Now, now, you know that Noonan, Twellman, Mullan, et al. can't hold a candle to someone collecting splinters in Europe. If we really are going to 14 in two years, then maybe holding the fort makes sense. I agree that LA winning would have been a travesty - a very, very pleasant travesty.
Say MLS even expands to 16 teams. Having half of them make the post season is still absurd. That being said, this current post season format is pretty interesting. Still, I think the best way to go is 2 divisions, with the top 3 in each division making the playoffs, but 1 getting a bye and 2 & 3 having to play home and home in round one. That way, with yellows, fatigue etc, there really is a decided advantage to finishing first. Then you have the conference finals being aggregate goals and the final a single match.
But not unprecedented. 16 of 29 (soon to be 16 of 30) NBA teams make the playoffs. 16 of 30 NHL teams make the playoffs. Only 8 of 30 MLB teams make the playoffs and 12 of 32 NFL teams make the playoffs. In a league with decent parity, go down about halfway and the last team or two should be right around .500. That's not exactly what you think of when you think "playoff-worthy", but, in the absence of a relegation battle, the race for those last couple of spots is what passes for a drama towards the end of the season. I don't think 8 of 16 is out of line, particularly. Not if you want to give some hope to those mid-table teams that they could conceivably get in to get gobbled up by the #1 seed. But, hey, at least you made the playoffs. That's what we consider a success in America, for the most part.
Everyone keeps saying this as if it's written in [insert favorite holy book here]. How can you say that. Most people I know think the idea of having half the league in the playoffs is dumb. As for geography, for a league that plays mostly on weekends I think this is basically irrelevant. Besides, the MetroStars could be in a division with New England and DC and play them on consecutive Saturdays but face a trip to Costa Rica in the CONCACAF Cup in mid-week. Or in a couple of years maybe even Argentina. All other things being equal, I think most here would agree not having playoffs is a far superior way to determine a league champion than an end-of-season playoff. LA obviously being the prime example (and it took a miracle to prevent it from being a strong possibility). Of course single table has issues, notably the potential for meaningless games absent relegation (which is far off if it ever happens). But making the MLS Cup and end of season league cup (separate from the league) with say the top 4 getting byes, 5-8 hosting in the first round, and 9-12 making it would at least partially solve this problem. You also keep the showcase game that MLS Cup Final currently is.
But that wasn't what he said, if that's what you're reacting to. American culture does say we need playoffs. We do playoffs to determine champions. Been that way at least since 1903 and even before that if you consider the Temple Cup. I'm not one of them. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I've just been conditioned that way. But besides the oh-yeah-we-clinched-the-whole-thing-two-weeks-ago deal, I just think you have to prove it again in the crucible of a playoff game or series. If you can't, well, sorry about your luck, nice season and all, but you didn't finish the deal. Nice regular-season silverware, though. I can respect the position of those who like it the other way, though. It's just not for me. Heaven forbid. You know, for all the kvetching on here lately that ohmygodLAcouldpossiblywinthewholethingandwouldn'tthatbeatravesty, they still would have had to go to Kansas City and win (or draw for 120 minutes and win in PK's) and beat whoever came out of the East before The Worst Thing To Ever Happen would have actually occured. This just in: A wild-card team actually won the World Series. The Cubs, who were swooning in August, snuck into the playoffs and almost made the World Series. Wild Card teams have won the Super Bowl. Villanova beat Georgetown, the best horse doesn't always win the Triple Crown, the US beat the Russians and the Titanic sank.
Every sport has them, this is obviously true, but I think MLS could survive just as well as it does now without them. College football a couple of years ago was sold as "every game counts." I think MLS could do the same thing. It won't suddenly put 30,000 in the stands every game or draw a 3.0 TV rating, but I think the casual sports fan would at least respect a league where every game truly did count. But that's just me.
Soccer needs the big event-type games. MLS Cup is a big event-type game. It is a game that every one knows about ahead of time (even if they don't know who is in it). I love it, personally, and will love it even more when the Fire are playing in it. Every time the Fire has been in the final, I have had a party and invited a ton of people--especially people who are not soccer fans. You know what? THey come, because it is a championship game--and they have a lot of fun. The championship game is what will sell soccer in this country. Single table? Don't need it. Champion in the regular season? I'm content with the Supporters Shield. Championship game? That is where it all must be proved.
There's also no single table. They can't seem to have either for logistical reasons (too many games needed, too little time to do it). I'm not sure that football fans will ever be able to be satisfied until 1A is down to about 8 teams.
The Big 10 has a single table. And the way things are going, DI-A might get down to 8 teams before too long. /exaggeration
I always thought that we should be a single-table, no playoffs, just-like-everybody else league. But I'm starting to realize that without relegation, comptition for cup spots, etc, there is not much excitement in a single table. The playoffs are our form of rewarding table finish. Of course, I think 8/10 is a bit much, but 8/12 is not bad. With such mid-table parity, leaving 4 teams out is pretty good--I'm not sure many points are going to separate the 6th and 10th place teams. Of course, one could argue that LA and DC should never have made this years playoffs (though LA put up a good fight for the first 110 minutes or so). Fine, but I still don't like resting the first place team and letter their opponent build more momentum, despite the injury/card factor (if it were single elim, maybe, but I like the way it is now). Playoffs to bring their own sort of excitement, though--we just need to wait until the league is a few teams bigger to make the regular season more meaningful. The other reason playoffs are necessary is because of the divided tables in all other US sports caused by geography/whatever. I mean, the Superbowl and World Series are between the winners of two separate leagues, historically. College playoffs/tourneys are the same way, the best teams from lots of little leagues. We will probably need to keep conferences for a while so we should keep playoffs. I just hope we never go back to three conferences--it's silly to have assymetrical leagues. Single table might be inevetable, however. Consider: when we get to 14 teams, making a balenced, ~30-game schedule with conferences is harder. Playing everybody twice in a single table would give you a 26 game season (16 teams, 30 game season) and then you could have a real Shield winner and meaningful 8-team playoff, too, of the top 8 overall.
