The "Thoughts That Don't Require Their Own Thread" Thread

Talk about a ridiculous website! I've seen Chinese video poker sites with less clutter and crap. I could not find anywhere on the site any sort of "contact us" link with a general e-mail address where people can send in questons for the show. Isn't it fairly common for people to e-mail questions?

Anyway, if you have an e-mail address, that would be most helpful!

 

Here's another wierd, parallel universe kind of question: If the NHL teams were soccer clubs, what would their jerseys look like?

Actually, a lot of them look pretty good, a lot better than many MLS jerseys (including ours).

Here are a couple, and this site has the whole league:

 

They are excellent. I would prefer if the Bruins had more of a Borussia Dortmund look, but I agree that in general, they are at least as good as MLS jerseys, if not better.

 

I liked the comment underneath that video: "mafia's best friend"

 

It's amazing what you can do with an oversized paper shredder on steroids.

 

New Castrol Index is out, and at this point I have no idea what criteria they use:

- CORY GIBBS is #21 overall.
- The only Rev in the top 100 is Shalrie at #83, who has been maybe 1/4th of what he was the past 2 years in 2011 and was nowhere close to Benny in terms of effective contribution during the period this was measured. AJ Soares is the next Rev on the list at #112 followed by Stephen McCarthy (#116) and Chris Tierney (#118)

 

Zak Boggs was in attendance at my high school soccer game this afternoon. The game was in Foxboro. I went up to him afterwards just to say hi and that I'm a huge Revs fan, i sit in The Fort, yada yada. Pretty cool to have a pro soccer player at your high school game.

PS. Please don't ask me how the game went. Don't want to think about it.

 

Whats funny is last night during the Pats game when Welker ran 99 yard for a TD I just pictured Milton running wide open with the ball and collapsing on the 10 yard line of exhaustion

 

When they showed the meeting about Wilfork's contract and they showed both of the Krafts my wife said "Gee do you think they hold meetings like that about the Revs?" I laughed and said they are much too important to make to a meeting about the Revs.

 

No I don't. I saw this too and it gave me a deflating window into their world, all consumed by the Patriots. Kraft seems almost kid-like around the team and around Sensei, Belichick. I can now see after these people being completely consumed by all things Patriots, there is little time or emotional energy to turn their gazes the Rev's way. I see now why the Rev's F.O. is but a babysitter, while the parents are out till all hours at the Patriot's function.

Not only did I watch, I looked at backgrounds of offices and hallways to see any sign of Revolution. Never saw one thing.

I'm convinced the Revs are the Cinderella in the house.

 

Rev's Trophy case! LOL Are they using an old locker for it?

 

Correct me if I’m wrong but since 2008 Bob has made two appearances at Revs-related events, the ’08 SuperLiga final and the Sergio Garcia practice. Two appearances in four years.

 

Nevermind the old man.... Where has the whippersnapper, Jonathan been?

 

Did the presentation of the shirt sponsorship, shows up at the STH event (doesn't he? I'm not an STH, I just recall reading he was there this year), and does his yearly appearance on the radio to "talk Revs" for 24.6 seconds.

In comparison, he's deeply committed!

 

The Patriots have an assssed value in the neighborhood of 1.4 billion dollars, and their gate receipts in 2009 significantly exceeded the total of all MLS player salaries for 2011.

Only obsessed superfans would find fault with the ratio of attentions and resources devoted to the Patriots and the Revs. I understand fully that exactly such people tend to congregate here; I just find it helpful offer a reminder that BigSoccer posters are hardly representitive of, or sometimes even connected to, the real world.

 

Amazing that the Seattle group can somehow manage to pay attention to both its properties, despite one of them being in the NFL, isn't it? Kasey Keller raised the "12th Man" banner at a Seahawks game to thunderous cheers. The signage is (from what I've seen on TV and heard) pretty evenly split for both teams. But of course, that can't happen here in New England.

MLSE somehow manages to treat both the Toronto Maple Leafs (Pats' obsession is nothing compared with the mental illness Leafs fans suffer from) and TFC as professional, top flight entities to be taken seriously by the local sports fan populace and sports media. They even run a pretty decently supported minor league hockey team as well. However is it done? Oh well, that can't happen here.

AEG owns more properties in sports and entertainment than this site will allow me to post, and yet somehow managed to make it's MLS team a global brand. Weird! But I guess only in California, not New England. We'll just sit over here in the corner and be thankful for whatever crumbs off the table we get.

 

Of course you will. To hardcore fans*, "They don't care as much as we do" isn't a frequent fact of life so much as grounds for high volume condemnation.

Out here in the real world, if the management of a sports team cared as much as the hard core fans do, history suggests that they would be (at best) slightly less likely to make good decisions. Passion doesn't guarantee quality insite and good decisions.

*of any team in any sport.

In any case, I'll leave you guys to your echo chamber.

 

Nobody is arguing that the Patriots aren't of more financial value to the Krafts than the Revolution. Obviously, National Football League franchises are going to be more valuable properties than Major League Soccer teams.

That said, the Krafts have invested the time, money, effort and care into building the Patriots' worth to the point where Forbes ranks the team as the third most valuable franchise out of 32 NFL teams. Indeed, in 2010 Forbes ranked the Patriots the fifth most valuable pro franchise in all of sports... GLOBALLY. And this is a franchise that had been amongst the least profitable in sports for decades. Hell, under the Sullivans, the Patriots were the very definition of "fifty pounds of stupid in a five-pound bag".

By comparison, despite having been Major League Soccer investor/operators from the league's inception, by the time Forbes got around to assessing MLS franchise values in September of 2008, the Krafts had only managed to build the Revolution to the point where the team ranked 10th in value out 14 MLS clubs.

Perhaps most damning of all in the Forbes MLS franchise valuation was the quote that accompanied the Revolution's financial figures:

"The Krafts are hoping that the success of their other team, the NFL's New England Patriots, will rub off on the Revolution."

"Hoping"? "[R]ub off"? The Krafts can't just "hope" that the Revolution eventually succeed as a business entity. Success doesn't just "rub off" from one business entity to another. If the Krafts truly want the New England Revolution to be Major League Soccer's equivalent of the National Football League's New England Patriots in terms of relative financial value and on-field success, than the Krafts are going to have to put proportionate time, money, effort and care into building the Revolution as a business entity. To date, there's no indication that they've done so.

Bottom line? Why is it that the Krafts have committed the resources necessary to operate the New England Patriots as a benchmark, best-practices franchise within the NFL, but operate the New England Revolution as an afterthought amongst MLS teams?

 

Indifference guarantees a lack of quality insight and bad decisions.

Therein lies the problem: It isn't so much that the Krafts don't have the same amount of passion for the Revolution that they do for the Patriots. Rather, it is the fact that their lack of passion for the Revs is dangerously close to outright indifference.