Tuesday, November 23, 2010

"Yyyyyeah, I'm gonna need y'all to get off my nuts."

Just a quick thought...but there seems to be alot of blame being tossed at my man Donny G. and the MLS for that admittedly uninteresting Cup Final.
But where's all the anger and negative press directed at LA, New York, RSL and Columbus for not getting the job done and knocking off these weaker teams so none of us had to watch that shit in the first place?  Just sayin'.

2 comments:

Brian said...

That wasn't his fault, but putting it in effing Scumville (Toronto, Canuckistan) on a Sunday night during primetime (at the same time as Sunday Night football) was.

I'm not sure how you feel about 10 playoffs teams (with some kind of play 4th and 5th seed play in) but I absolutely hate it. Yeah we're adding 2 teams in 2011, but over half of our teams making it? Goddamn Garber, let's try and make the regular season mean more, not less. I'm not a member of the Euro-snob-Abolish-the-playoffs crowd. I'm American as can be and a huge NFL and NBA fan. I love the playoffs, but the Supporter's Shield and regular season records in general, need to have better incentives and need to mean more.

I'm not sure what the solution is but MLS needs to find it. MLB is tough, almost too tough, with only 8 out of 30 teams making it. The NFL has a good balance I feel with 12 out of 32 teams making it. About the same percentage, but the NFL has a more organized, better balanced division system, so it's not as hard.

The NBA probably has too many times making it, with 16 out of 30, but with 4 rounds of 7 game series the cream usually rises to the top.

The problem with MLS is:

A) The 1 to 2 Western teams playing in the Eastern Conference, or vice versa. Just plain weird. I know it puts the teams with the better records in the playoffs, but then you might as well do away with Conferences and do Single Table and seed it 1-8 with playoffs.

B) When you have 2 teams from one conference playing in the other conference, sometimes it creates a situation (like this year) where one conference is teams 1-4 (the West this year) and the other is 5-8 (the East this year)

C) Top seeds frequently losing in the Conference Semi-Finals. I see 2 ways to fix this: A) Do away with the 2 leg series & just do one game at home for the higher seed, or B) Switch the order of the games around. The higher seed ends up having to do double the travel as the lower seed

I'm not sure I'm a fan of the Don's idea to do the MLS Cup Final at the highest remaining seed's house. On paper you think it will lead to more interest and better attendance, but hey what happens when the game is hosted in November in Salt Lake or Denver. Potential Winter storm problem? Uh yeah.

Also, I think the Don was just pandering to FIFA with the talk about switching to the European calendar. I think it could work at some point with an August-November and February-May schedule with a Bundesliga style break, but not yet. MLS isn't ready for that yet.

Faux Fur and Soccer Shirts said...

...aaaaaand this (combined with my boredom) has inspired me to bang out a full post on the subject.

All the other cool kids are doin' it.
Yes, I WOULD jump off the bridge.