Comments on: Thunder Players Voice Opinions on Sale of USL and TOA Confusion

By: Brian Quarstad

Brian Quarstad — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:41:31 +0000

I agree, particularly with your last two paragraphs. By they way, just found your comment. It ended up in my Spam again. Duhoooo!

By: Kenn Tomasch

Kenn Tomasch — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:16:40 +0000

Yes, thank you.

I will take issue with one thing Jonathan Greenfield (who I like quite a bit as a player, and, from what I’ve heard, is a Class A person) said.

The reason the indoor split didn’t help players is because instead of one potentially decent league, they ended up with two crap, disorganized leagues.

But, in general, as a player, competing leagues can only HELP you because it is inevitable that salary inflation will occur – if you’re a player, you can negotiate between leagues and drive up your price.

Now, admittedly, soccer may not be the perfect economic construct. It’s not 100% certain that we can support two leagues, or that either of the two leagues in a two-league universe could be strong enough on their own to make that salary inflation kick in. Two 15-team leagues? With solid franchises? Yeah, that would be good for players, because it would give them more choices.

But an 8-team (potentially) and a 5-team (potentially) league? Disastrous.

One of the major problems in our sport, and this goes back several years, is a lack of a commonality of vision. We talk about “for the good of the game,” but when it comes right down to it, it’s been every man for himself (and a couple of friends and their agendas) and that’s not been good for the game.

Without arguing the relative merits of NuRock vs. Jeff Cooper or anything, I just think there are a lot of raw nerves right now and cooler heads need to prevail once the initial knicker-twisting is over with.

This sport – particularly at this level – would not be well-served by a CART/IRL-like split. And everyone involved needs to recognize that.

By: Brian Quarstad

Brian Quarstad — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:10:24 +0000

Fan, fixed that, thanks.

The rest of the story Kenn knows about as it was a complete cluster for a number of reasons which I won’t go into at this time. But it was basically oversight and technical. If he had emailed me it would have been taken care of immediately. I’ve apologized to him but have heard nothing back from him since doing so.

By the way, I did give him credit on the original mention of his interview this spring when I was doing the USL Week in Review.

By: Fan

Fan — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:04:31 +0000

Thanks for finally giving Kenn credit (even if you did leave one ‘n’ off his first name).

By: Brian Quarstad

Brian Quarstad — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:49:59 +0000

I would say more so the doing the small things consistently day in and day out. My impression is, this is not something just noticed by the fans. There are some pretty smart guys playing for the Thunder. Guys with business degrees and marketing degrees. They too understand (or don’t understand) the lack of marketing. There are ways to do things on a shoe string budget. It won’t get you the numbers that a big ad campaign will but its some sort of presence until you can get the capital to start doing larger scale campaigns.

By: Jon M.

Jon M. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:36:45 +0000

Maybe I’m getting the wrong idea, but this: “You have to sacrifice and do the small things consistently day in and day out.” …has not exactly been the M.O. of the front office, the past two years.

By: Brian Quarstad

Brian Quarstad — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:53:52 +0000

Thanks much Nathan for being a regular reader and commenter.

By: nathan3e

nathan3e — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:43:39 +0000

Nice work, as usual.