Yes, this will be brief. Not much going on in Olympic sports, and you already know Chelsea scored eight goals against Aston Villa despite the best efforts of U.S. keeper Brad Guzan. But we have a few interesting reads … MMA
Good read on a guy we’d root for — if he can keep it together this time.
The San Diego Sockers have won 45 straight games, which is a professional sports record. Yes, you may quibble over the term “professional” in the PASL, and you may argue that the Sockers face even less competition in that league than Celtic faces in the Scottish Premier League. Peter Wilt, no stranger to indoor and other soccer, raised exactly that objection on Twitter. (MLSSoccer.com’s Andrew Wiebe sums up Wilt’s Tweet and a video from Fox Soccer.)
In the 2010-11 season, they lost two games in December and dominated the rest of the way, winning their last 13. That includes a couple against lower division teams in the Open Cup. Last season, the Sockers had two overtime games early, then won the rest by two, four, five, six … maybe 12 goals. After those 16, they won two more in the playoffs, taking the streak to 31. This year, they’ve opened with eight straight, all by at least six goals.
(Wait a minute: 13 in 2010-11, 18 in 2011-12, 8 in 2012-13. That’s 39. Where are the other four? Ah, here we go — the FIFRA Club Championships, the indoor-with-boards version of the World Club Cup. And actually, they count two more games for a total of 24 last year, which must have been the Open Cup. So if you really want to quibble, you could discount maybe 4-5 games against non-league teams, but I honestly don’t know whether those teams are “pro.” One Open Cup opponent, the Las Vegas Knights, appear in the PASL Premier, not the pro league, but the Sockers count those games.)
Meanwhile, the MISL’s affiliation is totally different. The MISL is now part of the USL. The Sockers won many MISL titles when the MISL was huge, but they were reborn in the PASL.
Got all that? No? Let’s back up with a quick indoor timeline:
– 1978-1992: The original Major Indoor Soccer League rules. Players like Preki and Tatu are semi-household names. A few teams average more than 10,000 fans. The pregame pyrotechnics pave the way for a lot of what we see in NBA and NHL games today. Teams play up to 56 games in a season. The NASL tries to head off the competition by also playing a few indoor seasons, but the MISL outlasts them and absorbs several NASL teams — including the San Diego Sockers. Another league, the AISA, springs up and forces the MISL to face more competition. (Also existing but not competing — the SISL, which would become the outdoor/indoor USISL and then the mostly outdoor USL.) The AISA changes its name to the NPSL and survives. (As always, Dave Litterer has the complete history to this point, and he has a complementary history by Steve Holroyd.) San Diego dominates the last years of the MISL, winning eight of the last 10 titles. The exceptions: The Baltimore Blast in 1983-84 and the Dallas Sidekicks in a whirlwind 1986-87 season documented in all its feathered-hair, synth-music glory.
Of course, for sheer video goodness, we have to see this one again:
– 1992-2001: The NPSL goes on as a low-key but relatively stable enterprise, absorbing two MISL teams and settling with an average attendance in the 5,000s. Meanwhile, two MISL teams — San Diego and Dallas — move on to the CISL, which plays in the summers when arenas have more open dates. The CISL also averages 5,000-plus.
– 1997: San Diego folds before the season. After the season, the CISL morphs into the PSA, which includes Dallas.
– 1998-2001: After one year as the PSA, the summer league becomes the World Indoor Soccer League (WISL), intending to have international divisions. Those don’t materialize. The attendance still hovers in the 5,000s, led by Dallas. In 2001, San Diego returns.
– 2001-08: Under aggressive new commissioner Steve Ryan, the NPSL reclaims the classic MISL name. And then they merge with the WISL, welcoming Dallas and San Diego back to the fold. And it looks a bit like the old MISL, with the Baltimore Blast and Kansas City Comets among other long-standing names. The league still keeps attendance near the 5,000 mark, but neither Dallas nor San Diego survives.
Ready? Now it gets interesting….
– 2008-09: Three leagues! Several MISL teams form the National Indoor Soccer League. Others go in a completely different direction with the Xtreme Soccer League (XSL). One team, the California Cougars, go to the Professional Arena Soccer League (PASL-Pro), the new pro effort by the decade-old Premier Arena Soccer League (PASL-Premier). The XSL lasts one year. The NISL name lasts one year, as the league goes back to the MISL name and re-absorbs Milwaukee from the XSL.
