Relegation Comes for the NFL
What is relegation?
-The action of assigning to an inferior rank or position.
“The relegation of experienced party members to the status of second-class citizens”
BRITISH
-The transfer of a sports team or player to a lower division of a league.
“the team manager refuses to throw in the towel and admit that relegation is inevitable.”
Relegation. It’s the word every soccer club hates to hear, think of, and be served with. The prospect of being demoted to a league below your current position can be defeating and demoralizing for the club and the supporters.
Relegation is the most exciting part of soccer that has nothing to do with what happens live on the pitch. The drama generated by a club’s potential downfall and another club’s possible promotion is Hollywood-like. The FX/Hulu documentary series ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ brilliantly showcases what relegation can do to a club, its supporters, and its city. ‘Sunderland til’ I Die’ on Netflix is another fantastic series, but in a slightly reverse setting than ‘Wrexham’. Sunderland is a once prestigious club being relegated and their battle to gain promotion to the English Premier League where, as Wrexham is the story of a club that has long been at the bottom and is now poised to make a run at multiple promotions.
The reason relegation is so interesting to me is that with this potential looming guillotine hanging over every club at the bottom of the table (standings), the relegation drama lasts all the way to the season’s final weekend. In European soccer, there are no ‘playoffs’ in club soccer like the NBA or NFL are accustomed to seeing. However, some tournaments selected soccer teams will participate in during the regular club season that utilize the bracket system. A points system determines the top from the bottom during regular club soccer. A win equals 3 points. A draw (tie) gives each team one point, and a loss is 0 points. Whoever has the most points wins the league (in the highest league possible). If you are in a sub-league and win the league, you are promoted to the next league above you. If you are at the bottom (sometimes the bottom 3 or 4 teams), you are now relegated to the league below you. The fight for promotion and staving off relegation is action-packed and full of twists and turns.
Now that we have a general grasp on relegation, let’s move into our ‘What If’ corner of the soccer multiverse and ask ourselves what the NFL (National Football League) would look like if the relegation rule was in place. Come on, everyone, put on your commissioner’s old white guy tie and hat, and let’s fuck up the perfectly tuned machine that is the NFL.
THE NEW NFL
As of writing this, the NFL is one Monday Night game away from concluding week 1 of the 2023/2024 season (Spoiler Alert, if you are a Jets fan, man…I feel for you). It has already been a powerful and reinvigorating weekend for many NFL fans, including myself, who are more excited for the Fantasy Football and gambling aspect than I am for the drama and play on the field.
The NFL is the 800-pound gorilla that all other American sports strive to be. Baseball was once that back in the day, but the slow-paced, stats-based game has gone the way of its OG fans; it has gotten old and stale.
Basketball, most notably the NBA, has grown leaps and bounds since its inception and shows no sign of slowing down. With the interest of overseas fans, the NBA has been given new life and is right up there with the most entertaining sports in America and now across the world. The NBA has the advantage of not covering its superstar's faces with masks or helmets, leaving each man on the court to shine bright and their likeness burned into our memories. In contrast, in the NFL, the matching helmets and uniforms are what we remember the most. You need to be a little extra special to stand out in the NFL.
The NFL is in a class by itself. Simply looking at the numbers, the money generated and moved by the NFL cannot be touched. The combined revenue of the MLB and NBA is just a few billion over what the NFL does yearly.
The thought experiment that we are about to embark on, I am positive, would completely fuck with the money machine that is the NFL's revenue. Of the world's top 25 highest-valued sports franchises, the NFL occupies 13 spots. Why is that? Well, it's because the NFL is the master of spectacle (English Premier League Soccer stole a ton of ideas from the NFL in the 80s to make the experience better for fans, including Monday Night Football, which they call…you guessed it, Monday Night Football). Every game in the NFL is hyped and branded as a significant event. The eyes that the NFL attracts ensure that the league can negotiate and generate billions from TV contracts from the likes of NBC, FOX, ABC/ESPN, CBS, Amazon Prime, and now YouTube, the exclusive provider of the NFL Sunday Ticket. The TV contracts are lucrative, and the revenues are spread across each franchise, initiating the rising tide, lifts all boats principle, making every club profitable. In 2021, the NFL signed a new 11-year, $100 Billion deal with their TV partners.
