Personally, I don't care if it's 100% balanced but at the least we should move away from a feeling that the schedule is contrived and a pure marketing tool that is unconcerned with the equality of competition.Originally Posted by Fort York Redcoat
Personally, I don't care if it's 100% balanced but at the least we should move away from a feeling that the schedule is contrived and a pure marketing tool that is unconcerned with the equality of competition.
The linked fan schedule proposal was a good read and well researched, but I don't think it is viable. Aside from the fact that it would be even more cramped when there are 20 MLS teams, arena availability could be a big issue as the schedule relies on regional travel: Philly has to be available after NY and DC has to be available after that etc. This cramped schedule would be hell for teams participating in more than one competition. There would be tons of midweek games and a team like Seattle already has March CCL, US Open Cup, and July CCL to deal with. By the time postseason rolls around they would be wiped out. Which brings me to my next point; this document does not take into account playoffs. It actually pushes the end of the season back two weeks. The league's best teams (who advance in multiple competitions) would be the most worn out by this point.
An unbalanced schedule is a necessity in MLS if there continue to be playoffs (which are also necessary and not going anywhere). This is not a European league. The distance between teams is FAR greater without even considering regional competition. It is unfair to the players to keep adding games and the quality on the pitch will suffer. But the concerns are valid, more "rivalry" games would suck major balls. Playing a team more than twice in the league is silly and would dilute the meaning of a derby. It would also be unfair: TFC might get to play the expansion Impact three times in a season while Vancouver would have to play Seattle. My solution would be to play every team home and away except for two inter-conference teams who would only be played once. This keeps total games at an optimal 34 and no team plays each other more than twice. When NY #2 joins in a couple years a team wouldn't play 4 of the other 19 teams either home or away. Chosen on a rotational basis, this is not too unreasonable. Plus there is always the possibility of meeting in the playoffs or other competitions.
Bring on the inevitable unbalanced schedule, just don't fuck it up MLS.
Yep, that's my feeling too.
yeah it's sould be move to the end of the season
Even with an unbalanced schedule, TFC should theoretically play every team in the league, so it might not be a drastic change at all.
If TFC plays every team in the Eastern Conference twice (home and away), that would require 16-18 matches. If TFC plays every team in the Western Conference once (home or away, alternating ever year), that would require 9-10 matches.
The question is, how will MLS allocate the remaining handful of fixtures?
If MLS wants to try to generate regional rivalries, certain clubs might play each other 3 times to fill out the schedule. For example, TFC might end up playing an extra game against the likes of Montreal, Columbus, New York, DC United, New England, and Philadelphia, with the venue for the additional match against each club alternating between the two teams every season.
You just have to think of non MLS fans/non North American's and see how they view this. They already all think that the MLS is a mickey mouse competition, full of north american gimmicks. An unbalanced schedule will just back up this thinking!
The MLS needs to try and appeal to the soccer world, not JUST north american sports fans. Creating an unbalanced schedule just shows that the MLS doesn't care about conforming to the rest of the soccer world...they kind of want to make a sport all of their own!
If it wasn't for TFC's involvment in the MLS, I would just laugh at this news and give myself another reason not to take any notice of this mickey mouse league!
yeah a big concern for me
Give us weekend games away at Chicago, NY adn Crew so we can fucking batter them.
That all I care about.
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Get used to it. This isn't Europe where countries are no bigger than the state of Texas. MLS, covering both the United States and Canada, is a huge, huge area the league has. Travel will always be a main concern both for the players and the league's budgets.
With the league adding more teams in its future - and they will - and east and west conferences being the closest you're going to get to a single table, an unbalanced schedule is going to be the reality.
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By the time the MLS gets to add 3 or 4 more teams, they should definitely have an East and West league, and not have the teams travel all over the country playing out of league. You could then have a cup competition where you play out of league teams, if you really want to see a west and east team playing each other. That would make more sense than having to play only two thirds of the entire leagues teams.