– 2009-11: The MISL limps along with five teams. Meanwhile, San Diego is reborn in the PASL-Pro. (The Sockers also maintain a reserve team.)
– 2011: The USL, which had been planning to revive its long-dormant indoor league, absorbs the MISL and keeps the name.
And that’s where we stand now. The MISL isn’t the old Preki-Tatu-Zungul league with sellouts in large arenas. But it’s relatively healthy, with the long-standing Baltimore Blast helping the average attendance stay up over 4,000.
The PASL, on the other hand, is a low-budget alternative. The record attendance is 5,909, set by …
… the reborn Dallas Sidekicks in early November.
Such attendance is not typical. But Dallas and San Diego are drawing well. And they give MLS nostalgia freaks a chance to see Chad Deering and Paul Wright in action.
But remember Jan. 27. That’s when San Diego will likely take its win streak of 48-ish games to Dallas, waking up the echoes of long MISL rivalries. And they’ll play again Feb. 1 in San Diego. Both games are streaming, but it’ll cost you.
So the accounting may be dubious. Still should be one of the most interesting matchups you’ll see. And with Dallas in the PASL, at least San Diego has a Rangers to its Celtic.
The rumblings are growing that MLS reserves and USL pros may soon share a league.
NASN’s Jason Davis says it looks like we’ll see some this year (2013 — I’m changing the calendar now) and more in 2014, with some MLS reserve teams going into the USL’s pro league and other MLS teams working out affiliations.
At the Sporting News, Brian Straus goes into the background of the problem — players who come out of college (or skip it) and find few chances to play.
The old-timers among us had to laugh a bit at the idea of affiliates — not because it’s a bad idea, but because we’ve seen it done before. MLS teams started with affiliates in what was then called the A-League. Yari Allnutt of my hometown Carolina Dynamo had a 1996 stat line of 1 goal in 45 minutes for Kansas City, surely close to a record for goals per minute, at least until Allnutt got a full-time MLS gig years later.)
But it wasn’t always a happy situation. A-League clubs could sometimes lose players at inopportune times. Over the years, the relationship soured.
For a couple of years, MLS operated a “Project-40” team in the A-League, immortalized in virtual print by future Real Salt Lake GM Garth Lagerwey in a pair of columns of SI.com. The idea of that team was to take all the young players (today called “Generation adidas”) who weren’t getting playing time with their MLS teams and toss them together to face the A-League pros.
So I checked in with Garth, who said this:
P-40 trips made me the man I am today, but certainly glad the league has grown since then. If there is some pairing between MLS and one minor league or all minor leagues I would say that is good for soccer and player development. We need a step in between Academies and MLS first teams and we need to have a viable second division with all the best non-MLS players for the highest possible level of competition to develop players.
Perhaps Project-40 and affiliations were ahead of their time. Ten years ago, MLS rosters were much smaller. The “affiliations” were less about getting playing time for reserves and more about dragging players up from the A-League on an emergency basis when injuries reduced an MLS team to 13 players or so.
Ideally, MLS clubs would all have enough players for a full reserve team. Also ideally, the USL and NASL would set aside their differences, and we’d have a sprawling second division that could be mostly regional. Also also ideally, college soccer would be a complement rather than a supposed detriment — perhaps by letting college players go on loan wherever they want in the summer instead of just to PDL or other amateur teams.
Some of those things may be beyond the scope of MLS and USL for now. But we can dream, right?
Perhaps it’s self-indulgent to post a 4-year-old first-person travelogue. But this was probably the most popular post on my “profile-page blog” at USA TODAY, and that profile page has finally disappeared. Anticipating this problem, I saved the text. And since I’m not writing much else this month, it seemed to be a good time for a holiday rerun.
In case you’re curious, the game report from this game — a 2-0 USA loss — is still on USA TODAY’s site.
At Qinhuangdao before everything went wrong. Photo by Grant Wahl
My first full day in China started with an 8:50 a.m. bus boarding at the Main Press Center for a five-hour ride to Qinhuangdao, site of the U.S. women’s soccer opener against Norway. That would turn out to be the easy part, a pleasant if puzzlingly slow ride through the countryside with a neat pit stop along the way.
