A Decent Proposal...I Don't Happen to Like

Brian, posting over on An American’s View, threw a novel suggestion for restructuring Major League Soccer’s regular season into the mix. It’s fairly convoluted, which I view as the chief knock on the proposal. But it's the fact that it retains the league’s continuing, unfortunate habit of rewarding mediocrity that seems most unpalatable. As much as I find the details personally unsatisfying - by which I mean, I’d happily continue following the league if MLS ran with Brian’s format, but really would rather not go there - I see where he’s going and commend the thinking. Moreover, he’s addressing a fairly fundamental question in the post.

So, what’s under discussion?

Brian begins by rejecting the idea of moving to single table. He’s also against the idea of reducing the number of teams that make MLS’s post-season. Under his proposal, playoff spots would still be limited to the top four teams in each conference, but it would make fifth place worth something as well - namely, a seed in any MLS v. Mexican league tournament that comes about.

And, here, Brian has bumped against a personal bias. With sub-.500 teams already regularly, if not perennially, qualifying for the playoffs, this virtually guarantees reward to still more teams that can’t manage more wins than losses. My inner jock - the competitive part of me - just recoils at that concept.

But that’s too simple an objection because he’s playing with a concept that goes deeper: namely, is MLS a business first, or is the sport better served by letting competitive purity stand as a first principle? As I see it, Brian is motivated by two considerations: first, there’s the financial side, which he would support by doling out more plums. The end here boils down to getting butts in seats and keeping them there as deep into the season as possible. The secondary consideration is the intensity of play on the level of each individual game.

For what it’s worth, this part of the argument doesn’t add up for me. Admittedly, Brian floats his proposal with a 16-to-18-team league in mind, which, as he points out, would amount to eight-to-ten more teams missing out and probably missing out earlier. Against that, though, there are current realities to consider. For all the late-season drama we enjoyed this year, I don’t know that, 1) it helped all that much with attendance, or, 2) it’s enough to compensate, either financially or in terms of quality of play, for the long stretch of mid-season blllaaaahhhhh....

Now, it could be that scaryice, who runs Climbing the Ladder and who goes in for number-crunching, has already discovered a broad-based swell in late season numbers. I didn’t catch one, but I also didn’t look all that carefully. All in all I’m not sure that the broader public - e.g. those not abnormally obsessed with MLS (read: Brian, Me) - heads to the games with a clear understanding of where their team is in the standings or vis-à-vis the playoffs. Put another way, the obsessives show up regardless, while everyone else pops by, more or less at random, for the spectacle.

Assuming, however, that Brian is correct and that his fifth-place incentive would help retain attendance, would that change my position? Aesthetically, no. But there's also a place where aesthetics meets naviete: sport is business, there's no point in denying that. I also have no doubt that league honchos would readily dilute the competitive stakes in MLS if it meant greater financial viability. And, in the grand scheme, it can easily be argued that a financially healthy league serves the game better than a pretty, bankrupt one.

The above back-and-forth is not to say that I’m right, Brian’s wrong, or vice versa. The number of unexplored assumptions contained in this post could render this entire exercise meaningless. Beyond admitting my personal bias, though, I don’t see enough benefit to handing out more prizes to make the muddying of competitive principles worthwhile. What I see instead are truly sub-par teams visiting Mexico for annual ass-whuppins’.

Because I don't think it's fair to criticize someone else's point without offering solutions of one's own, I'll cook up something later this week on what I believe would be the most beneficial format from the league. And it won't be pie-in-the-sky, context-free soccer utopia; I'll try to build from current circumstances. Anyway, look for that tomorrow or Thursday.