Can you imagine Montreal NOT playing LA next season, in their first season?! It would just be a farce! In fact, I can't imagine ANY of the east teams being happy about not playing LA at home. And equally I can't imagine any west team not playing NYRB at home!
With an unbalanced schedule, you are going to end up with an east and a west team missing out on the biggest crowd puller of the season!
Just speculation, however, 34 games could be played if we play everyone in the East three times and those in the West just once.
At 1st I thought it was stupid, but at long as TFC plays every team one (be it home or away), I'll live with it.
But this is making me wonder, COULD the league not want more games because this would leave them with some wiggle room for CCL matches or possibly (ok I'm dreaming here) a break for the Gold Cup and World Cup? Even a 1 week break would be SOMETHING!
Although if the league is so concerned with travel why not allow teams to book their own flights? MLSE has their own jet. May as well use it when the leafs and raptors aren't.
i could see them choosing a team that draws good attendence with or wothout LA and Beckham comming to town. And for some reason i could just see them deciding TFC or Montreal will miss out on the LA game, seems TFC missed out on Beckham comming to town just about every year in the passed anyways. While in the west i could see Portland or Vancouver missing out on NY comming to town.
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Yes! Yes I am! Fundamentally, it's the very definition of unfair when one team is arbitrarily given an advantage over another in any way. If we have a situation where Team A faces tougher opponents than Team B over the course of a the season due to an arbitrary decision made by the league, that's the very epitome of an unfair competition. Obviously, we'll never have a situation where we can ensure a 100% level-playing field for teams, but the least we can do is ensure a simple home-and-away schedule against every opposing team.
Last edited by Cashcleaner; 11-15-2011 at 02:52 AM.
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That would make a lot of sense.
If you're going to have divisions, the emphasis should be on play within the division.
I always thought that MLS was thinking of this for when they got bigger. That would be the only reason to keep divisions when you have a balanced schedule (like we had for 2 years), so that you would have the possibility of doing this in the future.
If you had a 24 team MLS some day (not outside the bounds of possibility), you could eliminate all play between divisions and have each team in each division play each other 3 times. That would result in 33 games.
Then have the east and the west champions meet in the playoffs.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
Sounds like a bunch of whining for nothing...If and when we get 20 teams and have a unbalanced 38 game schedule...THEN you can start whining...
But it looks like they won't move past 34 games.
Considering how the NFL and MLB give out playoff spots based on winning a regional division without even playing every team equally then yes they are unfair leagues. I'd like to see how the Jays would do if they played in a division that didn't have Boston, New York and Tampa. Sometimes their record is still close to a division winner's in the NL despite playing more games against the toughest teams.
The NHL gives out an automatic top 3 seed for winning your division. I remember Carolina being the only team making it out of the South East with the 7th best record in the East...but still rewarded for beating up on Atlanta, Washington and Florida. Meanwhile the North East would have 4 out 5 teams making it with the 5th in 9th or 10th place. I believe that was 2002. Would have been nice for the Leafs to have had home-ice advantage against Carolina that year. In fact I think the Leafs had the second best record in the East that year and third overall! (Just confirmed it was Boston 101, Philly 97, Carolina 91, Toronto 100...the only team worse in the playoffs was Montreal at 87 only 5 points ahead of 10th placed Buffalo). Yet they were given a fourth seed!
The NBA slightly better than the NHL only grants a top 4 seed and gives the team with the better record home-court advantage. However, the Raptors won the Atlantic division because again they were in the weakest division in the league.
Champion's League is flawed in the sense that you don't play all 32 teams. However, who you end up playing is based on a draw with seedings that are based on past performances. Furthermore the schedule is also drawn.
Seeding is totally unfair. Its designed to make it easier for strong teams to advance and do well.
