Ah, it’s always nice to get in on the ground floor of history.
Today, Onward! celebrates the birth of a new soccer league. No, I don’t mean a reborn Major League Soccer, saved from labour chaos and tucked into a cozy five-year cocoon of forced league-wide mediocrity.
I refer to a new project that begins on MLS opening night – this very Thursday when Philly debuts against Highlighter-Green Rain Forest.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
To back my ongoing claim that MLS is essentially a coin-flip league, where the teams are largely equal and no team or teams can ever become strong enough to lift themselves – and the competition – clear of the middlesome mire, I am going to start … counting coin-flips.
Whoever wins the opening coin-toss of each and every MLS soccer match shall be credited with – a win! Such dead-even fifty-fiftiness should produce a thrilling, dead-even competition, with all 16 teams squarely in the playoff hunt come the Autumnal Equinox.
A couple of provisions:
- Obviously, I won’t have access to every opening coin flip. So it shall be policy of the Coin-Toss League that whichever team kicks off to open the match shall be declared the winner. If team X decides, for whatever loopy reason, to defer its choice to the second half, it does so at its own competitive peril.
- If – when! – an MLS match ends in a draw, it shall be considered a draw in the coin-flip league, as well. Two reasons for this. It’s a statistical control which ensures both leagues will have the same number of wins. This will become important for satirical reasons. Also, because MLS is designed to be a place where equality rules, why should the Coin-Toss League deny equal points to teams who spent an entire match unable to defeat each other?
And in the post-season, of course, coin-calling will be … everything.
I expect a thrilling parallel soccer season. Which teams will emerge? Which MLS captains can’t call a flying coin worth bat spit? (The eyes of Red Patch are upon ye, Jimmy B!)
It’s the only proper, admiring response I can give to a league where the players won some minimal human rights in exchange to committing to five more years on competitive life-support.
If MLS wants to hold a little coin-flip ceremony at the beginning of games which are essentially forced coin-flips anyway, it’s long-since time that someone’s soccer blog started adding them up.
Onward! is that blog – and I am that someone.
Heads or tails, y’all?
Onward!