So, Uh, You Busy Next Year?

So now we enter into that long, dark, cold, lonely time that the more cavalier among us call the “offseason”. Basically, we won’t be seeing any real MLS action until March. Granted, there’s the Superdraft and some other small events in between, but for the most part we’re now adrift in an MLS-less winter.

2012, though, will be a very different season from the one just passed, as the addition of the Montreal Impact has been coupled with a grab bag of changes to the league’s schedule and playoff procedure. And frankly, I don’t like them. In 2012, each team will play each other team in its own conference three times, and each team in the opposite conference once. This totally sucks. Many have commented on the recent division in skill level between the east and west, and this will only be amplified by putting such weight on conferences. The East will probably be just a fairly boring competition between Sporting, Philly, and possibly New York and DC, producing very little exciting soccer. The West will really be the only thing people ever focus on as, if the Galaxy- RSL semifinal in this year’s playoffs proved anything at all, it’s that the west can actually produce some awesome play. The east can’t. Perhaps this divide will give eastern teams an opportunity to build up better rosters, as their competition won’t be quite as strong, and they’ll have more of a chance to test out young or new talent, but really the conference won’t ever reach the excitement of the West with such a divided structure.

Some argue that this structure is better for the way it enhances local rivalries, cut down travel time, and make inter-conference games more of an event. I suppose the local rivalries thing is true, but I submit that fans will get bored. I know that fans here in New York hate DC with a passion, but when it’s your third time playing them all year, it’s not going to have the same excitement. Imagine, then, how that will play out for teams that you don’t have a rivalry against; a Red Bulls fan may be a bit less inclined to see DC on their third go, but it would hard to find anyone that really cares about a third try against last-place New England, against whom the Red Bulls don’t really have all that much of a rivalry. People are going to lose interest with such repetition. As for travel time, come on, these are professional athletes. Being tired on the pitch because of a long flight is a lame excuse. I guess there is some truth to the last bit, though, as I can see how inter-conference games could be much more novel, even when against teams that the host doesn’t really care about.

Then there’s the playoff changes. Look, I really think MLS made progress coming into 2011. This year’s playoffs may have felt a little rushed, but the changes made for 2011 made the playoffs less conference-dependent, and allowed less of a change of yet another Cinderella MLS Cup run. For the first time in a while we had Conference winners who were actually from their respective conferences, and a champion who really deserved it. Overall, the changes were great.

The new playoff format is a pretty nominal regression in terms of all of 2011’s positives. In the coming season, the top five teams in each conference will win playoff berths, with the 4th and 5th seeds playing off for the right to go against the first seed in the first round. There will then be an intra-conference playoff, where the first place team plays the lowest remaining seed, the second place plays third place, and the winners face off for the conference final. This can be seen as good and bad: conference victors will automatically be from their respective conferences, with no chance of previous years’ conference champs coming from the opposite coast. But the quality of competition will be far lesser for the east than the west, and I can imagine that the Western Conference final will be a much better game than the MLS final. Further, by allowing more teams of lower quality into playoff contention, we re-open the door to constant Cinderella runs.

It was also decided that the Conference championships would become a two game aggregate series, as opposed to a single game, and that the Championship would be held at the home of the team with the better season record. I support the first bit, and I’m on the fence about the other, but I’ll start with the Championships. Home field advantage is a mathematically provable phenomenon, and I think it’s a bit unfair to be giving it at a game as important as the Finals. Granted, fans will often travel for a Final to the point where the stadium is fairly even in terms of support, but there will always be some sort of advantage for the home team. Fan travel can vary based on the distance between the teams involved, and even if a huge number of visiting fans go there’ll probably be more home supporters. I guess we’ll see how this plays out in terms of how many fans travel. Shifting the Conference Championships is thus a good move for two reasons, as it allows each side home advantage, and lowers the chances of an unworthy team making it through. You can get away with one luck game, but in two games the fairer team usually shines through.

I want to add, though, that, as much as it may sound like I am, I’m not against underdogs. I may have included more than once in this article that changes which lower the chances for Cinderella stories are good, but it comes in a very specific context. MLS has seen far too many Davids beating Goliath, and, frankly, it becomes frustrating. As much as it’s nice to see a team make a great, unexpected playoff run now and then, when it happens every year you start rooting for the big team. I was happy Galaxy won this year after the 2010 Colorado- Dallas final that nobody saw coming, as you really do need the best team to win sometimes.

That said, I really don’t like these changes. I hope I’m wrong.

Sound off in the comments.

Category: MLS