The Perplexing History of MLS Playoffs

The 2/3 format or first to five points gives more of a home field advantage. Every round except this round in this format does (1 game do or die at higher seed; 2nd round the higher seed has more rest; MLS Cup is at the hihgher seed).

Also, I'd like to point out that both Portland and Columbus have made moves in-season to significantly strengthen their squads. Afful, Sauro, and Mabwati are huge adds for Columbus, and moving Nagbe inside has really helped Portland. If the season was longer, I think both teams may have been a #1 seed (say, 40 games).

 

Both NYR and FCD were playing very well to close out the season and had a 7 pt lead. The Timbers and the Crew were not going to catch them.

 

The #2 Seed have won the last 2 Cups.

Columbus would be the favorite now...

 

Personally I think there shouldn't be 2 leg play off games. Your reward for finishing higher in the long MLS regular season is having the second game at home which really isn't much of an advantage. A real advantage would be to have the one game between two teams at home. If there are 2 leg games in the playoffs then why isnt the MLS Cup final over two legs as well? And why are the first round of games single play-in games? It just doesn't make sense.

 

It makes sense from one key perspective: All playoff teams except the lowest seed are guaranteed at least one home playoff game. Gate receipts are still a significant portion of the league's revenues. Two legged playoffs will end, possibly, when television money overwhelms gate receipts... unless, of course, the television revenues are more valuable with two-legged playoffs. OK, this is a no-brainer... two-legged playoffs will continue indefinitely. The only real question is about specifics of the format.

 

I don't really get this worrying about how much advantage the higher seed gets. Your advantage is getting into the playoffs. Once the playoffs start IMO it's a new season and you have to prove yourself again. In the playoffs I'm more interested in who is better in the here and now not relying on some advantage that was gained in a early season winning streak.

Another problem is that the playoffs are going to be the league's showpiece event long term. In theory these will be the games with highest attendance and highest ratings. It makes little sense to decrease what is your most attractive offering. Other US leagues have far longer and more grueling playoffs and it pays off in the excitement they produce and attention they get.

I do agree with the question of why MLS Cup doesn't follow the same format as conference finals. Personally I think it should either be the same format or move back to the neutral venue. Deciding the host based on point totals of the two conference leaders is pretty arbitrary since interconference play is limited.

 

NY's schedule down the stretch was cake. Columbus' was very difficult. NY's was home heavy, CLB's was road heavy. Portland also had a very tough run-in. FCDs was no picnic, true.

Plus, Sauro only had 3 games, and one of those was without Trapp. Crew played at nearly 2.0 ppg over the last 20 games, and the team at the end of the year was stronger. Even if they couldn't have caught NY in 40 games (I'm not so sure), the team as it is constructed now, is better than NYs and would beat them out over a full season. Ditto with Portland after Nagbe moved inside.

 

One of the biggest competitions in the world, the UEFA Champions League, plays two legs in the Round of 16, Quarterfinals, and Semifinals and a one game Final.

 

Because sometimes that second leg lacks drama, especially when there's a quick goal after a win in the first leg. The run-up to the final is exciting, and that in-between time between the legs can suck the energy and hope/drama out of it.

In 2009, the Impact won the D2 final's first leg 3-2 in Vancouver. Montreal then scored a quick goal in the second leg (4-2 agg), and that was pretty much the tie right there.

 

The league's logic goes beyond the initial ticket receipts, too. It's about the long-term and psychological factors. Fans feel they've 'participated' in the playoffs when they get to go to a game. As opposed to the poor Toronto fans that waited nine years to watch a pasting on TV in a road game.

This was Lamar Hunt's logic in having a series (originally a 3 game series with a more meaningful HFA, but that's a lot of match dates, and back in the day a lot of those games didn't sell well). And whether one agrees with it, I think the league is likely to stick with a formula where nearly everyone gets to host a game. I'd like the elegance and reward for the regular season that a single-elimination implies, but it's just not what the league is after.

Of course, it does not follow from that that goal aggregate is either good or inevitable. I regard it as basically a sports equivalent of isomorphic mimicry -- an underdeveloped league aping the form of the more developed ones where they don't have the underlying essence of them (ie in this case the UEFA Champions League using it to deliberately neutralize any home field advantage).

Who's to say you couldn't do a 2-leg on points? Then play out the OT at the higher seed any time the points are tied?

 

Well, count me as someone who thinks they got the evolution right.

First off, if you look at the Supporters Shield as a significant trophy in its own right, you are rewarding the team that does best all year long and give them the potential advantage of hosting the championship game. I believe that is potentially significant.

The play in game keeps more teams alive while rewarding teams that did better over the course of the season. It's a tough road for any team to go from sixth place to MLS Cup. Getting a bye is clearly an advantage for higher seeds.

As for the next rounds, the away goals rule is hugely significant, at least potentially. A higher seed can wrap things up on the first leg (a reasonable reward for having a better record in the regular season ) and stay in the hunt longer if they lose but manage to score in the first leg. (Dallas, for example, is capable of beating Portland 2-0 at home and winning the series - a reasonable reward for finishing the season as the leader in the West. The old system without an away goal would offer them no advantage in the same scenario. It also forced Portland to keep pressing for the third goal in the first league after they gave up the away goal.) Basically, the away goals rule potentially rewards a higher seed while forcing them to make a tactical decision.

So, count me as someone who likes the set up

 

I would prefer single game elimination throughout. And free beer. And alarm clocks that wake me up without wanting to smash them. And machines that auto-generate TPS reports. Yeah.., that would be great.