I would think 16 teams, 30 games, would be just right. Maybe that's one reason they went to 30 games this year (as well as keeping 8 playoff teams), so that 10 years from now (knock wood), when the league has 16 teams, they will have been playing 30 games a year for 11 years.
This would be a perfect scenario, of course if I'm getting perfect, give me MLS 2, and MLS 3 to replace the USL.
I don't think this is accurate. The American and National Leagues were separate "single table" leagues until 1969 that never played regular season games against one another. The teams with the best regular season records were crowned league champions. The World Series started off as an "exhibition" and more or less had remained that way for a long time. Now it turns out it was the most important exhbition game in sports, but an exhibition. The World Series was more like the Champions League, than the EPL, because even if the AL team had a better record than the NL team, they had faced completely different competition making the records not meaningful. The World Series wasn't a playoff, it was a seven game series between the league champions of the top two leagues in the world. League championships were extremely meaningful, and for a while as meaningful as winning the World Series. I suppose 1919 was the turning point on that. In 1961 the leagues expanded from 16 to 18 teams (and from 154 games to the present 162 game schedule), and in 1962 it expanded to 20 teams. Playoffs started in 1969 when the leagues expanded from 20 to 24 teams. A lot of traditional folks were UN-happy at the change, but the leagues were looking for the short term money the switch made and weren't thrilled with the idea of a 12 team table. Still, it was defensible since there was still no inter league play, and the separate divisions played an unbalanced schedule. Then in 1977 the American League added two more teams and went to a (more or less) balanced schedule, and that's where I think things went poorly. You now _clearly_ had situations where teams with inferior regular season play had chances at the championship over teams with better regular season play. For example, the 1984 Kansas City Royals finished with the 6th best record in the American League, but qualified for the playoffs by winning the Western Division. In 1985, the Royals finished with the third best record in the American League, 8 games behind the Blue Jays, and went on to win the World Series. In 1993 the National League added two teams and then in 1994, they introduced the "wild card" and any semblance of the single table tradition had been killed along with the idea of a "pennant race." Then in 1997, the final stake was driven into the "two separate leagues" dynamic of Major League Baseball as inter-league play was introduced into the season. Now Celtic would play Newcastle and it would count in the EPL standings even though Celtic wasn't in the EPL. The question is, what exactly has baseball gained by doing this, and does MLS benefit in any of the same ways? I still hold that the league should be split into two conferences, use an imbalanced schedule to reduce travel, and then have the conference winners play each other in the MLS Cup. If you need something to make the other games meaningful, well then figure something out. We don't need the single table champion, like the EPL, but I really despise second place teams being eligible to win Championships.
I understand people's frustration on this issue. But I think alot of our concerns would go away if the league found ways to emphasize the regular season. Hey, sounds like a thread!
Semantics. If you don't consider the early World Series to fit the definition of a "playoff" (and the Temple Cup before that), then fine. But the point is, they were settling things on the field. Even when there was only one baseball league, they tried playoffs (the split-season disaster of 1892 was largely ignored). But if that doesn't suit you, then fine. The NFL had a one-game playoff in 1932 between its top two teams before splitting into East and West divisions in 1933 (emulating baseball more or less) and making the NFL Championship Game official. They only had a playoff leading up to that if two teams tied for one of the division titles (which happened a few times). The NIT (which preceded the NCAA Tournament) was a method of determining a real champion on the court (though obviously not from a single-table circumstance, with schools spread out all across the country and in various conferences). The point was, we've been doing playoffs in this country for a long, long time and it's just the accepted way of doing things. Now, I'm not usually one to say "Well, that's the way it's always been, and that's the sole reason to keep doing it that way", but some things are like Coca-Cola - mess with them at your own risk.
That would have helped the Rapids. Then they wouldn't have become complacent and gone 0-4-4 to end the season (including playoffs). Teams should have something to play for during the regular season. Right now, Bruce is right. They don't.
I'm wondering how you would make an unbalenced schedule with 14 teams. 12 is easy--4x5 and 2x6 is 32. 14, not so easy to make it unbalenced yet fair. I mean, you could play 4x6, and then 7 games against the non-con opponents, with home-field decided randomly? That makes some teams' schedules a bit harder than others. At about 14 teams, it makes sense to play a single table...plus, playing a team 4 times in 30 games is boring.
I wouldn't say it was the best-played MLS game. Arena said a lot of good things about it but he stopped short of saying it was the best-played MLS game. It was sort of like the classic Colts Giants NFL Championship game in about 1960. Many of the players in that game don't call it the best-played NFL game or the best played by either the Colts or Giants, but it was great for the fans. Perhaps SJ played their best game of the year. They were winning most of the 50-50 balls. But Cobi Jones, Bo, Torres, and some others played poorly. Surely Sigi Schmidt could name some better-played games. Perhaps the second leg of KC vs. Colorado was better-played. Meola and the KC defense were superb.