Wednesday, February 1, 2012

The Autonomous League of Either/Or Sloe Gin

All 152 teams in the top four levels of the USSF "pyramid" have been mapped. You can find it HERE.

That link should give you the club names, city and state. Scrolling around it's hard not to get excited about unifying all these teams into a single entity.

After looking all that up, it is difficult to put in words the semi pro / pro growth in this country over the past 5 years. I've been around soccer since I was a kid. Crisp fall Saturday mornings in the '80s in Northern Virginia were spent on soccer fields. Others might lay claim to the birth of modern soccer. Nah. It was in Virginia. I've got the magic hour pics to prove it.

Where was I?. Oh.

If researching that names and towns of all these teams has shown me anything, it's been the growth of teams over the past half decade.

Looking at that map... How can you not have games that matter. Promotion, relegation. Statewide Cups in California, NY, Pennsylvania, Texas and New Jersey. Florida teams battling their way back into the second tier of American Soccer. 25k seat stadiums filled with rabid supporters on the beaches of Wilmington, NC and Charleston, SC?

How could you not get excited about that? How could you not think that that would work? How could you not feel the envy of the world?

(whew)

Here are the number of teams per state (or Canada-ness) registered in the top 4 tiers.

24 : California
13 : Canada
10 : Pennsylvania
09 : Texas and New Jersey
08 : Florida and New York
05 : Washington and Ohio
04 : North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri
03 : Wisconsin, Minnesota, Georgia, Massachusetts
02 : Maine, Utah, Michigan, Colorado, Louisiana, South Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee Mississippi
01 : Maryland, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arkansas, Iowa, Bermuda, Vermont, Puerto Rico, DC, Indiana, Antiqua, Alabama, Tennessee

When I was at home during the Holidays my family let me have some of the sloe gin they were working on. A friend in England sending them the berries to make it. Good stuff, man. Dang. Anyhoways, working on my own with cherries. Not the same, but almost.

What's sloe gin have to do with unifying all the soccer leagues in this country?

Everything.

View Autonomous League, The in a full screen map



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Here is the First Part of attempting to unify leagues in North America (the 'or' part). I'm taking on scheduling (how to play through winter and promotion/relegation) next.

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