Christ, again with wanting to move the Columbus Crew?

Edit: Apparently, Davis was "only kidding". In the very, tiny type under the picture of Chad Marshall:

This post is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Or not. It was supposed to be, but apparently I failed. Maybe the Crew really should be moved...

So yay, I wasted my time or something. Anyway, hope you all learned something about Miami and Tampa Bay.

*****

Perhaps not remembering what happened to Duane the last time someone wanted to move the Columbus Crew, Jason Davis over at MatchFit USA decides he wants to take a crack at getting rid of the team everyone loves to hate now that they win a lot.

Last night, only 10,109 could be bothered to watch the men in yellow go down to Real Salt Lake.
. . .
That, my friends, is what we call "not good enough".

Never mind the 11,499 who showed up in a new stadium on a warmer Saturday in Sandy for the first leg. But I guess those extra 1500 people made it ok.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Crew have been winners in recent years. Americans love a winner?

I guess it the axiom doesn't apply in good old C'bus.

No, Columbus fans only come out when their team is terrible and out of the playoffs.

Major League Soccer just isn't working in Columbus, Ohio. Believe it or not, it's time to move the Crew.

Besides being unhappy about the attendance to last night's game, anything else you've got that proves MLS isn't working in Columbus? No? All right then.

Luckily enough, there's a market in North America ready and willing to accept a Major League Soccer team: Montreal.

Too bad there's not already a team in Montreal which is trying to get in. Unless you're suggesting a crosstown derby. Which I don't even think you're insane enough to go along with.

"Perfect" doesn't begin to describe it.

Nope, it sure doesn't.

Canada is a the new frontier for Major League Soccer.

Then it should probably start its own league.

MLS, make it happen. Send the yellow boys north, where you have an owner and a city ready to embrace them.

Because neither Crew fans nor Clark Hunt give a flying fuck for the Crew.

Ok, here's a primer for all of those who want to move MLS teams: What do MLS teams need to survive?

1) An ownership group that runs the team
2) A viable stadium, preferably soccer specific that allows better access to game day revenues.

For the Crew, that's check and check. And we've even seen #2 get fudged for a lot of teams, KC, Houston, San Jose, and DC being the best examples at the present moment.

You know, I don't see anywhere where "semi-embarassing but not really" attendance gets you booted from MLS. If that were the case, New England, Colorado, Chivas and New York would have been left at the curb long ago. And if we're talking about playoff attendance, we wouldn't even have a league with Davis's standard.

Think I'm kidding? Why did MLS contract the Tampa Bay Mutiny? Because the league office had been running the team since the first season, and couldn't get the Glazers to take a flyer after five years. Oh, and employees were stealing six-figure sums of money. And there was no stadium. It was a complete and total mess.

As for Miami, Ken Horowitz decided he wanted out of losing around $12.5 million a year and tried to turn the team over to MLS. Not surprisingly, HSG and AEG told him that they were killing the team as opposed to absorbing that kind of body blow. Sure, it didn't help that the team only averaged 9400 announced fans over the course of four years, and it's only that high because they played some Orange Bowl double headers the last year, nor was there any corporate sponsorship to speak of, and the team played in Ft. Lauderdale, but if Horowitz had kept writing the checks and built a stadium, there'd still be a team there.

Read the press release from when those teams were contracted. Look at just how bad that situation was and then find some way, any way, you can to equate that to Columbus right now. It simply can't be done. Also, for those who complain about MLS loosening the single entity structure? Welcome to 2001:

Finally, the League has made significant changes to its operating relationship with its teams. These adjustments will provide enhanced revenue opportunities at the local level by allowing teams to retain a greater share of revenue from ticket sales, local sponsorship and television.

As for the Quakes, their average attendance has been higher than the Crew exactly once, yet they were around until AEG wanted out of the market and no owner group could be found. So they moved. Now, they have an owner and they're back in the league.

So until the day Clark Hunt decides he doesn't want to own the Crew anymore, no one else does either and Crew stadium collapses under a wrecking ball, the team is staying. And since Hunt is on record as saying he expects the Crew to remain for "50 years", I think it's safe to say we'll be waiting a while for that day.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about that attendance. I don't think you can overestimate the damage the post-Andrulis era did to the Crew's ticket base. Look at the numbers - before 2005, average attendance of 16,400. 2005 onward, average attendance of 14,100. Three seasons of not only non-playoff soccer, but unwatchable soccer, followed by the worst Ohio job losses in almost 30 years. By 2007 and 2008, the Crew's season tickets had bottomed out to around 3,100. And yet in 2008 that number was still not the lowest in the league, better than the Fire, Chivas, Kansas City, New York, Colorado, and Dallas. And this was after the worst three consecutive seasons of soccer in club history, and a sales staff that was so bad it got gutted at the start of 2008. Despite all that, Mark McCullers could claim paid attendance (actual minus freebies) was already starting to rise in 2007, up by 27%.

For the time being, the fiscal nightmare in Columbus, if there ever was one, which is doubtful from 1999 onward, is over. The Crew will still be a playoff team next year. If the job market recovers (and that's a big if right now), attendance should rise.

The counter argument is that expansion teams like Toronto and Seattle have changed the game, that only cities that can support upwards of 16,000 season ticket holders and 20,000 in attendance game in and game out should be considered. Those who make this argument tend to leave out Chivas and RSL, and hell, the rest of the league. Never mind that next year, there will probably be some games in Toronto that aren't sold out.

As for the move en masse to Canadian markets, I don't get it. Everyone's high off Toronto and Sounders mania, and as I've said before, one is coming back down to earth and the other is a unique situation. Let's see how Vancouver does before drawing big conclusions.

Anyway, Davis was trolling for hits this morning, so I guess I'll send my reader over to him. But I think he's got even less of an argument than Duane did, and if you'll notice I've spent more time talking about other things. Anyone want to write a Move Colorado piece or Move New England? This is getting kind of old.

Fake Sigi out.