That was Logan’s biggest mistake, which came from the idea that you had win over American sports fans who weren’t necessarily fans of soccer, because the base of American soccer fans wasn’t enough, in their view. So early MLS had such fabulous innovations as the 25 yard dribble-n-shoot to break ties, and a clock that counted down and stopped for breaks.

That last one was particularly bad, because it defeated one of the best things about having the ref control the clock: discretion. Refs are supposed to take into account game action that could affect the result of a match in the timing of blowing the final whistle. So if the team in possession could win or draw by continuing their attack, the ref is supposed to give them a reasonable amount of time to do that. In contrast, in early MLS, when the clock ran out, it ran out. I remember seeing the final seconds of a game in MLS where the losing team picked the ball up at the halfway line with a few seconds to go. There was nothing for them to do but to desperately punt towards goal, and of course, nothing became of it. Had it been a normal match, they might have been given enough time to launch one more real attack before the final whistle was blown. Seeing that pretty much killed the credibility of the league for me and I largely ignored it until the Sounders joined.

While I also did not like the old clock, it did at least prevent the inconsistent application of stoppage time, a problem in my opinion today.

Of course, you don’t need a clock rule circa 1996 MLS to do that. You just need more clear guidlines regarding stoppage time, universal application of those guidelines, and accountability on the part of those determining and enforcing stoppage time.

I can’t accept these numbers to be true. I watch Dallas play on TV and it looks like 500 people are they and they report 9,000? NY looks to be 1/3 full and they report a 2/3 full stadium?

I bet they are making these numbers up! I bet you somebody is putting down their birthday as the team’s attendance.

Does anybody know someone in the Colorado organization who’s birthday is Oct 4, 1983?

Match the attendence progression for years 2 – 5 for all teams and put them side by side.

That way you could normalize out the “new” factor that Fear is talking about. I’d take out year one, just because year one of MLS was such an anomaly it would skew the long term decline for the original teams beyond usefull analysis.