I have. I did. I am. And yet, he still follows me around like a little puppy dog. It does no good because this jerk becomes a freaking stalker and can't take a hint. The Ignore feature is only a tool. A block feature is far more effective. Why don't we have that here?
LOL "stalker" You show up in forums I post in, post garbage, and you get called on it or replied to. YOU AREN'T SPECIAL .. I do that to anyone that fits that bill. I'm sure there's a good number of other forums on here you post in that I DON'T, and don't go into just to pick you out like you'd have people believe.
I've done it with him and several others on multiple occasions for weeks and months at a time... it's been suggested that others do this with me, and I'm perfectly happy with that. Yet they don't, they'd rather troll bc we don't have mods that do a damned thing to them. If you've ever used IGNORE on certain posters, you know that you can spot check as to whether the poster you're ignoring is such a fergin asswipe that they just take full advantage of it and post endless arguments knowing full well I'll rarely respond. This has been a known issue. There are reasons why hundreds of soccer fans I know on Twitter who share my POV (with varying levels of enthusiasm) won't touch this webforum with a ten foot pole. The mods and this forum and the guy who does the lion's share of the blogposts for BS have a well earned BAD REPUTATION. Look at this thread. Look at it in its entirety. If you can look yourself in the mirror, and tell yourself this thread (a thread I had every right to start) has been well moderated, then you're delusional beyond belief. I've been on here since the year 2000. I can only stay on here when treated fairly, which has become a rarity. Why is that the case? Because we have no mods who share any enthusiasm whatsoever towards the idea of Pro/Rel for the United States of America. Dennis Crowley and several others used to post regularly on BS, but no more. Go figure.
Considering they're amateur teams, I would not expect any, really. There have been (formerly) PDL teams that have gone fully professional by choice, but they have been fairly rare and fairly unsuccessful. If USL were to one day come up with a mechanism for results-based promotion and relegation, it would, out of necessity, have to be between the Championship and League One levels first (and maybe forever). And then only when the organizational wherewithal of teams like Madison and South Georgia reached a point where going up would be less of a stretch. But the vast majority of League Two teams have zero ability to be fully professional, even if they might aspire to it. And the potential to win promotion to a level most could not afford would be unlikely to bring deep-pocketed investors out of the woodwork suddenly.
Same point @Robert Borden was making about CPL. When owners make investment decisions they are aware that the league is open to discussion about pro-rel. Isn't that what you wanted to start, a discussion? As for the PLS, the D2 team at the time got what it wanted. There are some very positive developments happening. We now have a formal D2/D3/D4 hierarchy. Top D2 clubs are investing in stadiums and academies (though I don't see the point of the latter without TC). Struggling D2 clubs now have a competitive 3rd division to self demote to. The top amateur/semi-pro "grass roots" clubs are forming a professional league.
Well you do because you see the replies to the ignored posts and curiosity gets the better of you. Happens to me with @M all the time
The fun part is trying to guess how many fans would be at Fort Finley for such a match.... since over 4,100 made it for the friendly versus Detroit City while RW was having its home opener, I'm guessing it'd be far more than that... I'd rather take 10k per MLS home game in Chattanooga with 4k per USL home game in Columbus over 10k per game in Columbus after they just "saved" the Crew.
We are years (assuming it ever happens, despite Jake Edwards' lip service) from USL ever seriously considering this. I would not be surprised if they actually went through on their challenge cup proposal, though.
Realistically, it's a bit of a leap to consider 10k per game consistently for Chattanooga. That would would be 2% of the entire metro area showing up 15-20 times a year for a soccer game and find that a little hard to believe. The Mocs only break 10k about once a year or so with only 5 games and football is so much more popular, not to mention there are so many local alumni. The fact that CFC is able to draw the way they do is incredible, but 3-5K/game is honestly the practical ceiling for season averages (this year is a little different). That puts them at about the same percentage of attendance compared to metro area as the Timbers and Whitecaps, which ain't shabby.
