Soccer...not Football, nor Futbol, nor Calcio....

Congrats Azzurri! Viva Italia!

So, another World Cup has come and gone. There have been allegations that a US squad made an appearance in this year's tournament, but I don't recall any substantiating evidence for that claim.

So, the age-old question will be asked again - how do we make Soccer work in the United States? There is a myth that the sport is not popular, but that simply is not true. It may not have the fan base of baseball or football, but there are plenty of folk out there who enjoy the sport and would support it.

So what to do? Is MLS the answer? Yes and no. They are a key piece for this puzzle, but not the answer in and of itself.

I'm going to break this down in three parts: advertising, presentation and league mechanics.

The advertising part is easy - for televised games put the logo of a sponsor in the corner next to where the score is displayed. This will work on a cable network better than ABC, NBC, CBS or FOX right off the bat. Charge for length of time the logo is displayed, then for bigger money an advertiser can pay to have their logo presented when one of the teams scores.

The presentation - this is where we need to be creative. We have to operate without commecial breaks here, so we need to have announcers who are creative, humorous and able to improvise. Now, I am one of the few that liked Dennis Miller on the NFL, but that's not where I'd go here. We need someone who is able to get big laughs out of people, but is sports savvy, so that he can entertain while calling the game. I'm talking someone like Jay Mohr here. You can have your traditional sidekicks who can be called upon to provide more insight into the games, but pick people with personalities, for god's sake!

As for the networks, approach the new CN network to pick up a few games - use the stars from their teen-angst dramas as guest hosts at times. Also, aim at networks like Spike, OLN or USA. Ratings that may be seen as disastrous for some networks would actually be the top rated shows on others. Seek them out.

As for the League mechanics, i would use the MLS as my base of teams. Currently, there are franchises in:

Houston
Dallas
New York
Washington DC
New England
Chicago
Colombus
Colorado
Club Deportivo (Los Angeles)
Los Angeles (yes, they have 2)
Kansas City
Real Salt Lake

12 teams.

I want to add 16 clubs. Yep, 16. Now, if anyone actually read this damned blog then their jaws would have probably hit the floor with that. Why would I want to inflate an already struggling league's numbers to nearly that of the NFL????

Well, I don't. I want to establish the MLS-based league like the English Premiership League. There will be two entities: Tier one, with 16 teams; and Tier 2, with 12 teams.

Tier 1 would consist of the existing MLS franchises, plus 4 others who would win their way into the league. That would happen when the (initially) 16 expansion teams of Tier 2 play a season and the top 4 teams would be elevated to Tier 1 status, with the winner getting a 1-year protection exemption from falling back down (more on that soon).

We would then mimick the Euro leagues in the way business is done. Every season, the three last place teams in Tier 1 drop to Tier 2, while the top three teams in Tier 2 will be elevated to Tier 1. Every year the Tier 2 winner will get a 1-year exemption where they cannot fall back down to Tier 2.

The expansion franchises will be: San Jose, California; San Antonio, Texas; Austin, Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; St. Louis, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; Madison, Wisconsin; Miami, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Detroit, Michigan; Seattle, Washington; Atlanta, Georgia; San Diego, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Orlando, Florida.

Some of these are open to debate, some (San Jose, San Antonio, Phoenix, Vegas, Austin and Oklahoma City) are not.

A couple notes - any Tier 1 team that wishes to relocate will automatically be relegated to Tier 2 the season they move. To prevent tanking games to move, any Tier 2 team must have played at least 2 seasons in Tier 2 before being allowed to move.

What stadiums? Well, we use existing college stadiums, or underused public venues. This league will not be on par with the big 4 of Football, Basketball, Baseball or Competitive Eating in the US, so we'll have to issue everyone some boots, and more importantly some bootstraps, in order to make this work!


Or I could just try to start a Pro Curling circuit.