TV Schedule Analysis

Except for one small detail:

Those teams didn't suck. In fact, they were great teams. I hear that they even won a few championships during the '80s.

If the NBA chose games to televise the way MLS apparently does, we'd get a steady dose of the sorry-ass Knicks almost every damn week these days. Sacramento and San Antonio need not apply.

Don't get me wrong. I've got no problem with the number of games that LA is gonna get (they're a big market and they're the champs), and I'm not proposing that MLS completely boycott the Metros for national telecasts. I understand that they're in the #1 TV market and I have no problem if they were to get a few more national telecasts than the average team, which has usually been the case. But MLS has gone completely over-the-top this season.

 

But that's the difference between basketball and soccer.

In basketball, one player CAN make a difference. A player the caliber of Magic or Bird or MJ could transform a team from an average team that no one cared about to a championship contender. So to say that it was less about the team and more about the player is a bit misleading because in the case of Larry and Magic and MJ, the player made the team what it was. "Great player" and "great team" were, for the most part, inseparable.

But even in the case of Michael Jordan, the first couple years of his career with the Bulls were in relative obscurity. CBS (who had the NBA contract until 1991) didn't show the Bulls in '85 or '86 very much for the simple reason that they weren't very good. (And this is with one of the greatest players of all time on the team, which should tell you how bad the MJ-less Bulls were in those days.) They chose to stick with a steady diet of Larry and the Celtics, Magic and the Lakers, and Dr. J and the Sixers.

Sure CBS and the NBA promoted Magic and Larry and MJ and Isiah in those days, but when you tuned into CBS, you knew that you were gonna see a top-quality team playing. Yes, those were great players, but more importantly, they made their teams great almost singlehandedly.

But soccer's different. One transcendent player can't make as great of an impact. Clint Mathis, for all the hype, hasn't won the MetroStars a championship and didn't help the MetroStars get into the playoffs last year. Brian McBride hasn't transformed the Crew from being the Eastern Conference answer to the Dallas Burn. And while it may be the fault of their teammates' incompetence, that's soccer. Players can shine, but teams ultimately win games.

Sure, MLS and ESPN can hype Mathis all they want and show him on TV every other week, but if Mathis' teammates are a bunch of clowns who can't help but trip over their feet, guess what? The Metros will lose, and MLS will come off as laughable by putting them on TV every other week while competent teams are playing in relative obscurity.

That's the problem with the NBA model of promoting players over teams. Major League Baseball has tried that approach and it hasn't done wonders for them, either. (I remember Keith Olbermann writing an editorial about it on ESPN.com several years ago. Basically, his contention that it was stupid because the player around whom they'd be hyping a telecast would get at most one chance in nine to offensively influence the game.) At the end of the day, the NBA model for promoting players, rather than teams, only works well for basketball because of the nature of the game.

It's been my contention that MLS should look to the NFL, which promotes great teams at the expense of individual players, for promotional ideas. The NFL is forced to do it because their players' faces are concealed by helmets and facemasks, but like soccer, success in football depends on many, many players on a team, not just one star player.

When the Pistons were winning back-to-back titles in '89 and '90, they were on CBS just about every damn week. I remember this vividly because I hated those damn thugs and I hated seeing them on TV all the time.

And if Isiah didn't get the attention that Jordan got, it was because he didn't win slam-dunk contests or make the highlight reels every night or have multizillion-dollar endorsement deals. He wasn't that kind of player. He was simply a great playmaker for the Pistons. And frankly, the Pistons didn't help matters any. When you're the key player for the team that everyone loves to hate, your image is going to suffer a bit.

 

I like the schedule, but probably cuz I'm a Rev fan.

So, wait, what happened to ExtraTime? Is that still running?

Prof

 

This is true. Last year's distribution:

Metros: 9
LA: 7
Chicago: 7
New England: 6
San Jose: 5
Dallas: 4
Columbus: 4
Colorado: 4
DC United: 4
Kansas City: 2

About the only team that really stands out are the Revs, who at that time were best-known for being consistently the worst team in the league. And the rest? Well, you can make an argument that San Jose, as the champions, probably deserved more coverage, but other than that, it's not TOO outrageous, all things considered.

Here's this year's distribution. One ESPN2 game in July was changed from DCU-Chicago to Metros-New England:

Metros: 10
LA: 8
New England: 8
Chicago: 5
San Jose: 5
Columbus: 5
DC United: 5
Colorado: 3
Dallas: 2
Kansas City: 1

The total number of ABC and ESPN2 games are the same as last year, but it looks as if they've increased the number of games for the Metros, LA, and New England at the expense of Chicago, Dallas, Colorado, and Kansas City. LA and New England you can justify, but the Metros?

 

Now that I look at it that way, it's really bad. Kansas City and Dallas are really good teams, and deserve more coverage. My guess is the Clint Mathis Show. People loved Clint and his hairdo in Korea, so they want to see more of it. I can just see the focus groups of football fans sitting at ESPN headquarters. The guys ask them "which one is your favorite?" All the rednecks pick Clint, cuz he's got the coolest do. No offense, he's a great player, but on the whole, the Metros probably shouldn't have more coverage, than, for example, the Crew. Kansas City gets only one? Wow, still hard to believe. I hope Dallas and Kansas City do really well this year, just to spite ESPN for their TV schedules.

Prof

 

According to BigSoccer user kenntomasch, here are the highest rated games on ESPN2 in 2002:
August 10: Chicago at Dallas - 0.31
August 17: DC United at San Jose - 0.30
Sept. 26: Chicago at New England (playoffs) - 0.26

There aren't enough ratings on Kenn's page to draw any sort of meaningful conclusion about which teams draw a better number. However, Metros games on average had a higher rating than the 0.19 average, while LA games had a lower-than-average rating. So you can make an argument for both teams' getting more games (Metros based on better ratings and LA because they're the champs and they've always been a good team).

However, Dallas games got better-than-average nationwide ratings (due largely to the big number for the August Brimstone Cup game, but also due to better ratings in other games) and Kansas City games came in around the 0.19 average. So there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to determining which teams' games due much better, and you can't say definitively that "big markets" = "bigger ratings."