Now, let us fantasize about the world of the NFL with the omnipresent relegation rule in place. The guarantee of having the TV revenue every year for every club keeps the struggling franchise afloat (by struggling, I mean rust on the field, not profit). Picture the Cleveland Browns or the Jacksonville Jaguars; their fan bases are not massive, and they are not teams that sell out every game. If they had to rely on fan support and turnout for a majority of revenue, they would be struggling to keep the lights on, especially when they had years like 2020 during the pandemic when stadiums were at half capacity, if they allowed any. The NFL lost 4 billion dollars in ticket sales during the quarantine era. The new TV deal ensured that if something like that should happen again, every team, including the NFL itself, would be safeguarded from empty stadiums.
So, for the sake of this thought exercise, let's not focus on what our changes would do to revenue. Maybe later on, we can dive deeper into that realm, but for now, let's focus on these three segments:
-Competition
-Development
-Ratings
These are the three areas that I would be most intrigued by AS A FAN if the NFL announced they were considering relegation. Of course, AS AN OWNER or stakeholder in the NFL, I would care about one thing and one thing only. Revenue/Profits.
But we are just lowly fans today, so let's start with the first segment: Competition!
COMPETITION
Sports usually give us typical winners and losers. There is the occasional tie, but for the most part, one team walks away the victor while the other sulks in failure.
Losing sucks. Everyone hates to lose. You can lose a no-stakes hand of UNO to your 7-year-old, and there is still a little voice inside your head that yells, "God dammit!" and that's ok. That voice is integral to the survival of our species. If that voice wasn't there, humans would have been wiped out in those caves, hunted by tigers and wolves.
The top-tier leagues in US Sports have a losing problem. A problem that no team in European Soccer has. The NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL all have the same losing problem. What is that problem?
The problem is, really, there is no problem. Teams sometimes want to lose! In the NFL, when you lose so much, you get a nice little prize wrapped up in a guaranteed number-one pick for the following year's draft. In the NBA and NHL, you are not 'guaranteed' the first pick if you suck the most, but you certainly get the best shot at it (the worst team gets the most lottery balls in the spinning cage of destiny).
A phenomenon known as 'tanking' is a not-so-subtle tactic that teams will implement when they realize they have no shot of winning anything in a particular season. If the Miami Dolphins (more on them later) lose their first seven games and the next 11 don't look any more promising, well…they may move into tank mode. There are no rules against tanking, but do you know who is against it? The fucking fans. They hate it, yet they get it. They want that draft pick just as bad as the sporting director. Tanking starts by resting some veteran players, putting in the new guys to get more reps, and maybe calling some plays that are not advantageous to winning; perhaps they start looking at how the NCAA college draft pool is shaping up, maybe they start thinking hey maybe we could get ourselves an excellent new quarterback to replace the concussion prone 30 years old we have under center right now. These are all real things that teams (looking at you, Miami) have done to better position themselves for an excellent draft pick next year.
Speaking of the Miami Dolphins, the team in South Beach was accused of tanking by their own head coach, Brain Flores, after he was let go from the club. In a report, Flores said the owner of the Dolphins, Stephen Ross, would give Flores an extra $100k for every loss. Wild stuff.
Let's throw in that big R word (not that one). Let us play a fantasy game where the commissioner of the NFL has gone full Colonel Kurtz, taking full command of a majority of underling NFL owners he now commands. We, people, are Colonel Kurtz. And we intend to shake things up. Here comes the boom. A press conference is set, and we walk out, shaved head, super bloated, and wet head to toe for some reason. Lights, camera, action!
Relegation is now a rule in the NFL. The bottom two teams will be kicked out of the league at the end of every season. Two teams from the XFL, that's right, the XFL baby (Can you smellllll), will now be promoted to the NFL while the two bottom NFL teams will now be playing in the XFL.
The first question from the press: "What about the draft?"
Great question! The draft is still on! (Or we can axe it; more on that in the DEVELOPMENT section.) But no longer will the worst team get the first pick. It will now be completely random. Lottery balls in a cage of destiny, 30 teams all competing for the highest spot! No more rewarding losing in this league, baby!
Question 2: But there are 32 teams? Why only 30 balls?
Another great question! The two new teams being promoted from the XFL they get the first two picks in the draft. The winner and runner-up of the XFL Super Bowl (they call it the Million Dollar Game, I guess?) will get the first and second pick, respectively. Everyone else? It's an equal playing field, baby. Again, winning is celebrated in this league and in the XFL. Next question!