When you continue to post in discussions that others are involved in it's a bit hard to cry foul on them counter-discussing yet you constantly are. Simply because you choose to put your fingers and let in only what strokes your narrative doesn't mean others have to block you out. As has been explained to you on many occasions, this is a PUBLIC FORUM and we ALL have the right to discuss. YOU don't have the right to tell anyone who can and can't respond to you. Your choice of whether to respond or not is irrelevant to myself and others pointing out the issues with what you profess from time to time. The entirety of the discussions are open to EVERYONE participating in them. Of course, calling names and threatening violence doesn't do you wonders by any stretch of the imagination. Myself and others have EVERY RIGHT to discuss and speak to comments from anyone on these boards. We also have EVERY RIGHT to defend ourselves from YOU. Oh no, a semi-rich guy that started a soccerballs group and doesn't pay his players and wants a handout instead of doing work himself doesn't post on BS anymore ... ... the horror.
I know we're talking pie-in-the-sky theoreticals at this point and for the foreseeable future, but don't sell yourselves short. My metro area was smaller than your CSA in the late 70s and early 80s and we drew over 11k per game our first season, over 16k our second, and nearly 20k per game in 1980. We had a regional pull being in the old NASL that the USL team (as well as my NPSL club) can't really ever match. In fact, the big joke around Tulsa, both way back then and 15+ years ago during a 2003 exhibition game in hopes of impressing Garber & Co, was that there are more people who'd watch NASL/MLS soccer in Tulsa than watch the local NCAA DI college football team playing at the same stadium. This is what 14,025 butts-in-seats looks like in a 41k seat stadium (downsized to 27k fixed seats about 10 years ago)... compare to some of these crowd shots from MLS games so far this season, and ouch! Tulsa 2003 Columbus 2019 And, let's not forget, that we're not talking butts-in-seats attendance, we're talking MLS-style "tickets distributed." I mean, I could wax poetic about what makes Tulsa so totally special in the context of American soccer cities despite how bad the new USL team is drawing these days... but really, fans in Wichita, Kansas feel the same way about their previous success indoors and... well... if CFC wins its way up the ladder from NPSL Pro to NISA to D2 to Pie-In-The-Sky MLS you'd think that'd be enough to roughly double your attendance and get folks driving out from all over the place... much like when I meet older soccer fans who say they grew up in NW Arkansas or southeast Okla or even those bastards in OKC who'd go to lots of Tulsa Roughnecks games bc it was us against the world (or at least the Cosmos). I mean, I seem to remember a game against a Cosmos B team that seemed to draw pretty well at your place, right? So, let's dream. And don't dream small, dream big. I support a likely unstable NPSL Pro that includes CFC over the more seasoned USL League One that includes Red Wolves because I will always support "dreamers over schemers." /end rant.
That's just it. PDL is not unlike the vast majority of NPSL teams, so why even bother calling them "League Two," which implies something they've never really been before. We've referred to PDL and NPSL as defacto D4 for years when really, if anything, there needs to be a USL League Two that runs along the same ideals as Founders Cup to take up that space, an actual USSF D4. How bout we do something like that first before we rebrand ourselves in the mold of the English system? Otherwise, it just looks kinda gimmicky?
Why does USL2 have to run along the same ideals as the Founders Cup? The USL is structuring different levels under one umbrella. What's wrong with that? This is the base of what everything else is built on. I mean, how does it look any more gimmicky than the Founder's Cup? I mean how is USL 2 not serving that purpose? Yeah it's a short season but so is NPSL.
It remains to be seen what the future of the Founder's Cup is after this year, but, assuming there's demand for it (which admittedly, is a big if), it seems like it could serve as a good way for teams to stay amateur but start expanding to a full season, which a lot of NPSL team owners would like to do: https://www.soctakes.com/2017/08/12/multiple-npsl-owners-favor-full-season-play/ Obviously it remains to be seen how many of those owners are actually willing to walk the walk and, certainly, not every community is going to have access to a deep pool of non-collegiate players (UPSL somehow manages, though), so who knows. But given that there's definitely interest from an owner's perspective and there will be precedent, maybe it can be an annual fixture to help clubs ramp up to a more professional season.
