As I emerge from almost finishing my second cup of coffee and my clouded, hangover feeling brain sharpens after another night of choppy sleep due to baby refusing to understand how glorious sleep is, I've decided to write an article, my first in a long time. And yes, the lack of sleep is worth it when you have a baby. 100% worth it.
I read an article this morning that inspired me on E Pluribus Loonum, Should the NPSL North Expand? It was an interesting article, mentioning some of the reasons the division should consider adding a couple more teams to continue to grow it's presence and strength and coverage of the state. However, having talked to several NPSL teams in similar situations, (strong conference, good presence, more potential markets) I can tell you, resistance to expanding is real. Why would they resist that? you might ask. More teams means more games which is good for everyone, right? Not always. Especially not when your season is only 10 weeks long. Consider the aforementioned NPSL North. Currently they have 8 teams. That's 14 games over 10 weeks. Not great, not terrible, but anything more is really pushing it when it comes to player health and having room for reschedules if needed. This is one of the key issues with the NPSL. A short season relying on college players limits your growth potential unless there is a strategic plan in place. I believe I wrote about it once again but I cannot find the article, and it might have been a post on BigSoccer, actually, NPSL could have, and really should have, implemented promotion and relegation years ago. With the right plan in place, it could have been a reality, and their might not have been a need for UPSL to grow beyond southern California. Here's how simple the plan could have been. Every conference has a cap on it's number of teams. Only 6 teams per conference, so everyone is playing 10 league games across a 10 week season. Anyone else who wants in after that forms a second division that will also be capped at between 6 to 8 teams based on geography and population centers in the region to ensure limited travel. Boom. There you have it. Of course, NPSL would also need to get rid of it's ridiculous and completely unwarranted $17,000+ expansion fee, but this really could have worked and you'd have something very special going on. In fact, if they wanted to the NPSL could still do this and even break up some of it's bigger existing conferences to get it going. In the North Atlantic, you'd already have a 5 team second division ready to go. And of course, if this had been the plan from the start, we wouldn't have this weird world where we're just hoping that NPSL and UPSL merge to help the amateur game in the US survive. Where there is no vision, the people perish. So I was reading an article recently called the 2018 Top 100 Best Places to Live, and it got me thinking. 'How many of these Best Places to Live currently have non league soccer clubs in them?'
Naturally, I spent way too much time looking into it. What follows is a breakdown of which of these cities has team, what league it's in, and how many cities, by state, don't have a team. UPSL, 15: Charlottesville, VA, Madison, WI, Fort Collins, CO, Boulder, CO, Lincoln, NE, Charleston, SC, Redwood City, CA, Newport Beach, CA, Boise, ID, Salt Lake City, UT, Irvine, CA, Provo, UT, Littleton, CO, Lakewood, CO, Ann Arbor, MI NPSL, 12: Ann Arbor, MI, Charlottesville, VA, Rochester, MN, Davis, CA, Asheville, NC, Greenville, SC, Boca Raton, FL, West Lafayette, IN, Sioux Falls, SD, West Hartford, CT, Fargo, ND, Irvine, CA PDL, 7: East Lansing, MI, Johnson City, TN, Portland, ME, Boca Raton, FL, Cincinnati, OH, Eugene, OR, Santa Cruz, CA, Right now, 34 of the Top 100 Best Places to Live have an non league team. UPSL leads with 15, and Charlottesville, VA, is the only city that has two teams, one in the UPSL and one in the NPSL. That leaves 66 hoping for some soccer. Those are helpfully broken down for you by state. The states with the most 'unclaimed' places are at the top, descending to a long list of states with one place. Unclaimed By State CA: Palo Alto, CA, Santa Cruz, CA, Berkley, CA, San Luis Obispo, CA, San Rafael, CA, San Mateo, CA, Santa Barbara, CA, Alameda, CA, Walnut Creek, CA, Santa Monica, CA, Burlingame, CA, Pasadena, CA, Novato, CA, Huntington Beach, CA, Mountain View, CA, Fullerton, CA IL: Evanston, IL, Downers Grove, IL, Wheaton, IL, Elmhurst, IL, Champaign, IL, Oak Park, IL, Naperville, IL WA: Pullman, WA, Kirkland, WA, Bellevue, WA, Olympia, WA, Bellingham, WA, Redmond, WA FL: Gainesville, FL, Tallahassee, FL, Coral Gables, FL, Sarasota, FL, Miami Beach, FL MA: Cambridge, MA, Newton, MA, Brookline, MA, Framingham, MA KS: Manhattan, KS, Lawrence, KS, Overland Park, KS PA: Pittsburgh, PA, State College, PA VA: Arlington, VA, Blacksburg, VA NY: Ithaca, NY, White Plains, NY MT: Missoula, MT, Bozeman, MT ND: Bismarck, ND, Grand Forks, ND OR: Corvallis, OR, Ashland, OR IA: Iowa City, IA, Ames, IA MO: Columbia, MO, NC: Chapel Hill, NC VT: Burlington, VT IN: Bloomington, IN TX: College Station, TX WV: Morgantown, WV AZ: Scottsdale, AZ KY: Lexington, KY ID: Moscow, ID MN: Edina, MN WY: Laramie, WY OH: Oxford, OH SD: Brookings, SD MD: Rockville, MD AL: Auburn, AL TN: Franklin, TN As you can see, there are 16 cities in California that don't have non league teams. That's enough to start their own league if they wanted. The biggest surprise for me is the fact that Kansas has 3 cities, and North Dakota and Montana have 2 each. I'm not trying to say that there is a correlation between the success of a team and the city it's located in, but I do hope this will help people looking to start teams, and leagues looking to accept them, to understand at least a little better the potential of the city to support soccer, especially when you consider the Ranking Criteria. So get on starting those teams in Laramie, Wyoming and Ames, Iowa! You just might be a city that has everything it needs to help your club succeed.
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Hello faithful AP'ers, and welcome back to American Pyramid! You might be asking yourself, 'wait a minute, this isn't an interview. Thursday's are new interview day!' Yes, that's true, but due to requests from some of the clubs I've completed interviews with, I'm delaying their release a little bit. Not for bad reasons, to be clear, but in order for new news to come out and create a larger wave of momentum around the team. Really quick, in case you missed it, I'm considering starting another blog, talking about all kinds of other sports in the US. Rugby, NBA, College Basketball and Football, Pro Wrestling, MLB, whatever I feel like, really. You can vote on whether that's a good idea or bad idea in my Twitter poll.
Now, today's article is based around an idea I had for a potential new amateur league structure while I was out on a walk. There's some ideas in here that might sound familiar, and some that might not, and I'm sure there are plenty of you thinking 'good grief, another article about how to do soccer leagues in America?' But I implore you to hear me out. This idea is the culmination of over two years of interviews with teams and leagues nationwide, not some click bait article. (I mean, it is, kind of, but I digress) Everything in here is designed to address issues encountered by teams in dealing with leagues, paying costs, needing help, and fan perception.
So without further ado, I present A Better Way. Check it out. A couple of weeks, I wrote a post based solely around some old maps I had made and found as I started cleaning out files on my work computer. (You can read that by Clicking Here) It would up being way more popular than I thought, and after some positive feedback, I decided to do another one, this time covering soccer in the states of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska.
Personally, I think any league worth it's salt should have maps as part of it's planning process. Growth is good, but maps can help keep everything organized and keep that growth aligned with a particular vision. For that sake of this project, you can imagine these maps being used three different ways.
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