Question 3: Yes, so if the two new XFL teams get the first draft picks, and it is historically predicted in European Football (Soccer) that the two teams promoted are most likely to be the following teams to be relegated the following year, won't that de-incentivize the top two picks form wanting to go to those teams?
That was an OK question that maybe is a tad too deep for this fake scenario, but for the sake of argument, let's say those draft picks are certainly entitled to not play for those teams (looking at you, Eli Manning and John Elway) so the responsibility to ensure those draft picks are happily signing with the team they were drafted by is put upon those teams. Show them they should sign with your club! It's not the commissioner and league's problem. NEXT!
Question 4: How do we determine who are the two worst teams?
BOOM! Amazing question. The two teams with the worst record, including pre-season games bitches, will be in the bottom. If there is a tie scenario, we will go by points; those with the better ratio of who scored more points than gave up will fare better than those with a worse percentage. The playoff system stays in effect, and the Super Bowl continues on.
Question 5: Why relegation?
Finally, someone asked it. The real question of the day. In my humble psychopathic/Kurtz opinion, relegation will make the competition even better in the NFL. No more fucking tanking. We encourage the will to win. Losing now has consequences, just like in real life. If you fail in battle (I'm a Colonel, remember), you fucking die! Or you get captured and tortured. Now, I get that is an extreme example, but I still would rather win a game of UNO against my 7-year-old daughter than lose. We want to breed a culture where complacency is no longer the norm. It will be encouraged to want to win. This will now make every team more competitive and every game more exciting, especially at the end of the season when, let's be honest, in the past, before relegation, some games were so pointless that the only reason to watch was to see if your gambling bets hit or not. Now, the shit teams will be the most exciting games to watch at the end of the regular season. Also, more eyes will watch the XFL to see who gets promoted. Also, now, the little guy, the small market team sitting in the XFL, has a huge incentive to play better. They can make it to the big leagues now! Promotion means more money for the team, which means better players, which means more wins, which means more fans, which means more profits, which means more ticket/merch/concession sales, which means new upgrades to the stadium, which means even more fans, happier fans, new fans! Win-win-win, baby.
Question 6: Okay, so we get how relegation will bolster the winning culture and eliminate tanking in the top-tier NFL and lower XFL league. What about the XFL? Will the bottom two teams be relegated out of the XFL as well?
Now we are getting into the weeds, and I love it. Hell yeah, they will be relegated. The bottom FOUR teams will be relegated to a new league below them. Ever heard of the CFL and AFL? That's the Canadian Football League and American Football League. Two from each institution will be promoted. There will be no relegation for the CFL and AFL.
This is an excellent time to call an end to our press conference and slip back to our ostentatious commissioner's office to clear off the whiteboard and start the development portion of our dream scenario.
DEVELOPMENT
Let's start with what systems soccer clubs worldwide use to develop their teams.
The Academy
Major soccer clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea FC, and Manchester United have been churning out superstar after superstar by recruiting and developing youth soccer players through their academy systems.
Academies work precisely how you think they would. They are primary schools that specialize in developing the next Lionel Messi or Harry Kane. They indoctrinate kids starting from the age of 8 (sometimes younger) into the world of soccer and breed/train these young talents into the future stars of their club.
English stars like David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, and Harry Kane were recruited early by their respective clubs and rose very quickly, being included on the first-team squads while still teenagers. Wayne Rooney was 16 when he first appeared for Everton FC, scoring a goal in his first game, solidifying him as a boy wonder and future superstar striker.
To my knowledge, there is a small academy system here in the United States for soccer, but nothing to the extent of what the Europeans and South Americans are doing right now. The Philadelphia Union (MLS team) is the leader in recruiting and training young American talent and bringing them up through the ranks while educating these players in structured training and schooling programs.
In this dream scenario, let's say that NFL clubs like the Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets started an academy system. What would that look like? Let's pretend to be someone with a lot of power, money, and influence in the world of the NFL, shall we?
And here. We. Go….
Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, invested $60 million in a new school/facility to train youths from the age of 10 to 20 in the art of American football and academics, specifically related to the sports industrial complex of America. Jerry and his recruiters go to the homes of these young men and their families and promise them free tuition, room, and board in exchange for the rights to their bodies, in perpetuity, to play in the NFL. How many families take the bait? I would say a fair number.