I'm not knocking the idea, or what it is. I'm just curious as to why USL2 to ... why there's an issue with it? Seems like it is a landing spot for clubs like the PDL/UPSL/NPSL are/were but it is built into the USL structure w/the logical next step (if you wanted it) would be to go to USL 1.
Not trying to start an argument but logistically how is it even possible for NPSL to go full season amateur when they're relying heavily on college players. You'd be asking college players to miss class time and IIRC there's some NCAA eligibilty rules about playing in other leagues during the academic year. I honestly don't see how NPSL could do it unless they're going to rely on non-college players.
The step from amateur, summer league to fully pro D3 is way bigger than it looks. Did you read the soctakes article? One of the reasons these owners want longer seasons is because they can A) obviously bring in more gate money B) more importantly, bring in more sponsorship money. The capital expenses of going fully pro are way beyond what the majority of amateur teams have on hand. What would be a lot easier is to ramp up to a full-time front office first, then gradually start introducing payroll (not fully pro) to your team. But this way they can continue to grow without taking the enormous risk of being fully pro. Well, the fall league would have to be less reliant on college players. That said, Chattanooga FC has for years fielded players that have since graduated and clearly most NPSL alumni never go pro, but they must go somewhere. That is, there are many, many more former NPSL/PDL players than there are current NPSL/League 2 players. They question is what it would take for them to keep playing (part time).
No it's not treated like any public forum that's any good. Not the way you moderate it. Look at the first five pages of this thread... Inexcusably poor moderating.
No one’s forcing you to be here. Your method of pointing out how much you disapprove of this thread was to necro-post it after it was dormant for six months?
There are plenty of people who've tried various methods, both direct and indirect, to force me to leave. Have you noticed I no longer post on the thread that reflects my subject of interest? Learn to read.... start by reading the first five pages of this thread to see how this thread was initially TROLLED to death. And guess who was the last TROLL to post on page 5 before I revived the thread about two and a half years later? Answer: YOU. I revived the thread at that time because of the threat to CFC's very existence with this.... And I immediately thought of this thread when I first read the tweet you accused me of "necro-posting" ??? I think the description “crappy field with no fans” fits @NYCFC a little better, no? pic.twitter.com/9gWL6LSI5a— G 😴 (@QXCC__) April 8, 2019 I mean, I guess I could have posted it on the general Chattanooga thread, but felt my thread which I created was actually the more appropriate one to post it on.... especially considering the contents of its very first post... http://www.twiceacosmo.com/2015/11/...er-ill-advised-cheap-shot-chattanooga-fc-npsl "If you're investing billions and billions of dollars, which we are now at about $3.5 billion invested [in MLS] in twenty years, to build something in Kansas City and they have a shitty season, to think they might be playing in Chattanooga in a stadium of 4,000 people on a crappy field with no fans, makes no sense." -Don Garber, BlazerCon
You've somehow managed to simultaneously create a post that is both a non-sequitur and a cheapshot. I am happy that NY Cosmos and Miami are taking what had been their NPSL reserve squads and using them to partner with Chattanooga, Detroit and other clubs to do this Founders Cup/NPSL Pro idea rather than try to force them into joining some D3 version of an NASL desperately trying to regain its lost D2 status. Good on them, I say. I remember the many discussions I had with my NPSL club's owner during the 2013 offseason and in our 2014 season before the arrival of the USL D3 Tulsa Roughnecks in 2015. I said over and over again that we can't just play a two month season and expect to compete for fans with a USL D3 franchise whose season runs from March through September. We had to at least explore whether we could even attempt to make a leap to the NASL. But the best option for us, were it available at the time, would have been to either join a non-USL D3 or try to get the NPSL to create the kind of pro league they're trying to do right now... Because we didn't (couldn't?) do that, our attendance went down by more than half... and after having our stadium torn down to make way for what turned out to nothing more than surface parking, we now play at a public park before about 500-700 fans per match. And if that weren't bad enough, the Roughnecks are now playing before crowds of not much more than half the butts-in-seats we were getting in 2013 and 2014. The last thing CFC needs is for what happened to us to happen to them.