To return to Beijing, we in the media were told to meet the bus at 11:30 p.m. We weren’t told where, but we figured we could ask in the stadium. One of the 38,298,294 friendly Beijing 2008 volunteers offered to take me to the spot. No, no, don’t trouble yourself, I said. I’ll stop by the restroom (no guarantee that the pit stops were open on the way back), and you’ve pointed me most of the way there. Thanks very much.
Oops.
As I headed in the pointed direction looking for the media security entrance at which we had been dropped off and from which we were supposed to return, the landscape looked less familiar. Funny how darkness will do that.
Another journalist had joined me at that point, and we think we had sorted out where to go. But it couldn’t be that easy, could it?
At the same time, two uniformed men with Darth Maul-style double-length night sticks plopped onto the sidewalk like Spiderman swinging into the neighborhood. One started pointing us in a new direction. “Go!” “Go!”
A volunteer assured us he would show us where to go. We didn’t argue with the volunteer because it’s heartbreaking to argue with such nice people. We didn’t argue with Darth Maul out of fear of joining Qui-Gon as a disembodied spirit in the Force.
Another volunteer, much more fluent in English than Darth, joined up with us and pleasantly walked us out. We repeated a few phrases back and forth to encourage her to question her sense of direction.
“We were told to go to the media security entrance.”
“Yes, yes,” she said as we walked toward a tent clearly labeled “Staff security entrance.”
“We’re taking the media shuttle.”
“Yes, yes, you’ll be fine.”
“It leaves in 10 minutes.”
“This man (Darth) will show you the way.”
Upon reaching the street and seeing no bus, the friendly volunteer started to realize things weren’t right.
“You want to go to the bus station?”
“No, no, media shuttle.”
“Oh, train station?”
“No. It’s a bus.”
“Ah, bus station?”
“No … look, can we just go to the media security entrance?”
Darth and the friendly volunteer suddenly realized we weren’t there. “Ohhhhh.”
The friendly volunteer rounded up a buddy with a car who would drive us there, which seemed to be the only way we’d make it in time.
We flew across the compound, having been sort-of waved through security when our friendly volunteer told everyone we had just come from the venue and walked maybe 30 feet away. All seemed well.
Until we exited the venue at something that was quite clearly not the media security entrance. Two buses appeared, but they weren’t heading to Beijing.
“You want the bus station?”
“No, the media shuttle.”
“What time is your train?”
“It’s not a train.”
Long pause. As the clock clicked to around 11:29, we tried two new tacks simultaneously. One was a repeated plea to get to the media security entrance. Another was a plea to take us to the media room, where people knew how to direct us, though it would surely be too late.
After a few minutes of chatter between friendly volunteer and driver, we finally took off.
“Don’t worry. Media room. We’ll take you there.”
Except that we were leaving the venue far behind. Even by the standards of these Games, in which we often arrive at a venue but find we must round a couple of blocks in a winding path a la Billy in the Family Circus strips before entering, this route wasn’t working.
“How is this taking us to the media room? Can’t we go back?”
“Media room. Don’t worry.”
(Sudden realization.)
“Wait a minute. Are you taking us to the media hotel?”
“Yes, yes. Don’t worry.”
The deans and masters of U.S. soccer journalism, Michael Lewis and Grant Wahl, had the foresight and expense accounts to book rooms at the media hotel. We did not. But at this point, we had nothing left to do. Perhaps the folks at the media hotel would figure something out. Maybe we could prevail upon them to make up for the error in media handling with a free night at the hotel, which would make it that much easier to get to Tianjin for the men’s game the next day.
At the media hotel, several people gathered around us to figure out what was going on. I produced a timetable for the media shuttle, which made a light click on the friendly volunteer’s head. The apologies flowed. I shook her hand, smiled and said I was sorry for the miscommunication.
The friendly staff at the media hotel had a reasonable solution for us. A train was leaving Qinhuangdao for Beijing at 1 a.m. We had an hour to make it to the station, and they’d flag down a taxi for us. Terrific. Grant had raved about the train. And so we didn’t even care, when we reached the station after a nice quick taxi ride, that we had to buy standing tickets because all the seats were sold.