Imagine being a young player. You are 10 years old, a star running back in your inner-city football league in Baltimore, Maryland, and one night, your mom says to put on some nice clothes and take a shower because you have company coming over. Later that night, Tony Romo, head recruiter for the Dallas Cowboys comes walking into your living room and asks you personally if you would like to one day play for America's Team? All you have to do is move to Texas, live in a dorm with other talented football players, go to class for a few hours a day, much less than your normal school schedule, and the rest of your time, you get to practice becoming the best running back in the world. It sounds almost too good to be true. Well, it may or may not be; that depends. The devil, though, is always in the details.
In exchange for this commitment, once you reach 18 years old, you will be eligible to play for the first team, the Dallas Cowboys. Instead of having the customary rights of a draft-eligible player or a free agent, you are not allowed to play for any team other than the Dallas Cowboys for as long as the Dallas Cowboys want you on their roster. You are a restricted acadamey player by all accounts.
If the Cowboys see fit to get rid of you two years after being on the first team, they have the right to move you to any other team in the NFL, they collect a transfer fee, and you get a new contract with your new club.
What an opportunity! Now, let's compare that to a traditional American college football athlete. College athletes must hit a certain standard of academics to be eligible to play college football. That bar differs from school to school. College athletes are limited to how much money they can make from sponsorship deals (NIL is implemented in our dream scenario). The more prominent athletes (Think Deon Sander's son, QB Shedeur Sanders of Colorado) make most of the NIL money, and the third-string kicker makes little to zero money through sponsorship NIL deals. Academy players are not allowed to sponsor ANY product that the Dallas Cowboys are not affiliated with. In fact, you will be required by the Dallas Cowboys to be in promotions, social media posts, and be present for media events, all while not being paid for these appearances at all.
Some college athletes must pay for tuition, and only some players are eligible for scholarships. Academy players are guaranteed a full ride as long as the athlete completes all of his duties (schooling and football training). You pay for absolutely nothing as long as you are in the academy. The team will even give your family a small stipend ($2k a month) to train your son.
A college athlete can declare for the NFL draft anytime after their freshman year, leaving the fate of their NFL career in the hands of the NFL draft. Academy players are not eligible for the draft and must play for the team they are training for.
There are certainly pros and cons to each system. Suppose enough teams start to utilize the academy system (why wouldn't they?). In that case, a battle will begin for top-tier talent between each academy and every major college football program. The academy system will better fit some people, so the college game will always be an excellent option for those not recruited and developed in academies. I foresee families with poorer living conditions would opt to have their child attend an academy where more well-to-do families would probably be more apt to reserve the rights for their already affluent child prodigy. Also, college coaches will have to start offering contracts to younger players now, scouting the Pop Warner little leagues across the county along with the academy scouts.
College athletes can be dropped from a program, or a scholarship can be rescinded if performance or behavior becomes an issue. Also, college athletes can leave a program at any time. Academy players do not have that privilege. Academy players sign a contract to play for the club that recruited them. If an academy player leaves, they are not eligible to play in the college game and are not allowed to play for any other academy/team unless said team releases that player from their contract. The team can trade and move academy players at any time, with the academy player having no say in the matter at all.
The academy player will have an advantage over most or some college athletes by having more training. Their earlier lives may also be smoother, having access to the best facilities, coaches, and trainers money can buy. Not having the burden of worrying about how one's family will pay the bills is a huge advantage that many athletes are not afforded. Let's not even get into the cost of youth sports in America. I promise you, that will be a whole other blog post.
Having an extra 8 to 5 years of knowledge from observing the game while living in an academy will increase academy player's value over college athletes who may have only high school and college football experience.
In European football (soccer), players trained and brought up through an academy system and promoted to the first team are extremely valuable for many reasons. First, they have been integrated into the club's culture for nearly a decade before starting for the first team. They know and understand the expectations at a very young age. They know the schemes, and most importantly, they have been playing with the same 20 kids for five years, getting to know each other better than any college team could hope for. Secondly, they are treasured monetarily because if a club should choose to sell that player, it is essentially bonus money. Transfer fees keep the team's payrolls moving and growing in major European soccer. Here is an example.
Arsenal FC in London has a player they trained from the age of 8 who is about to jump to the first team. His name is Frank. Frank is 17 years old. Frank will be replacing aging super start Saka. Saka was signed to Arsenal five years ago from a small Nigerian team for a fee of $25 million. Saka is projected to garner a fee of $100 million once transferred to another team.
