I'd Like To Beat Garber Under (Or Over) The Table

Warning! This entry is not going to be funny - at all! I'm flat out pissed right now so rant mode is activated!

While I think MLS does an amazing number of things right, sometimes I just want to tell the commissioner, Don Garber, where he can stick his footcer balls - in a huge vice.

There was a great interview in the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram today where he is forced by a reporter to talk about my favorite MLS subject, the single table!

In the answer to Tobias Xavier Lopez's question, "Will new league configurations involve [after expansion] involve a single division?"

According to Garber:

"The single table (no playoffs, teams with the most points is the champion) to me is not an issue of respecting the integrity of the international game, it's a structural representation of what exists in Europe and other parts of the world where they can relegate [drop teams to a lower division] and promote teams. We're not going to be in that position in any time I can see, so why would we need a single table? There's travel issues, there's regional issues, there's broadcast issues. Other than the fact that you've got a very small amount of people who would think it's cool, we haven't seen the value to it."

Now, the single table and promotion and relegation are two different animals completely! The point of a single table is to decide a regular season champion - that is indisputable - but there's no saying that playoffs can't occur to decide a post-season champion as well.

If anything, one table makes the playoffs a better idea. Right now, the conferences are functioning as two separate entities like basketball where the four qualifiers in each conference play 1 v. 4 and 2 v. 3 with the winners meeting in the conference championship. But since there are only six teams in each conference, only two teams don't make it.

What's the point of the regular season?

But, right now this is the only way since the leagues are really imbalanced. E1 v. W4 is unfair compared to W1 v. E4 (much tougher) due to expansion.

One table, no issues. The eighth team is the eighth best team (at least by record). But hopefully it will be shown that eight teams is far too many playoff spots. Still the bottom four spots that get left out are the worst performing teams even with eight.

Secondly, one table actually makes the regular season champion mean something. There's no, "hey that team doesn't deserve the Supporter's Shield, they played in the West." If you went one table, the league could even pick up this unofficial title for real. Then you'd have a real treble if it happened.

I can see the issue though. With 12 teams, unless you wanted to play 44 matches (which is just a silly amount) there's no way to make it so the teams played each other equal times. Now, once the league is 16 teams, it's 30 matches which, with playoffs, mean the teams play as many games as anywhere else in the world, not much more, not much less.

Even with 15 teams, 28 games would be a fair amount. I swear if when the 15th team comes into the league (which is looking like about 2009) if they switch to three divisions of five, I am abandoning MLS forever.

I mean it.

What world is Garber living in when he talks about travel costs though. It is no cheaper for the Fire to fly to Kansas City twice than it would be to fly to Dallas once and Kansas City once. And that one time that Kansas City came to town would even be something special for the fans to see. Maybe some die-hards would even come up from Kansas City if they only got one chance a season.

Relegation? Nowhere in the equation!