In the dark, dank, sweltering waiting room populated by 100 or so sweating folks, some shirtless, we spotted a group of Americans and figured it couldn’t hurt to join up with them. They were thrilled to chat with some more Americans, even though they told us we weren’t getting the quick two-hour express train, but a trip of perhaps four hours.
Boarding the train was tricky because we had to step over the people who had given up on seats and were instead sitting on the floor. We weren’t so much embarking on a train ride as we were diving into a box of humans and rubbish.
Somehow, this wonderful group of Americans from Ohio, Alaska and a few other points started making deals to upgrade us. We got a few seats. As the train thinned through a couple of stops, some people even got beds.
The transactions were complex. We paid for seats in cash and found that the price also included some alleged food of various types and warm “Lowen” beer. No one in the group did a taste test to see if the drink was worth adding the “brau” to the name.
We were also using an intermediary who spoke a little English and communicated with the train’s attendants. Later, we found out the train attendants had sold us their own seats.
(Note to staff in Virginia: I do not have a receipt for this transaction. If that’s a problem, your chairs may disappear for a couple of days. The point will quickly be taken.)
Beijing South train station.
While the train creaked up the line, we had a wonderful time explaining to each other how we all ended up here. One was a journalism major who didn’t seem scared away from the profession by the bedraggled duo of reporters now fully dependent on the kindness of strangers to avoid a night in a Qinhuangdao train station.
We were told we’d arrive at 5. Make that 5:25, which is when we slowed down. Or maybe 5:45. Or 5:55.
The two of us heading back to the Main Press Center bid farewell to our new best friends and found, with some help, the entrance to Beijing’s wonderful subway system.
The wonder ceases when it’s time to hop on the line into the Olympic Green. To hop that line, we were directed to walk down corridors so long they make the London Underground look compact. Then we had to leave the station, walk out to the street, turn left, walk more, turn left, go through security, turn again, turn again, head down the escalator and end up a few feet from where we were before.
The Olympic Green subway station is convenient to the Main Press Center in the same sense that an airplane’s coach section is close to the fully reclined first-class seats. Physically close, yes, but not a transition anyone can make. We first went right around the giant International Broadcast Center, only to find that street blocked. We were told to go the other way. Ten minutes of walking later, we thought we’d made our way around to a security entrance. Except that it was pointed TOWARD us.
We’re used to taking the long way around by this point. The arrival point for most venues requires vehicles and pedestrians alike to go at least halfway around the building. Sometimes three-quarters. For this trek, we had wandered around a couple of buildings, only to find that we needed to turn around and walk between them.
I fell backward a step or two, then banged my head against a post to the great amusement of a couple of volunteers.
At 7:25 a.m., nearly 10 hours after the final whistle of the U.S. women’s loss to Norway, I entered the Main Press Center and went to McDonald’s, where the staff probably thought it a little weird that a bleary-eyed guy in a USA TODAY golf shirt did everything but kiss the ground.
I’ve been excused from traveling to Tianjin today. I’ve been told to go back to the media village and find the bed I haven’t seen in 30 hours. I’ll do that.
If I can find the door.
Epilogue: On the way to the media village, I bumped into one of the people who rode the bus out to Qinhuangdao. He told me they convinced the bus driver to circle back and look for us for about 15-20 minutes. If we had ever convinced our friendly volunteer and driver to find the media entrance or a “media room” not in a hotel, we would’ve caught the bus and caught some sleep on the way home.
Following my last post on Bradenton, doing the relatively easy online research to figure out where the class of 1999 had gone, I asked if I should turn my attention to another class. A voice emerged from the crowd: “Play Salieri.”
Or, in reality: “Do Memo Gonzalez’s class.”
By the time the future Galaxy roster member played in Bradenton, the program was bigger. Some players were spending multiple years. So the list below is broken down by graduation date and the number of semesters they spent in residency. It also includes many players who didn’t play in a U17 World Cup.
