Open Letter #3, To: The Leagues
I’ve let Mr. Rawlins have it pretty good the last couple of days, but these shenanigans didn’t happen in a vacuum (even though. . . they really sucked *rimshot*). They took place in the larger picture of American soccer, where everything below the stability and strength of MLS is more or less complete and perpetual chaos.
Until this sudden development, Aztex fans thought we already had worries enough at the league level. Namely, we didn’t know which one the team would be in. Nor were we alone, as the threat of another winter in limbo loomed over all the USSF-Division 2 teams, except the MLS-bound Vancouver and Portland. That threat still looms, for people that still have teams in their city.
USSF had laid down the law about minimum standards for future second division leagues, NASL had applied to be sanctioned as that league in 2011 even though they fall woefully short of the standards, and USL had given them both the finger as they attempted an end run around the whole mess with USL PRO (aka the LEAGUE where EVERY second WORD is SHOUTED for NO apparent REASON).
That’s a little background; here we go.
NASL and USL, you two incompetent douchebags, you’re a disgrace to the sport. Your combined ineptitude has stunted soccer’s growth in this country like a 6-year-old smoking a pack of Marlboros a day. I know you claim that you’re working for what’s best for the sport, but I just double-checked, and YOU ARE NOT. What’s obvious to everyone is that what you’re really working for is yourselves, and your little fiefdoms, and your goddamned franchise fees.
That was a dig at you, Francisco Marcos, did you get that? Yeah yeah, yay for you for keeping the flame burning through the long dark years after the original NASL bit the dust. Congratulations, thanks, here’s a Certificate of Appreciation from 1998. Now pull your money-grubbing fist out of everyone’s back pocket and piss off. Come on, you’ll be okay. Maybe you can write a book in your retirement: How To Build A Profitable Business Based on Your Franchisees’ Constant Failures. Or, One Man’s 75% Failure Rate is Another Man’s 25% Success Rate. Maybe you can get a cameo as a vampire in the next Twilight movie.
And by the way, take your ridiculous fucking I-League with you, jackass. Like we need new niches and additional fragmentation.
Now your turn, NASL. Poor, crazy NASL. Damn, I hardly have the heart to attack you, now that we’ve both been shafted by Mr. Rawlins. Still, I’ll always have some small black place in my heart for you, for shattering USL-1 in the first place. You were like the greedy kid trying to wrestle the candy jar out of the grown-up’s hands. Fighting, pulling, screeching — and then, the jar slips from both your hands and smashes on the floor. No candy for anyone now, genius.
Speaking of grown-ups, how about that USSF? Great job you’re doing with Division 2, USSF (he said, dripping with so much sarcasm that he had to wipe off his screen with a sponge).
Did you really think those new standards would be helpful? It’s as if I saw my kids were failing in school, and I told them: okay! Time to shape up! Straight As by this time next semester, and get part-time jobs while you’re at it, or I’m kicking you both out of the house. Okay, then, that’s settled; you’re welcome!
I know you’re busy up at Soccer House, bribing FIFA executive committee members (good luck on that part, actually; let me know if I can pitch in) and planning the U.S.’ semifinal loss to Ghana in Brazil in 2014 and everything, but this is important, too. You’re supposed to be building soccer in this country. America is a world power in just about every imaginable measure but this one. And it’s the same story year after year, decade after decade, despite the bajillions of kids who suit up for little league soccer each season. So although we have huge quantities of raw material, we still get knocked out of the World Cup by countries whose GDP wouldn’t cover the down payment on Sunil Gulati’s car.
And MLS! Yoo-hoo! MLS? Over here! You’re not getting out of this. You know I love you, MLS. I mean it, you’re the man (sexist yet accurate anthropomorphism; +1). But you kind of suck, too. I know you’ve had to be selfish. Your prime directive has been survival at all costs. But cherry-picking the best second division markets, without contributing anything back to help cultivate future crops, that sucks. USL/NASL/USSF-D2/WTFL is not getting any stronger by losing Seattle, and Portland, and Vancouver, and Montreal. Once those are gone, where will you go next? Orlando? Come on, I’m trying to be serious here.
Hey, listen. I’m just a dope of a fan. I’m obviously not as clued in to the goings-on in the soccer world around me as I think I am (self-deprecating reference to my team moving 1,000 miles away before I hardly knew it, did you get that?). But jesus, is it really so hard? There’s a bunch of fans that aren’t in MLS markets, there’s a bunch of MLS reserve players who need to play if they’re ever going to get off the bench, there’s a bunch of college-age kids who need to play during the summer to keep their game up, there’s a bunch of in-between guys who want to play and will be happy with a semi-/minor-pro situation.
