ... +++++++ Side note, too bad Malaga isn't in a pro/rel set up ..... Oh wait
That's not the argument, though. We don't say Serie B or Segunda Division or 2. Bundesliga aren't at a level for promotion to their first division even though they might contain teams that are nowhere near the right level. The point is that the top of the 2nd division should be in reasonable proximity to the bottom of the 1st and we have ways to measure that, because the top of the 2nd division goes up and the bottom of the 1st goes down. The leagues will naturally pull themselves up or it will be the same 6 teams getting promoted and relegated every other season. With USL, where you don't have that cross-pollination, the leagues evolve completely separately from each other. Colorado Springs can invest at a level that would put them on level with Nashville SC, but why would they do that? Thus the investment is recalibrated towards what it takes to be competitive in USL-C, which has no bearing on whether or not that's at a level to be competitive in MLS, which then gets used against USL-C in the context of pro/rel with MLS. See what I mean?
But in most leagues where pro/rel has evolved, as opposed to dictated by a confederation, there are multiple teams in the lower division capable of operating successfully in the top-flight. In England the Alliance League provided established teams that had the finances, infrastructure and support to compete at the top level, similarly in Germany when they merged the regional leagues. And in that environment the odd Eibar or Bournemouth will make it to the top-flight. Agreed but back in the 90s there were a only a handful of investors willing to invest in soccer and they demanded the security of a single-entity. Which is a great argument against pro-rel as things stand today.
Single entity is problematic for all kinds of reasons in the pro/rel argument, but it's orthogonal to the claim that "USL isn't at a level for pro/rel". "Today..." how would that ever change?
It won't. By enabling the closed league route with single-entity thrown on top, the USSF essentially ensured that pro/rel would never happen.
But USSF needed MLS and MLS would never have happened without the single-entity. This is what came before. 1995 A-League Pl. Pts. (Av att.) 1 Montreal Impact 24 51 (5,075) 2 Seattle Sounders 24 51 (4,571) 3 Vancouver 86ers 24 33 (4,492) 4 Atlanta Ruckus 24 32 (2,632) 5 Colorado Foxes 24 29 (5,873) 6 New York Centaurs 24 20 (1,461)
The original intention of NASL was to create a successful, stable second division. Had it acheived that then somewhere down the road there could have been a reasonable discussion about pro-rel with MLS. Unfortunately Bill Peterson jumped the gun and the league ended farcically. But USL seems to be achieving that intention. From fiftyfive.one The first commissioner of the NASL, David Downs, had a vision that was both ambitious and achievable. It is simple to explain. The NASL would be the best possible second division that it could be. The focus would be on helping every club become relevant and grow in their own market. The league would target cities and owners who couldn’t support or fund an MLS club, existing independently of the first division, but not in opposition to it. “The NASL's goal is to be the No. 1 professional soccer in-stadium experience [their markets]…To convince people of that and get their per game attendance from an average of 3,000-to-4,000 to 6,000-to-7,000, that would make them financially healthy. And that's a pretty easy proposition." -David Downs No professional second division (let alone first division) had ever achieved success and stability in the United States and Canada. But the NASL’s early process of expansion and finding new owners for existing clubs yielded promising fruit. Its vision attracted Tom and Dave Fath in Edmonton, Gordon Hartman in San Antonio, and Bill McGuire in Minnesota. While Downs stepped down as commissioner at the end of 2012, the NASL continued to find success by sticking to the original recipe. Indianapolis, Ottawa, Jacksonville, and even New York (a city large enough for multiple clubs, where the NASL stayed well clear of the existing MLS team) proved natural second division markets and benefited from committed ownership. "It's a different proposition than MLS,” Downs told Sports Business Daily in 2014. “The NASL's goal is to be the No. 1 professional soccer in-stadium experience in Atlanta or in Miami or in San Antonio or in Tampa or in Minneapolis…To convince people of that and get their per game attendance from an average of 3,000-to-4,000 to 6,000-to-7,000, that would make them financially healthy. And that's a pretty easy proposition." Last season 10 second division clubs averaged attendances of more than 6,000 and that's despite teams like Montreal, Minnesota, Orlando and Cincinnati moving to MLS. If USL remains stable and continues to grow then in a few years time we could begin a sensible discussion.
I understand what you were saying ... I'm pointing to the reality of pro/rel lower divisions simply not supplying the support for that connectivity that many think that it does. Even with the connectivity there are plenty of clubs that cannot, do not, or will not invest and pro/rel isn't exactly providing the ability for them to do so that many claim. It's kind of ironic that the unique structure of sports in the US kind of leaves it open for the folks with money to do what they want. Maybe Col Springs and San Antonio and Phoenix et al want to invest and build but don't want to do it on an MLS time frame or level. They can do just that. They can also get together and move forward as a group and obtain what MLS has. They aren't tied to anything ... and the USL evolving completely separate from MLS isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is very unlike lower level clubs in pro/rel set ups. Everything they do is calibrated towards that one line path even if they're already out of the running for ever being much more than what they are right now. No league that never had more than 11 teams at one time and was on a downward slope would ever be at a level for pro/rel.
A racial angle to college sports' shamateurism: "“It’s morally bankrupt,” Garthwaite said. “The NCAA wants it to be ‘amateur’ for the athletes, but none of the rules of amateurism to apply to all the other people in the system.”" and on how money made off football and basketball players gets funneled elsewhere: "The students playing those sports tend to be Whiter and hail from wealthier neighborhoods than those who play football and basketball. Black students constitute nearly 60 percent of the rosters of football and basketball teams, and just 11 percent of the rosters of all other sports. Similar racial dynamics are apparent among coaches." https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/07/ncaa-student-athletes-pay-equity/
Revenue-producing college sports like football and basketball subsidize non-revenue sports. There tend to be a lot more Black athletes in football and basketball than in those other sports. Didn't we already know these things?
Maybe you knew the precise degree that this was the case; I didn't. Nor was I aware of just how much more shamateur college football and basketball have become in recent years thanks to tv contracts. As the study author says, "“We’re the first to empirically document the regressive nature of it in a systematic way".
No, I didn't know the precise degree, just that it is generally true, and has been for years. Perhaps the reason why I didn't know the precise degree is that I no longer follow major college sports like I once did. Now, the only one I pay all that much attention to is track. My background is Division III anyway. Things are very different there than at the football and basketball factories of Division I. No athletic scholarships allowed and very little revenue, if any, from football and basketball.