That 2003 U17 World Cup, held in Finland, was the one in which 14-year-old Freddy Adu shredded South Korea. The USA also beat Sierra Leone before falling 2-0 to Spain, which got a goal from someone named Cesc Fabregas. He turned out pretty well. That led to a quarterfinal appearance against Brazil and a forgettable finish. Nineteen of the 20 players on that team were in Bradenton; goalkeeper Quentin Westberg was based in France. The players on that team are marked with *
And wouldn’t you know it — someone from ESPN/Soccernet looked at this team as well back in 2009. It’s worth a read for the recollection of the South Korea game alone.
So I’ll be updating and expanding. Here goes …
Graduated in Spring 2003 after two semesters in Bradenton:
Adrian Chevannes*: Went to Clemson but transferred to SMU, sat out the 2005 season and finished up in 2007. Drafted in 2008 by Colorado, but he told Soccernet he had suffered a few injuries in college that made a pro career unlikely. Said something in that piece about grad school. Beyond that, I found nothing. Anyone?
Steve Curfman*:Went to Wake Forest. Drafted by Real Salt Lake but wound up back in North Carolina, first with the Carolina Railhawks, then the Wilmington Hammerheads, then the PDL’s CASL Elite. Listed as a coach at Carolina Soccer Club.
Chris Germani*: Several injuries at North Carolina and Penn State, and he finally sat out his senior year. Now an investment operations manager with Northwestern Mutual.
Brian Mascarenhas: Coincidentally, India has a player by the same name. The American Brian Mascarenhas went to Vanderbilt, only to see the program disband. Then he went to Georgetown for a year. Then Penn. Along the way, he interned for U.S. senator Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) but embarked on an apolitical career, working for Cox Media Group and coaching at his old Atlanta youth club, Concorde Fire.
Brandon Oot: Transferred from St. John’s to LeMoyne. Then I’ll give a classic “What I know / what I don’t”: There is a Brandon Oot and Associates listed in Newburgh, N.Y., there’s a Brandon Oot “business owner / professional training and coaching” listing for Newburgh, there’s a Brandon Oot listing with a Syracuse hometown and current location of Newburgh, and the soccer player named Brandon Oot is from Lafayette, N.Y., just outside Syracuse. What that proves other than my love of run-on sentences, I’m not sure.
Jacob Peterson*: This one’s a little easier — went to Indiana and won a couple of NCAA titles, then bounced around MLS: Colorado, Toronto, San Jose, Kansas City. Tied his career high for goals in 2012 with four.
Eric Vogl: Started his college career at Furman, transferred to Charlotte (formerly UNC Charlotte) and then stopped playing. Has a really impressive business resume, though.
Jamie Watson*: Played a couple of years at North Carolina before going pro through Generation Adidas. Couldn’t get regular time at Real Salt Lake and took a journey through the lower divisions. Spend 2012 on loan to Minnesota but plans to return to Orlando in 2013.
After three semesters:
Jose “Trini” Gomez: Started at UCLA but transferred to Loyola Marymount, where his GPA was impressive. Beyond that, he’s hard to find. Not exactly a unique name, even among U.S. soccer players — another Jose Gomez is projected as an early pick in the 2013 MLS draft. He also goes by “Trini,” short for his middle name “Trinidad,” but that also doesn’t help.
Drew Harrison: Went to Virginia. Then it gets interesting. To summarize his colorful bio: He went into stock trading, watched the markets crash, went to Central America, then came back to Charleston (S.C.) to promote sustainable urban agriculture. He was named one of Charleston’s “40 Under 40” and said his goals were to expand his Green Heart Project and see the U.S. win a World Cup. (Men, we’re guessing, since they haven’t won one yet, though it’s been a while for the women as well.) And yes, he coaches a bit.
Kyle Helton*: The Soccernet roundup tracked him from Duke to New England to Sweden to Atlanta to Austin. He’s in Norway now with Mjøndalen, which has narrowly missed out on promotion to the top division.
Jonathan Spector*: Maybe other players were more heralded, but he’s the one who signed with Manchester United straight out of Bradenton. He made a couple of appearances for the EPL giants but went on loan to Charlton, then transferred to West Ham, where he had a few productive years. He has since moved on to Birmingham City. He has been in and out of the U.S. team, but he was “in” for the glorious 2009 Confederations Cup.