 

There's so many different ways to skin a cat here. Whenever I read one of these threads I read at least two or three ideas that I really like. Ultimately MLS just needs to stick with one format and let that be the format for some time and let more people adopt it. With that in mind, you can count me as one that likes this setup.

 

The other more important reason for dropping the 2-leg format is that it takes too darn long to complete the playoffs. Decision Sunday was a month ago! That's 5 1/2 weeks between Decision Day and MLS Cup.

With NBA, college football, college soccer, etc you completely forget about MLS cup after your team is eliminated. staying interested for >5 weeks is expecting too much of Americans.

 

I agree the playoffs are too stretched out. I view playoffs almost like an international tournament like the WC or Gold Cup. Normally these tournaments will have a team play every 4 days or so. The congestion inevitably tests the team's depth, but I kind of like that. In the current format the MLS champion has to play 6 matches in almost 7 weeks. That is a bit absurd.

The current format is probably driven by the fact that the owners all want to ensure that their playoff game is on a weekend. And they want the extra time between games for marketing.

I personally think this is a bit short sighted. If MLS were ever to become truly popular I think it would do just fine without worrying about these things. Look at a typical 7 game series in other sports. You only get a couple of days notice before you even find out whether there's a game 5 or 6 or 7. And yet fans still make it somehow and the event is successful.

 

It's 5 or 6 playoff matches (and possibly national team games) in 6 weeks. MLS Cup is 6 weeks after the last day of the regular season. 7 game series in other sports give at least as much rest between games as teams are used to from the regular season. MLS clubs are used to playing once a week most weeks with some weeks with two games. I'd also be annoyed if I was the owner (I know MLS is single entity so is owner the right word?) of a team in the playoffs whose home game was midweek and the other leg was on a weekend.

 

My ideal format:
* Regular season ends the week after the November international break (this year, November 21-22)
* U.S. Open Cup final is the following week (this year, November 28-29)
* Conference winners play for the MLS Cup, hosted by higher seed, which is two weeks after the international break (December 5-6)
* 3 of the 4 U.S. CCL berths go to the MLS Cup finalists and the USOC winner. Other high finishing teams enter a playoff that results in the winner getting the fourth berth (or third and fourth berth, depending on how the slots wind up, format would have to be flexible to account for this).

I'd settle for the same format as now with single elimination throughout, hosted by higher seed. The playoffs are way too long with too much downtime.

 

Playoffs would lose some of its luster if I knew my team had little to no chance of hosting a home game.

MLS Cup has already lost its appeal to me since they went away from neutral venue. We've had 4 cups with all 4 won by the home team. I expect that trend to continue indefinitely with few isolated exceptions. Home field advantage becomes more decisive exponentially as the value of the game increases. A final for me is enjoyable when both teams have pretty even odds of succeeding. When the balance is tipped too much in one team's favor before a ball is even kicked I tend to stop paying attention.

 

The top 4 seeds in each conference would still get at least one home game, same as now. Only 5 & 6 would be extremely unlikely to get a home game.

MLS Cup isn't an independent competition, it's the final game of a months-long one. I see no issue with rewarding the team who did better over the season with a home game. It's one of the ways to make the MLS regular season "mean more". A neutral-site U.S. Open Cup final, where neither team has "earned" the right to host on the field, would make more sense in this train of thought (if not any other, at least not yet).

 

I think the obsession with making the regular season mean more could inadvertently make the postseason mean less .... at least for the teams that aren't top seeds. If you make it so difficult for a 5/6 or even 3/4 seed to get the cup then the value of qualifying for one of those seeds goes down.

I know this is unpopular, but if you want to make the regular season mean more then you shorten it to 32 or even 30 games. Right now the regular season is unnecessarily long with many throwaway games that shouldn't even be played for various reasons. And if anything you need to expand the playoffs and eventually when they expand to 16 playoff teams then everyone is guaranteed a home playoff game.

Let's eliminate 2-4 meaningless regular season games that often have to happen during international dates and replace them with 2-4 playoff games. Elimination games and series inherently provide more entertainment and drama than a mundane midseason game against a team you've already played twice in a season. We can still keep roughly the same November period for playoffs, just need to make more use of the midweek. There's no reason teams need a full week between every playoff game. It's very anticlimactic.

 

Count me among those who think it's really the NT window in the middle that's stretching the playoffs out. If we had single elimination, they would still try to put the games on weekends. The once-a-week pace is no different from the NFL (and the NFL takes a week off before the Super Bowl).

True, but there's a 'perception gap' either way. People don't generally feel like the 5 and 6 seeds are very good, so they don't really want them to have an easy path to the playoffs.

 

The point about the NT break is part of it (but I don't think all of it, it's still a five week playoff without it), but the NT break is reality and something that has to be considered.

And the NFL schedule is shorter, since rounds take one week instead of two. That does make a difference.

 

True, although I think it's only a matter of time before we go to a 16 team playoff format. Maybe as early as 2020-25?. And once at 16 it probably stays there for awhile. Is MLS going to stick to the single game play ins? Seems doubtful to me. I think the single game play is just a temporary solution because you can't give a top seed a 2 week bye while the other two play a proper home/away. Once we're at 16 I think the owners will be tempted to guarantee everyone a home game and go with 2 leg ties all the way up to or possibly including the final.

Does that possibly make things a little easier for a lower seed? Maybe ... but I'm not totally convinced. I still think that with a 16 team field the cream will undoubtedly rise to the top. Anyways, any team that can win 3 consecutive home/away ties + a championship is a worthy champion regardless what seed they were