But hold on a second, I think a lot of people hold up the balanced schedule with a league winner and say "that's equality" but it has flaws as well. Depending on when you face teams within the season there are different things going on. Is someone going to send out their best lineup a day or two ahead of a UCL match? or what about before a league cup final? What about if their season is shot, but they aren't a threat to be relegated? Is that the same test for their opponents as if they had to play them at the beginning of the year?
Personally, I favor a balanced schedule but then a small playoff-type format at the end with maximum four teams in total.
But frankly we're all having this conversation in vein because worldwide everything is trending towards whatever generates the most dollars whether that be playoffs, unbalanced schedules, no relegation, etc... People keep saying no but it continues to pop up.
yeah, agfutbol is right... the balanced schedule is balanced in theory.. but in practice, teams don't have the same number of days of rest, teams change players during the season, great players get injured and teams don't have to face those guys later etc. It's not perfect.
So we shouldn't say that simply because of balance, it means the schedule is perfect and has no biases. Even the transfer window effects the fairness of the balanced schedule (I'm sure some teams wished they'd faced TFC in the early season rather than later, when TFC got Frings and Koev).
I think people will just have to get over their dislike for the unbalanced schedule.
As a growing league, MLS probably won't stop at 20 teams. I've heard Garber talk about 24-28 teams someday. At that point it's not just feasible to squeeze in 46 to 54 league games (plus CCL, Nutrilite, playoffs, MLS Cup final, days off for FIFA etc). As a result, some unbalanced schedule will have to come into play. It's inevitable.
And I know some people say "ditch the playoffs" but man, even without playoffs, that's an extra 12-20 games on the schedule... the playoffs right now only add a max of what, 5 games to the schedule of a team that played 34? It'll be impossible to find the room for 7-15 more games given weather problems etc.
Last edited by rocker; 11-15-2011 at 11:29 AM.
I don't think the balanced schedule would be hard to do as long as every west division trip was paired up with another game. If we play in vancouver then we should also play another game against a western team ex. seattle rsl or whoever. It would ultimately make every west coast trip a mini road trip. This would gretaly cut down on travel which is a big factor. It would also be done with western teams coming east to play. You might not have to do it with every trip out west but it makes sense certainly for the west coast teams, vancouver, seattle, portland, and both L.A. teams. Get rid of the all star game as well.
Last edited by habstfc; 11-16-2011 at 04:20 PM.
All star game won't be gone. I believe it's part of CBA that players picked for all star game gets a bonus
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Does anyone believe that. Where are they going to put these additional teams? MLS already have about 5 or 6 problematic teams. They need to move some of these franchises or fix them before they think of adding anymore teams. For this league to get better there is inevitably going to be a significant increase in the salary cap, I'm not sure there are any more cities that can support mls to generate enough revenue to keep up with an increased salary cap.
There is about 30 cities over a million people in the U.S. that don't have an MLS team.
Most are larger than Salt Lake who support their MLS team very well.
an MLS team only need to have an attendance of 12-14K to be profitable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_o...tistical_Areas
Last edited by troy1982; 11-16-2011 at 07:51 AM.
That's correct.
Plus, all-star games are a North American tradition in many different sports. Just because it isn't done elsewhere doesn't mean that we can't have our own organic traditions.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
Totally agree....When they get to 20 times they should sit tight for 5-7 years and stabilize any troublesome franchises, and move them if necessary...Nothing hurts a league's standard and reputation more than folding franchises...just ask the NHL which has lost at least a dozen teams over the years...
here is how they can make it more balanced.
Expand the league to 24 teams (2 divisions of 12).
You play every team in your own division twice (22 games)
You play every team in the other division once (12 games)
Voila, 34 games.
Get the 2nd NYC team
Team in Atlanta
Team in Florida
Team in St. Louis
Team in Detroit or Las Vegas
Get off your high horse Garber
So put it at the end of the season (a week after the MLS Cup) similar to NFL Pro Bowl. Warm vacation location that the players can bring their families to.
With MLS salaries the players won't be able to afford to bring their fams.
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