Chase Wileman: Played at SMU, then stayed in Texas with FC Dallas, where his current bio says he was reserve team MVP in 2008. He has since gone into coaching, first locally in Texas and now at Dartmouth.
After four semesters:
Corey Ashe*: From North Carolina to the Houston Dynamo, the left-sided player has been a strong cog on a lot of winning teams.
John DiRaimondo*: Went to St. Louis, then played mostly in Colorado’s reserves. Passed through D.C. United, Harrisburg City and Richmond in 2009. He returned to St. Louis to get an MBA and work with the soccer team, then joined Ernst and Young.
Eddie Gaven*: Overhyped! Underrated! Overhyped! Underrated! Three seasons with the MetroStars, seven seasons with Columbus, and people still don’t know what to make of him. He’s pretty good. Really.
Guillermo “Memo” Gonzalez*: A can’t-miss prospect who missed. Maybe Dan Loney or someone else from the Galaxy fan base can explain how things went down in Los Angeles. But the bottom line is that he played a total of 12 games in MLS, all with the Galaxy, and no one picked him up. He has been an assistant women’s coach at Cerritos College, among other coaching gigs, for several years.
Brian Grazier*: Like DiRaimondo, Grazier went to St. Louis, then to Colorado, then back to St. Louis to do graduate work and help out with the soccer team. Now on the coaching staff at Rutgers.
Michael Harrington*: Went to North Carolina and was picked early in the draft, then spent six good seasons with Kansas City. Traded earlier this month to Portland.
Phil Marfuggi*: Goalkeeper played at Clemson, was picked in the MLS Supplemental Draft, wound up with the USL’s Pittsburgh Riverhounds and went on to a successful football career. Oh, not that football. Or that one. He moved to the Arena Football League as a placekicker. Funny thing — he has more tackles than field goals.
Tomiwa Ogunsola: Played at Clemson and James Madison, starting 21 games in four years. Popped up at German lower-division club VfR Horst, then Cleveland City Stars. Turned up at a pro combine in 2011, getting good marks for speed and strength. Then he turned up on a list of coaches at Northern Virginia Soccer Club … hey, did I coach against him at All-Stars?
Brandon Owens*: Brandon is his middle name, so you may see him listed as Dwight Owens. Played at UCLA, taking a redshirt season to recuperate from a knee injury. The Soccernet roundup in 2009 saw him passing up one of the old-school (or old-CBA) $13K developmental contracts with D.C. United. Instead, he went into coaching and banking, with a few stops in the PDL (Thunder Bay, Orange County) along the way.
Continued on in the program (with one exception, players had been in Bradenton for two semesters and continued for another two):
Freddy Adu*: This was the third of his five semesters in Bradenton. Has had an enigmatic and erratic career since then, starring at every level of age-group soccer (U17, U20, Olympic) but struggling to find a long-term pro home.
Michael Bradley: Didn’t play in a U17 World Cup but seemed to do pretty well for himself. He was a bit of a mystery when he signed with MLS at age 16 and had to wait until the fourth round — unusual for a teen signee — until his father’s team, the MetroStars picked him up. His father, Bob, also coached him on the national team. It’s taken a few years and a few stints with five European teams, but the “nepotism” charges should be officially dead now. American Soccer Now’s panel of experts ranks him as the No. 1 U.S. player at the moment.
Christian Jimenez: Six minutes. That’s the MLS playing career of Christian Jimenez, who left South Florida after one season and was drafted 14th overall by Chivas USA in 2005. He never played for the Rojiblancos and moved to Real Salt Lake in 2006. At RSL, he played in one game — for six minutes. He moved into coaching.
Marcus Rein: Goalkeeper transferred from Wake Forest to Central Florida, then dropped off the roster just in time for a young freshman named Sean Johnson to come in. Then he moved to California and started a fitness company.
Steve Sandbo*: Played at SMU and declined an invitation to the MLS combine to go into investment banking. Still doing financial stuff.
