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kevinfootes

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Everything posted by kevinfootes

  1. Here's what I typed: "At that point there was talk around town of exapnding the soccer park to try to land a team, but the league insisted on places like the Meadowlands, Arrowhead, etc" While this was not the best crafted sentence I've ever written, it in no way states that soccer park would be expanded to 50K. My point is that the league was looking at bigger venues. So can we at least agree that I never suggested soccer park would be expanded to 50K? This isn't high school? In the early days MLS didn't miss it by much. I've stated many times that Tiger makes a difference. My original point in this thread was how could anybody expect a new women's soccer league to succeed while longstanding sports like women's golf were declining over the past 10 years (while men's golf was growing). I'll stand by that.
  2. So are you agreeing that you were wrong and that I never posted about expanding the soccer park facility to 50K? Again, golf was popular before Tiger and will be popular when he's gone. He's a big draw, but life will go on. Soccer park could have fairly easily been expanded to add 4-6K more seats. More recently, the land was offered by inbev (probably for tax reasons) as an option for a totally new venue. In 1993-1994, soccer park with a few thousand more bleachers added would have been the best atmosphere in the league. A better facility could have been built down the road. Are you saying that 8K fans in the 78K Arrowhead stadium would have been better?
  3. If you're fine with a sample of 16, then you don't understand statistics. That's really neither here nor there. Kindly show me a sentence where I stated that there was a plan to expand the soccer park to 50K. You'll have trouble with this one because it never happened. I first posted that there was a plan to expand the soccer park but MLS was looking at venues like the Meadowlands. I later posted that there was a plan to expand soccer park to a capacity of 10-12K. That's it. I'm clearly making posts based on memories of newspaper articles that I read almost 20 years ago. I could easily be off on my numbers a bit. You are making posts with a great deal of certainty but posted no links. If you can show me a link to some early '90s statement that MLS was looking to build soccer specific venues I'll buy it. I can't really find anything before about 2000.
  4. I see you don't work with statistics very much, and you changed the point to include "not being competitive". In any case, my point has been that men's golf was popular before Woods came along and will be popular after he's gone. You've done nothing to refute that. Also, I've never disputed Tiger's impact on ratings. He's obviously the big draw. The plan was to expand soccer park to about 10-12K, and StL never got serious consideration because that was deemed too small by the league. Flood plain? When had that ever stopped anything in this town? Do you remember where Bidwill wanted to build his football stadium?
  5. Tiger has only missed a few majors in the past 4 years. That's not a sufficient sample size anyway. Tiger (along with the Nike push supporting him) had obviously helped the ratings. You just can't claim that golf didn't get good ratings before he came along. If the plan all along was to play in smaller venues, why was an expanded soccer park rejected? I may be "misremembering" but as I recall StL was told that a 50K stadium was needed.
  6. A senior bowling league can have competition, effort, and execution. So can anything else the Sklar brothers might watch.
  7. I'm not sure "blame" is the right way to phrase this. People just weren't interested.
  8. Craig Upchurch was a local player from Beaumont (6'8") who was admitted into SLU out of high school provided he passed some summer school classes at the university. Upchurch passed the coursework but was refused admission to the school afterwards because the internal politicians were gunning to get Rich Grawer canned. Upchurch went on to be a 4-year starter at Houston. He would have been the perfect counterpart to Anthony Bonner and most likely given SLU enough to get past Xavier in the old MCC and into the big dance. Upchurch never played in the NBA, but he did go to training camp once or twice (with the Hawks I think).
  9. "Up until now that's not the case"??? Men's golf is certainly driven by Tiger Woods today, but there is a LONG history of good ratings before he started playing. Have you ever heard of Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer, etc.? How long do you think golf has been on network tv? I disagree that the casual soccer fan in the U.S. wants to watch European soccer leagues on any kind of regular basis at this point. The casual soccer fan wants to watch the world cup and olympics. The league NOW wants teams to play in soccer specific venues. If you read what I posted, when the league started they insisted on a capacity of > 50K. At that point there was talk around town of exapnding the soccer park to try to land a team, but the league insisted on places like the Meadowlands, Arrowhead, etc. I agree that they learned their lesson and changed the path, which is good.
  10. I agree that Upchurch was an entirely different situation than recruits who simply decided to go elsewhere. IMO, the Upchurch situation was a million time worse than our current problem. There was never any debate about his conduct. He went to summer school and completed was he was asked to do.
  11. How many schools get all of their top recruits every year? This was/is a rebuilding project and this was going to be the first year it would start paying off. If RM were 7 or 8 years into the program and this happened, I would agree that there should be some depth to compensate. If KM and WR are on the team next season and we're at .500 going into the new year, I'll say there is a problem.
  12. Most of us (myself included) don't care too much about recruits that got away, although this info most likely upset at least one poor soul who posts on here regularly.
  13. Happens all the time in Mexico, no matter how nice the resort is supposed to be.
  14. I'd be happy with an average of 50 pts and 2 rbs per game.
  15. I mentioned one sport. I wouldn't call it a list. Even so, women's golf was declining while men's was at an all-time high (for many reasons). If there was growing interest in many women's sports, the idea of a soccer league might make sense to me. Tennis is certainly a bright example. I like soccer just fine, but how do MLS ratings compare to NFL, NBA, MLB? For that matter, how do EPL ratings compare? Soccer could get there in the US. It's not like any other major sport started out with a great deal of interest. The NBA was playing in very small towns for a long time. Hockey went down to a handful of teams for a long time. When MLS started, they made crazy demands like insisting venues had a 50K capacity. Have you ever seen the 8K fans inside of Arrowhead stadium for a Wizards game? MLS has improved it's plan, but the entry fee seems pretty outrageous right now. I could see soccer being a bigger deal 20-30 years from now, but that's not much different than how things went for the NBA and NFL. The shifting population demographics point to growing interest in soccer.
  16. How is the LPGA doing these days? By and large, no one in the U.S. has ever cared about soccer, men or women, outside of the world cup and olympics. The LPGA was doing pretty well about 10 years ago. When the established women's pro sports are struggling, you can't expect an upstart league to survive.
  17. Did Eustachy drive to Cancun with a trunk full of Natty Light?
  18. I agree for the most part, and it's no different in the real world either. By and large people who are better educated (for example) tend to do better professionally. But then there are always going to be Richard Bransons.
  19. Southern Miss typically scores a lot of points, almost 84 per game (although they didn't today), they have a win at Cal (who beat Temple), and their only loss is at Ole Miss. This is a pretty good team, and it would be a nice win IMO.
  20. UIC had a nice win over the Illini yesterday.
  21. It's amazing that a powerhouse school like Southwest Missouri State U lost a good coach like Spoon to lowly SLU. Why would a coach leave someplace like Springfield MO?
  22. Why would Butler want to join the Valley? They seem to have a pretty good thing going as it is.
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