Let's steal some ideas from soccerby Kevin Hench
Kevin Hench is a frequent contributor to FOXSports.com. An accomplished film and television writer, Hench's latest screenwriting credit is for The Hammer, which stars Adam Carolla and is now available on DVD.
A lesser sport would have taken the hint years ago: America was not interested.
The NASL folded. The MISL folded. The WUSA folded.
But like a drunk guy with no ride home, soccer just kept pawing at us. And against all odds, a love connection may finally be forming.
The Seattle Sounders of MLS are averaging almost 30,000 fans a game. A new women's professional league has launched. Americans have purchased more tickets than any other country to World Cup 2010 in South Africa.
And, depending on the water cooler or watering hole, American sports fans are actually talking about the pricey transfers of Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka to Real Madrid. (Heck, the Manchester United owner blessing the $131M transfer of Ronaldo is yank tycoon Malcolm Glazer who also owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.)
Americans may not know the difference between George Best and Marco Van Basten, but if someone pays $228M to acquire two players -- not to mention the tens of millions each player will command in salary -- we take note.
But this isn't yet another cri de coeur hoping the beautiful global game becomes as big in the U.S. as it seems to be everywhere else. No, this is a plea to the major American sports to adopt three elements of European football that would seriously spice up the U.S. sports landscape.
I'm talking about the transfer market, in-season tournaments and -- best of all -- relegation.
Transfer market
In European football, at the end of each season and for a short while in midseason, teams can sell their players -- or "transfer" them -- to the highest bidder. Ronaldo, the reigning FIFA Player of the Year, was under contract to Manchester United through 2012. This was a commodity with real market value in the wild and woolly free market of professional soccer.
Instead of the traditional American system of losing a star player to free agency for little (a draft pick) or no compensation or trading him for prospects, a club can sell him for whatever the market will bear.
The Cavaliers could lose LeBron James to free agency after next season. But imagine if owner Dan Gilbert could auction off the right to sign LeBron right now? Assuming a deal was in place to sign LeBron to a max extension, how much non-salary-cap-limited scratch would one of the NBA's billionaire owners be willing to part with to have LeBron come to town? I'm guessing it would eclipse Ronaldo's $131M record.
By buying Ronaldo and 2007 FIFA Player of the Year Kaka, Real Madrid essentially just signed the LeBron and Kobe of futbol. Guess ownership was not satisfied with its runner-up finish to Barcelona in La Liga. The spending spree evokes the Yankees' signing Mark Teixeira ($185M), CC Sabathia ($161M) and A.J. Burnett ($82.5) after missing the playoffs last year. But the key difference is the teams that lost those stars don't get any of that $428.5M.
I'm sure the Atlanta Braves would be much happier if they'd scored some serious dough for Teixeira at the 2008 deadline as opposed to acquiring Casey Kotchman (.745 OPS) and Stephen Marek (6.35 ERA in Double-A).
American baseball already does a version of the transfer when acquiring players under contract to Japanese teams. The Red Sox paid the Seibu Lions $51M for the right to negotiate a $52M, six-year contract with Daisuke Matsuzaka. Why not open up the posting system between teams in Major League Baseball?
Since small-market teams are always going to lose out on big free agents, at least a transfer system would give them an opportunity to infuse some much-needed cash into their organization. I don't know how much Nate McLouth would have fetched in a wide-open transfer market, but the Pirates might have been able to help their organization more by having that dough to sign draft picks and offer extensions than by receiving three prospects from Atlanta.
In-season tournaments
In professional sports leagues in America most fans know before the first pitch, kickoff or opening tip whether their team is a contender or pretender. A month into the season it's even clearer. Which leads to most teams playing out a semi-meaningless 162 or 82 or 16-game schedule.
In European soccer there's always something to play for. England has the Premier League crown which 20 teams vie for each year, even though everyone knows Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea are going to win it every season. Then there's the Football Association Cup, a knock-out tournament among all levels of club teams that takes place during the Premiership season. The Big Four almost always win the FA Cup too, but Portsmouth ended their 12-year hammerlock on the trophy in 2008.
There's also the League Cup, another in-season elimination tournament between the Premier League teams. Seven different teams have won the League Cup in the last 10 years.
And, of course, there's the European Cup or UEFA Champions League tournament that pits the best clubs from all of Europe's pro leagues against one another.
In American sports, there is one champion and a bunch of bummed out losers. European soccer has a way of spreading the joy around. A team that is scuffling in the league standings can salvage its season -- and generate a lot of additional revenue -- with a long run in one of the tournaments.
Baseball, basketball and hockey would all do well to drastically shorten their regular seasons and create space during the year for these mini-championships.
It may be hard to imagine a Knicks-Bobcats game meaning much in April, but think of the intensity if losing meant being relegated to a lower league. (Streeter Lecka / Getty Images)
Relegation
Visiting England a few years back I came across a book called "Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK."
Hull, a Yorkshire port city of about 250,000 was the "winner."
In subsequent magazine and TV stories Hull defended its crown ably. A high crime rate, high levels of obesity and the lowest-rated education system in England were some of the reasons Channel 4 would later give for naming Hull the least desirable place to live in not-always-so-jolly ol' England.
But three Sundays ago -- on May 23 -- those dumb, fat bastards in Hull lived in the happiest place on earth.
Sure, the Hull City A.F.C. Tigers lost 1-0 to Manchester United's third string on the final day of the English Premier League season. But as Hull was bowing to the league champs, who had clinched the title earlier in the week, the news from out of town made the 24,945 fans packed into Kingston Communications Stadium forget that they would likely be mugged on the way home.
In 38 games -- the length of the Premiership season -- Hull had won only eight games. The Tigers had won just twice in their last 29 matches (also known as "fixtures"). They had been outscored on the season by 25 goals. But Newcastle's 1-0 loss at Aston Villa on that final Sunday meant that Hull had finished 17th out of 20 teams in the Premiership. And that meant Hull had avoided relegation, demotion to what amounts to the English football equivalent of Triple-A.
When the Newcastle result went final you'd have thought an English national team made up exclusively of lads from Hull had just won the World Cup. Such is the glory of staying in the "top flight" and the ignominy of finishing in the dreaded "drop zone."
In England -- and all across Europe -- the worst teams in the top soccer division get shipped to the minors, replaced by the top finishers in the second division. Relegation creates as much, if not more, excitement at the bottom of the standings as at the top.
In Germany, the top team in the second division swaps spots with the worst team in the top division (the Bundesliga) while the second-best team in division two and the second-worst team in the Bundesliga play each other for the right to be in the top flight. You think a one-game playoff between the Washington Nationals and the Toledo Mud Hens for the right to be in Major League Baseball might be a little more exciting than the way it is now?
Relegation creates dire financial repercussions for a team. Who wants to pay good money to see minor league soccer? This leads to teams not being able to sign or re-sign top players, which can send them plummeting further into the bushes to the equivalent of Double-A or A-ball. (The second, third and fourth tier leagues work the same way: promotion for a high finish, demotion for being in the bottom two or three.)
So instead of tanking to get more ping-pong balls in the NBA lottery or the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, European soccer teams fight like hell to win down the stretch.
The transfer of top players is as American as the free market. America loves crowning champions, something European soccer leagues get to do three or four times a season with all their tournaments. And Americans love a fight to the finish, something guaranteed by the threat of relegation.
They can keep their 0-0 draws and constant offsides flags, but the transfer market, in-season tournaments and relegation are three ideas worth stealing.