Danny Szetela*: Once upon a time, he wasn’t far behind Adu in the pantheon of youth stars. He went into the MLS lottery and played a couple of underwhelming seasons with Columbus, but he was still enough of a star (and a success at the U20 World Cup in 2007) to sign with Racing Santander in La Liga. Then he was loaned to Brescia in Italy’s Serie B. Came back to MLS and was a little less successful than Adu, playing a handful of games for D.C. United and getting the axe. Arrested in a 2011 bar brawl. After that, the trail goes a little cold. He is certainly not the “Daniel Szetela” on LinkedIn. I don’t see him on Facebook, either.
Julian Valentin*: Had a good run at Wake Forest but spent most of his MLS career on loan from Los Angeles to somewhere else — Hollywood United Hitmen, Cleveland City Stars, etc. Moved on to Tampa Bay in Division 2 and was named team captain in 2010. Then he retired to be an assistant editor with the Colorado Rockies. Maintains a fun Twitter feed:
Tim Ward: Last but not least, the defender went to St. Louis and left early to join MLS, playing with the MetroStars, Columbus, Colorado (reserves only), Chicago and San Jose. Unclaimed in recent re-entry draft, so he’s now a free agent.
So overall … a lot of murky careers, a lot of injuries (playing too much?), a lot of college transfers, a lot of guys landing on their feet.
Everyone’s attention was surely diverted from sports this weekend. Here’s what we missed. SOCCER The Club World Cup might not be the most prized trophy in sports, and no one’s going to seriously claim Brazil’s league has surpassed England’s. But when Corinthians beat Chelsea 1-0, thanks to an acrobatic performance from goalkeeper Cassio, it was party time in Brazil …
(I’ll have something separate on the NWSL as soon as finish processing thoughts. Or finish being yelled at on Twitter. Whichever.)
SWIMMING The short-course World Championships don’t always draw the best competition, particularly in Olympic years. But Ryan Lochte made the most of his trip.
The cross-country men also kicked up some good results — Noah Hoffman was 8th and Kris Freeman 10th in a distance race. The U.S. women’s ski jumpers placed five in the top 12: Lindsey Van 4th, Jessica Jerome 5th, Sarah Hendrickson 7th, Abby Hughes 11th, Alissa Johnson 12th. And Hendrickson keeps getting attention.
And things only get stranger in Bellator, where a fight was canceled when the casino folks suddenly realized they couldn’t have a 20-year-old in the building.
Bill Archer started the “legacy” talk a couple of days ago with a good piece on Pele being trotted out to stir up interest in any vaguely New York-ish soccer endeavor, though I was disappointed in the lack of a shoutout to the Simpsons’ “Crestfield Wax Paper” segment.
Then I happened upon this piece on the reborn Dallas Sidekicks, tying together the history of the decorated indoor team. That included a line that will make soccer purists spit in horror:
The success of the Sidekicks is one of the main reasons soccer is now the most popular youth sport in North Texas.
I wasn’t aware of it, but the Sidekicks’ most remarkable season is documented in this wonderfully ’80s film. Haven’t seen this much feathered hair and heard this much synth music since a-ha ruled the airwaves.
When that film was made, outdoor soccer was pretty much dead. (I did enjoy seeing Eddie Radwanski, who went back outdoors with my local Greensboro/Carolina Dynamo.) The MISL was all there was, and it wasn’t doing badly. Did the Colorado Rapids have that many people greeting them at the airport when they arrived home from MLS Cup?
And just what is indoor soccer’s place in keeping the game alive?
It’s astounding that whenever one of these high school basketball blowouts like this week’s 107-2 thriller in Indiana pops up, some dudes always pop up to say, “Oh yeah, well, you wouldn’t want the other team to just stop playing. My Southwest Birdpatch County team beat a team 198-1 one time, and that was after the coach put in the fourth-grade JV players and told them to pass the ball five times before shooting.”
Let’s do some basic math, shall we?
High school basketball games are typically 32 minutes — 8 minutes per quarter.
Let’s say you slow down a bit and shoot every 30 seconds — maybe your opponent takes 10 seconds (still relatively fast) per possession and you take 20. Then let’s say you shoot mostly 2-pointers and hit a staggering 75 percent of your shots. So every 2 minutes, you put up 4 shots and hit 3 — 6 points. That’s 3 per minute. If you score 3 points per minute, that’s 96 points.
And again, that’s if you’re hitting 75 percent of your shots in a half-court offense. That’s not going to happen, no matter how weak the other defense might be.