Manchester United buys Saka from Arsenal for $100 million, a profit of $75 million for Arsenal. As an added bonus, a "free" (relatively compared cost of a homegrown academy player, costing maybe $200k total vs. a transfer signing of anywhere from $10 million to $150 million) academy player, Frank, is taking Saka's role. From one player, Arsenal now has $75 million to spend on new signees while a free academy player slides into his spot.
Flash forward five years. Although good for the first few years, Frank doesn't fit into the new coaches system at Arsenal. Arsenal think they can get $50 million in transfer fees for Frank. Chelsea Football Club is willing to pay $50 million for Frank. Now, another considerable profit is being made for Arsenal. A player they got for free (no transfer fee since he came up through the academy) is being sold for $50 million. This, for every club, is the bread and butter of revenue. Selling an academy player for a hefty fee is the goal more often than utilizing an academy player for his talents on your own squad.
So, now we are Jerry Jones again for the Dallas Cowboys. We know we have an academy player coming up who is a QB who has a lot of potential. He has been killing it in the second-squad games. He could start for the first team tomorrow if needed. But the Green Bay Packers need a QB after six games into the regular season. The Packers know they won't get a good QB in the college draft, and there are no good free agents to sign, so they reach out to the Cowboys to buy the QB in the middle of the season! The Cowboys have three good QBs on the squad right now, so they say yes. This is a win-win for everyone. Green Bay doesn't have to wait til next year to draft a QB; they can get one right away from Dallas. Dallas wins because they have made a massive profit from selling this academy player. This scenario happens over and over and over, transferring players and wealth from team to team for years to come.
LOANS
Another weird thing that happens often in overseas football is the concept of loans. Loans are exactly what they sound like. One team loans a player to another group in exchange for money or possibly another player. Simple. Why would a team loan out a player?
Well, let’s say the Cowboys, they are hurting badly for a Center. The two on the squad are injured, and the academy prospects are not ready yet. So, they look around the league and see a center who plays for the Miami Dolphins and may be available to play. He just turned 18 and hasn’t had a lot of practice yet with the first squad. The Cowboys reach out to Miami, and Miami says, yeah, he’s a good player, just hasn’t had a ton of first-team reps since the starting center is so good. We (the Dolphins) would love for this player to get some real game action, so hey, how about we loan out this center to you for the remainder of the season. We get his salary paid for plus a fee from you (The Cowboys), and you get a center to play for your team. Cowboys say yes, done deal. At the end of the season, that center goes back to the Dolphins with more experience and confidence.
Loans can have a ton of conditions and clauses as well. Some loans have an option to buy at the end of the loan. Some loans are multi-year deals or based upon requirements established on performance.
Loans are prevalent when it comes to lower-league teams needing help as well. Say the Huston Roughnecks (XFL team) need a starting QB for the season. They can approach a higher-level team like the Houston Texans (NFL) and ask for an academy player to step in on loan and captain their squad for the season. This is a common practice in European soccer and, again, a win-win for both sides. The player gets a ton of experience at a lower level, and the lower-level team receives a high prospect to play for them for the season.
Another standard loan is when a team gets relegated to a lower league; sometimes, the team star isn’t happy about it. Sometimes, that star wants to continue to compete in the top-tier league, but the team isn’t willing to sell that player. To keep the star happy, the team can loan him out to a team still competing in the top tier, keeping him happy while getting a nice little chunk of change for his services.
OK, I think that is enough changes for today. Now that we have decreed that all these changes be made henceforth, let us see how it all plays out in the area we care (second) most about. The ratings!
RATINGS
Let's get to bras tax. The NFL doesn't need any help attracting more eyeballs to their games. The NFL is already on every significant broadcasting station, including cable giant ESPN; on top of that, they are now taking over the internet by showing Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime and broadcasting every game through their Sunday Ticket package, exclusively on YouTube TV.