It just seems to me that if you all really gave a shit about the game, you’d find a way to figure it out. Until you do, the only games that will be perfected are the ones Mr. Rawlins plays when he flips cities overnight, and whatever crazy shit those Cosmos people are up to in New York, and the greasy shuck and jive Jeff Cooper pulled in St. Louis, and on and on, ad nauseam.
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4 comments to 'Open Letter #3, To: The Leagues'
November 11, 2010
Chris, I agree with some of what you say. But it is not fair to blame MLS for moving into (former) minor league markets. You write:
“You know I love you, MLS…But cherry-picking the best second division markets, without contributing anything back to help cultivate future crops, that sucks.”
MLS is not under any obligation to help, or invest in, the minor leagues of American soccer. The minor leagues are a competitor to MLS, not a collaborator. Sure, it would be nice if MLS franchises owned minor league farm teams. But they don’t, and it’s their money, they can invest it where they want to.
As for the US Soccer Federation, what are they supposed to do? They can’t bankroll second division soccer, and they can’t prevent franchises from moving or closing. In other words, they don’t have much leverage. The USSF’s new guidelines for the operation of Division 2 soccer are very good, albeit about 10 years too late. I don’t think it’s fair to blame the USSF.
November 11, 2010
Technically you’re right, MLS is under no obligation to help. I still think they’ve done second division soccer a disservice. Perhaps as long as MLS gets its full slate of solid teams, as it has been doing, that’s all it cares about. And it’s getting close to that, I think there are just a couple more expansion slots left.
But they’ve done serious long-term damage to D2 soccer in the process, and it will take that level of soccer a long time and many false starts before it can build up the next Portland, Seattle, etc. MLS may no longer care, having already cashed out with the markets they want, but the system, the pyramid, is seriously weakened.
And that’s why USSF should have played and still should play a bigger role. That is expressly their reason for existing! No, they can’t “bankroll” anything, I didn’t say they should But they have some authority to curb some of the otherwise selfish, often short-term strategies of the actors in this drama.
And if you take Rawlins at his word, their new, very strict requirements for the D2 league and teams is what drove him to search for additional investors and, ultimately, to Orlando. So in other words, their new, “very good and 10 years overdue” guidelines caused what was widely considered one of the most solid franchises in D2 (though who knows now; maybe that was bullshit all along) to move to a brand-new, completely unestablished market to play D3 ball under that wingnut Marcos.
Look, I liked those guidelines, too. The Wild West that D2 has been wasn’t productive, either. But there needs to be some kind of support, or at least some allowance for existing clubs to transition, or it winds up being yet another negative force to reckon with. And there may well be some allowances given; I won’t be surprised at all if USSF has to hold their nose and allow a couple of sub-par clubs to squeak by in NASL for a season or two. So maybe Rawlins was bullshitting us about that as a reason behind his departure, but if not, then I still hold USSF partly to blame.
November 11, 2010
“I still think they’ve done second division soccer a disservice.”
What else do you expect? They are competitors, and this is a business. By analogy, do you expect Coke to help Pepsi, and Pepsi to help Coke? Of course not.
November 12, 2010
Ah-ha, that’s the fundamental difference in opinion we have. I don’t see MLS as competing with D2, any more than the Premier League competes with the Championship. There may be some competitive aspects, but they’re also both essential parts of an overall system.
That comparison is imperfect as well, as the U.S. is obviously much different from England. But if anything there’s *less* competition here, because there aren’t teams from the two leagues head “competing” head in any single city here. I can’t imagine that having a D2 team in Austin hurt Houston’s or Dallas’s fanbase too much.
Meanwhile, as you and other original NASL fans know as well as anyone, the very sport itself is trying to grow here.
Coke vs Pepsi is a poor analogy, but let’s see. Even if the two leagues were like Coke and Pepsi, it would still be in an environment where coffee, tea and lemonade were the longtime favorites, the American Drinks, and cola was some odd, foreign thing that beverage columnists made fun of for their whole career. In other words, maybe they’ll compete eventually, but for the foreseeable future it’s worth more to both to grow the overall market for cola nationwide. Instead, Coke is taking over Pepsi’s markets, and leaving Pepsi less able to continue to develop new ones. Like I said before, maybe Coke doesn’t give a damn about that, maybe what they’ve taken is enough and they don’t think they need more, but I think it’s a poor strategy.
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