The losing team was apparently in “an aggressive 2-3 zone.” Great! What better time to practice passing the ball against an aggressive defense?
I realize I don’t have to say that. No one asked me if I thought Bellator would survive and thrive. Even though USA TODAY is going for more of a hipster/snarkster audience these days than it was in my full-time decade there, they still would leave headlines like “Another Conversation With Another MMA Promotion Doomed to Fail” to Deadspin.
So I hope I hid my skepticism at the time, when I was thinking, “What? Another MMA promotion? And another boxing guy is running it? Yeah, yeah — I’ll take the call, whatever.”
I’m still not a fan of first-person sports analysis (though I realize two of my recent posts start with confessions of various biases), but I think this is the best way to illustrate the point …
In the two years I spent as USA TODAY’s MMA beat writer, I spoke with all of the promoters with big-time ambitions — Elite XC, Affliction, Strikeforce, WEC, IFL, etc. All of those promotions had decent TV deals at one point, while Bellator was starting out on ESPN Deportes and pushing out highlights on YouTube.
Some promoters believed in MMA. Some believed in their vision of MMA. Hindsight is easy, but only a few promoters grasped the sport and their place within it. Reed Harris and the rest of the WEC crew got it, and they were already comfortably in the Zuffa umbrella. Strikeforce’s Scott Coker got it. And now it’s clear — Bellator’s Bjorn Rebney got it as well.
And still, in today’s Bellator conference call, I had to play skeptic. I’ve just finished a draft of a book on The Ultimate Fighter (and if you’d like to publish it, I’ll put you in touch with my agent), so I’ve been as aware as anyone that TUF isn’t drawing the ratings it once did. Is the reality MMA market played out? And while MMA fans fret that TUF isn’t producing UFC-caliber talent, can Bellator turn up any half-decent fighters?
We won’t know until we see it. But Rebney’s answers showed that he’s not full of the foolhardy bravado that has dragged down other promotions. He’s aware of the challenge, and bringing in Amazing Race producing veteran Bertrand van Munster is a sign of how seriously he’s taking it. They’ll focus on fighters “earlier in that maturation process,” but Rebney wouldn’t rule out the occasional veteran.
Maybe Spike deserves a bit of skepticism here. While Rebney, like Coker before him, isn’t one to poke the UFC bear, Spike still seems to think it’s the network for MMA. Granted, I’m out of the demographic that gets excited about the pro rasslin’ lead-in. In fact, the 10 p.m. Thursday air time for regular Bellator shows will be past my bedtime. (If it’s any consolation, that’s also why I don’t watch much Duke basketball.)
But to put down the first-person perspective for a minute, they don’t have to convince me to stay up late. They need to stand out in a saturated MMA marketplace. And Bellator shows all the signs of being the one group (besides the UFC) that can do it.
Atlanta: A finalist a few years ago, and now they’re looking at a possible Seattle-style NFL-MLS combo.
St. Louis: Another finalist from a few years ago. Sullied by the NASL/WPS debacle, but a different ownership group has taken the first step toward a stadium.
Fort Lauderdale: Miami has been in the league before and was a recent finalist before a partnership with Barcelona fell through. But now the NASL Strikers are pursuing stadium plans. (To wrap up the finalists from a few years ago: The seven were Atlanta, Miami, Montreal, Ottawa, Portland, St. Louis, Vancouver. Three are in the league, three are on this list, and Ottawa went in a different direction.)
Elsewhere from NASL and USL: Four of the last five “expansion” teams were essentially economic promotions from the lower divisions. San Antonio is thinking about the leap in the long term but knows it might take time. From the SB Nation roundup, we can see a few teams pursuing stadium construction or expansion: Orlando, Carolina (Triangle), Pittsburgh, Minnesota, etc.
And whatever happened to Las Vegas? Baltimore? Detroit?
Longtime MLS fans know it’s pointless to start rooting for specific expansion sites. They need owners and stadiums, not Twitter campaigns.
But how many of these partially developed stadium plans would be fully developed if MLS threw open bidding for the 20th team?
And so MLS fans have a right to ask, along with a few folks in Queens: Why here? Why now? Why not consider other options?
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