Between the intrigue of the drama every week in the NFL and the growing gambling market, thanks to many states now legalizing gambling, the NFL will always have fans. A few years back, the NFL came across a string of controversies. First, it was the buzz around concussions and the mental health of their players. Next, it was a scandal involving Tom Brady called DeflateGate. A targeting (intentionally trying to hurt an opposing player) scandal involving some coaches on the New Orleans Saints ended in coaches being suspended for a season. After that came the COVID-19 pandemic, and with that came the rise of Black Lives Matter, and with BLM came protests/kneeling during the national anthem. That was the most considerable hoopla the NFL has had to smooth out in the past ten years. Even during COVID, BLM, and player protests, the NFL was swimming in an endless pool of eyeballs.
Introducing the rule of relegation and promotion to the NFL may not add more viewers, but it may even out viewership throughout the season. Many middle-of-the-pack games will garner less interest and viewers than a big game between the KC Chiefs and GB Packers. The looming threat of relegation may attract more viewers to the middle-of-the-year, middle-of-the-pack games where a loss could mean dire straights or a win could be the beginning of a hot streak to get out of the relegation zone.
With relegation, the end of year games that used to be crap will be viewed with renewed interest. Usually, the worst teams in the NFL in the season's final weeks are putting out new and fresh players to get them experience for the next season. With relegation, bad teams will have to continue competing to stay out of the relegation zone. So, in the last week of the season, the most significant games will not be the great teams heading to the playoffs; the bad teams fighting to stay alive will be highlighted on Sunday and Monday night. That in itself is a Super Bowl of sorts.
A gigantic game that happens in English soccer is something called the Richest Game in Football. The Premier League is England's top football league. The successive league below is called the Championship. In the Championship League, the top two teams get promoted to the top-flight Premier League, with a third team being promoted, but that team is determined by a one-time playoff game, i.e., the Richest Game in Football.
Why is it called that? Well, because making the jump from the Championship to the Premier League means a considerable increase in ticket sales, sponsorship deals (some sponsors even make their pitch to the winner as soon as the final whistle blows), and the biggie, which is shared revenue from the Premier League. In 2018, the guaranteed amount of money from the Rev share program for each of the 20 teams was $125 million. The highest portion going to the winner in 2018 was around $198 million. So if you win the Richest Game game, you are guaranteed $125 million for your club next year, plus the new revenue from new sponsorship deals. Lose that game; well, you just lost out on a guaranteed $120 million and now have to compete again next season to gain promotion, which is a grind mentally and physically.
With relegation in American Football, the XFL will have its own Richest Game. The XFL will have their typical 'Super Bowl' where the first two teams are guaranteed promotion, and a second game, the 'richest game,' will be played by the 3rd and 4th place teams to see who gets that third promotional spot to the NFL. The ratings on the game in England are huge, and the ratings for its USA equivalent would be as big.
Ratings are the thing the NFL worries less about right now but are always top of mind with every executive and owner. The NFL worked extremely hard to become the top dog in America, and they are willing to do whatever is necessary to keep it that way. The NFL is a 12-month season now, with the draft, training camps, pre-season, regular season, playoffs, and Super Bowl, never giving us, the consumers, a break in the action.
In America right now, the MLB is seemingly dying on the vine along with its old-head viewers, while the NBA continues to see substantial overseas growth in ratings. The NHL and MLS continue to gain steady popularity by evidence of expansion teams in both leagues.
So, we did it! We fixed football in America. For now…
Let us jump into our stray balls and get the hell out of here.
STRAY BALLS
Stay balls are random things I have on my mind about the game of soccer at the time of this publication.
- Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest football of all time, is lighting the world on fire in Miami, playing for fellow legend David Beckham's Inter Miami. This is like LeBron James or Michel Jordan jumping ship at the tail end of their career to play in South Korea or Australia. These are not insignificant markets, but certainly not small. This is a big deal for the MLS, and we will keep an eye on how the Messi-verse continues to affect soccer in the USA
- The USA is hosting the 2026 World Cup with our hat and pants, Canada and Mexico. USA soccer has a massive task of generating real buzz to get people in this country excited for this hugely significant event. USMNT star Weston McKinnie recently said that the motto of U.S. national soccer has changed: "We set out on a mission four years ago to have the way the world views American soccer. Now our motto is to change soccer in America forever." I dig it. Get to work, boys and girls, the clock is ticking.
- Personal Note, I suck at soccer. I played one organized game and immediately hyperextended my knee like fellow sexy beast Travis Kelsey. I want to keep playing, but there is a high barrier of entry for newbies like me in my hometown. I am considering changing that by starting a league for novice nerds like me. I'm just putting that out there in the universe.