ARGUMENT:
The MLS should dump the playoffs and divisions and go to a single table.
ISSUE
Major League Soccer (MLS) is in a struggle every year to attract both "soccer purist" in the United States and new fans. It is a decent league, but commisioner, Don Garber, strives to make the league one of the best in the world by 2022. However, many people think that the MLS should be like the European leagues and get rid of the playoffs. They should go to a single-table, which means that each team would play everyone else twice (once home, once away), and the team with the best record wins the title. They would also argue that the MLS needs to do a promotion/relegation system, but I may tackle that issue later.
ARGUMENTS FOR A SINGLE-TABLE
The MLS has a problem establishing itself as a legitimate league in the world; one of the reasons being is that it is virtually the only league in the world that does not do a single-table. It is also a fair way of determining who is the best team of the year, because everyone plays each other twice, unlike the MLS which the teams play intra-conference opponents three times, and inter-conference opponents once each year.
Even if we can't get rid of the playoffs, the single-table can guarantee that the best 10 teams in the MLS will make the playoffs. Under this current format, when one conference is stronger than the other, some of the best teams will be left out of the playoffs, becuase each conference has to have five teams each. If we must have playoffs to try to bring in new fans, it should be a single-table, every team plays the other 18 (19 in 2015) twice, and the best 4,8, or however the amount make it, regardless of where they are geographically.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST A SINGLE-TABLE
A single table is great for Europe, but it would not work in the MLS. In most European countries, the teams are so close together, that the players can travel by a team bus to the games. In England, for example, most of the teams are within 70 miles of each other, with several being in London, and two in Manchester. The farthest they have to travel is when Swansea (Wales) is in the English Primier League. In the MLS, many teams do not have rivals that are within 70 miles. For example, the closest opponent for the San Jose Earthquakes is the Los Angeles Galaxy, and they are nearly 300 miles away. Many European players who have played in the MLS say that the travel is one of the most difficult things about the league.
European teams may have to travel to the other side of the continent for Champions League or Europa League play, but that travel is only once or twice every two or three months. This travel is on a weekly basis for some teams. Especially, since this league covers two vast countries. A single-table sounds good on the surface, but it is not logistically possible.
Finally, it is not in the American sports culture. Every other league in the United States has playoffs. The problem that the MLS has is that it is not just competing against other leagues in Europe for quality of players, but it is also competing with the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NASCAR, and the PGA for ratings in the United States. There are fans who will tune in to a sporting event if it is in the playoffs. Those are potential fans that the MLS will lose, and to non-soccer fans, the MLS is hard to follow to begin with. They will be in danger of contracting teams without the support of playoffs.
MY THOUGHTS
I understand both sides of the argument, and I personally tend to support playoffs. I would be in favor of a compromise. In this compromise, I propose that the conferences would play a single-table against each other, no inter-conference games. The conference champions would play each other for the MLS championship. There would probably have to be a few more teams in each conference before that can happen, though.
3 comments:
I'm all for dumping the playoffs, but is not the most important issue MLS has to deal with. Cheers!
I'm pretty sure there was a time historically in North American sports where they didn't have geographical divisions and teams had to travel a lot and play very demanding schedules. Geographical conferences and divisions are a matter of teams wanting to save money on travel expenses and players becoming more pampered than their predecessors, who were often under-compensated and exploited by the club owners.
I know that with Major League Baseball, all the way up until 1994 they only had 2 geographical divisions (East and West) per league (American League and National League). And in the AL, you had to play 13 games with teams in your division and 12 games with teams at the other side of the continent in your division. So the Blue Jays for eg. would have played 13 games with the Yankees and 12 at the other side of the continent with the Oakland A's. And they would still play 162 game schedules back then.
But unless you are a pitcher, baseball is not very demanding on the body like soccer. So there's that. Pitchers get exhausted very easily from throwing 80+/90+ mph pitches. That's why clubs have a whole roster of starting pitchers, relief pitchers and closers to prepare for the 162 game schedule. Even catchers (2nd most physically demanding position in baseball) could play almost every game across a 162 game schedule travelling all over America (and Toronto and Montreal) barring double headers and injuries.
As for playoffs, they are basically a gimmick that every major league in North America adopted to extract as much money as possible from the sports fan. Playoffs make little sense from a sporting perspective. Playoffs, due to their small sample size nature, are based a lot more on luck than the regular season. Even the World Cup and your typical FA Cups are not really good sports events. The primary goal of the World Cup is to make a lot of money. Not to crown the best national team in the world.
There was a time when Major League Baseball did not do divisions. The American League had a single-table, and the National League had a single-table, and the winners played in the World Series. However, the MLB only went as far south as Washington, DC/Baltimore, and as west as St. Louis until the 1950's when teams moved to California. Other leagues were more regional. I personall think a single-table wouldn't work in the MLS, but we won't know for sure unless the MLS tries it.
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