On Words: Promotion and Expansion

Geoff Gibson over at Stumptown Footy has some thoughtful musings on the meanings of "promotion" and "expansion" as applied to the wacky world of Major League Soccer. Like a lot of relative contentious cultural flash-points, I think the debate over whether MLS needs promotion and relegation to become a great league and join the civilized leagues around the world is more heat than light. As I understand it, lack of pro/rel in American soccer is a historical wrinkle due to a number of factors involved in creating a new league from scratch in the early 1990s. I won't go into it here, for fear of attracting some of the unsavory internet creatures who lurk in dark corners of the web, waiting to bait unwary US soccer fans into furious exchanges of conspiracy theories. Suffice it to say, American soccer has tiered leagues, and even though Timbers are rising from a lower league to a higher one, they're not technically being promoted.

So, expansion or promotion? Geoff has it right in his piece that the semantics really don't matter in the long run. For purposes of this entry, "promotion" is an authentic rising of a lower-league power to a higher class of football. Expansion is more of when money talks, and an ownership group foists its way onto the league with a sparkling new product.

I think Timbers capture the essence of a promoted team, even if the new club is a different league entity and has a much dumber, soul-gutted, office-park approved logo. But as long as new teams are allowed to openly raid the rosters of existing teams, I'm not going to get on a promotion high horse. At the end of the day, I'm just happy to get out of a league that spends too much time in bankruptcy court.

As a counter-example, when people talk about expansion teams, the regular stand-in is Philadelphia, which began the league last year without so much of a lower-level team before then. However, I'd advise you to watch a video (via Mike on Twitter) of Seattle fans in the old, old days of USL. It was before Major League Soccer, before Arlo White, before fans, before almost everything, it seems. (Before everything but the cheerleaders?) This is what a pre-expansion team looks like, ladies and gentlemen.



(photo - Portland Timbers US Open Cup Match July 2010, PGE Park against Seattle - taken by yours truly)