Ep 301: Addressing Some Objections to Promotion and Relegation

The following is a brief chat I had with Terry on objections to promotion and relegation in American soccer.

For the uninitiated, American soccer is polarized.

It’s polarized between those who subscribe to American exceptionalism when it comes to soccer, and those who don’t.

Let me explain a bit.

Outside literally a handful of countries, the entire world consisting of 190+ countries operates its soccer as an open ecosystem. That means it is based on opportunity, freedom, and merit. And the mechanism by which this is instantiated, is promotion and relegation.

By contrast, the special interests in the United States have set up a closed ecosystem that rejects opportunity, freedom, and merit.

A polarization between those of us who fight for opportunity, freedom and a merit based system, and those who claim the United States is special. And thus, can’t allow opportunity and freedom.

They claim that a system of promotion relegation would destroy soccer in our country.

Of course, this is not their original thought. They’ve been programmed for years with this line of thinking by the special interests that have a monopoly on the ecosystem.

As such, many parrot objections to promotion relegation without even understanding what the underlying struggle is about. It’s not about kicking a stupid ball around a rectangular field for 90 minutes.

It’s about whether you believe in opportunity and freedom, or you don’t. Even supporters of pro/rel haven’t seemed to grasp this yet.

Now, there’s a ton to unpack in these statements, and that’s something that will be done over the course of time and episodes. Today, is about starting to address a few classic, superficial objections.

Specifically, Terry and I touch on two:

1. That we can’t have pro/rel because the lower divisions don’t have the wherewithal to operate in such a structure. And
2. that newly promoted clubs “park the bus”, and so makes for poor entertainment value.

Spoiler alert, both of these are bullshit.

Again, these chats are totally free flow and unscripted. I don’t even know what the topic will be when Terry hops on a call with me.

But that’s okay. The intention is to get started, then later we’ll clean it all up for you.

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