Saturday, March 20, 2010

Hello

Hello,

You may remember me. Andrew, the other guy who writes on this site. Yeah, I've been kind of busy with some things. You wouldn't believe some of the stories. I should probably be in bed right now getting some sleep. I will do that.

But first a few general observations that I have somehow been able to make in the past month.

A new CBA has been reached. I'm just glad a deal was reached and that the season will begin on time. A work stoppage would have been a disaster for the Revolution and the rest of the league. I don't know the details but I'm just glad a deal is in place.

The Revolution move to Comcast sports. Does this mean they will actually mention the words "New England Revolution" on New England Sports tonight? No chance in hell. I hate that show with a passion. Is it still called that or does it have a new name? The show is terrible and I'm not just saying that because they don't talk about the Revolution. Their coverage of the Celtics and Bruins the past 8 years has been a disgrace. The show just sucks. I'd get more into it but I don't feel like getting all worked about it. The fact that the games will be in HD is a nice little addition. Too bad I don't have a HD tv. Damn.

Greg Lalas is no longer doing games. I wasn't a fan. He's certainly not the worst commentator in MLS, which isn't saying much, but we could do better. Lets see how Heaps does, it's an interesting choice. We need Ray Hudson to do Revolution games. But we'd really have to get him to become a huge Revolution fan so that he'd opnely root for them, like he did during the last week of La Liga a few years back in which he openly rooted for Espanyol so that they'd stay in the first divison. Amazing.

Some other things happened, but like I said, I haven't had much time to follow it. I don't think any of it was too important. The sun still rose and set every day. Or so I'm told. I honestly don't know. I'd have to take your word for it.

I'm actually having a really good time, just thought I'd make some jokes at my own expense.

-Andrew

Thursday, March 18, 2010

2010 TV Schedule

This Monday, March 15, the Revs announced their 2010 TV schedule. The team has a new deal with Comcast SportsNet to be the exclusive regional broadcaster of Revs games. CSN will show a total of 27 games, and miss out on the three others, which will be nationally broadcasted by FSC and FSE (2) and ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes (1).

The article from revolutionsoccer.net can be found here.

CSN takes the place of WSBK TV-38 of last season. In addition to this, Jay Heaps will be the color commentator, a role that was filled by Greg Lalas last season. Brad Feldman will stay on as the play-by-play man.

This is good. Was my TV the only one that made the Revs games on TV-38 look like a video from a cheap camera phone? CSN will have every game available in HD. CSN also reaches more households in New England.

TV revenue is one of the major sources of revenue for other top leagues in the world. MLS lags behind the biggest leagues in this arena, so every step forward is valuable. CSN is also the regional broadcaster for San Jose Earthquakes and DC United in 2010.

Concerning Heaps vs. Lalas, I wasn't a huge fan of Lalas, just as a matter of personal preference. I can't think of many great MLS commentators though...or any, actually. Hopefully Heaps does a good job. I'll give him a few weeks to get acclimated to the job before making a definitive judgment.

Overall, I like this news.

John

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

CBA Expiration

The MLS CBA expired last Thursday. The Players, as of now at least, are continuing with normal preseason activities as if the season will start when it's supposed to.

I wrote a piece for PremiershipTalk.com about this over the weekend, which you can see here. The gist of the article is that there's a lot of uncertainty about what happens now; the league hasn't operated without a CBA since 2004, and there were some key issues that would have been settled in the new CBA.

I have a feeling something big will happen soon; they can't operate without a CBA forever...that's terrible for the Players because it means they don't have the rights that a CBA would have given them. Ives Galarcep cautioned that a strike is still possible. Until then, the League has won the power battle over the Players.

Overall, this is a bad situation MLS finds itself in. Even if the League holds the growth of the sport as its top priority, it generally likes to go about it much more conservatively than I would like it to. I don't like the centralized structure. I want free agency, along with a CBA-dictated salary cap.

I also want to use my Revolution season tickets in 2010. A strike would pose a threat to this. In fact, during the duration of the strike I definitely could not attend Revolution games. But I could still go to the Gillette parking lot at 4pm on would-be game days and drink beer and grill burgers. So my reaction to a strike, if it happens, will be a balancing act between these things, and maybe others.

Hopefully something good happens soon. In the meantime, take a look at the link in Taylor Twellman's awesome tweet, "Me and My Bitches in latest issue of Boston Magazine". I didn't know he was that kind of guy.

-John