It never fails to escape me how serendipitous writing about Sporting Kansas City can be. I’ve seen the very best and worst of fan behavior over the last 30 years, from the wretched days of hooliganism in England, to demonstrations of unfailing support that have changed games and left me in awe. Roll back to 1989 and an FA Cup 3rd Round Replay at Highbury on a Wednesday night. Arsenal were on a roll, playing amazingly, and would go on to win the league and they were unlucky not to grab a win at West Ham United’s Upton Park the prior Saturday.

The Hammers were hopeless, bottom of the standings, and Arsenal pounded them – absolutely dominated them – and somewhere near the end of the first half the thousands of West Ham fans in the Clock End started a methodical relentless chant …

“Johnny Lyall’s Claret n’ Blue Army”
“Johnny Lyall’s Claret n’ Blue Army”
“Johnny Lyall’s Claret n’ Blue Army”
“Johnny Lyall’s Claret n’ Blue Army”
“Johnny Lyall’s Claret n’ Blue Army”
“Johnny Lyall’s Claret n’ Blue Army”

After a few minutes they mixed it up … the west side of their away supporters paddock would sing it, with the east side repeating it right back to them, then the west side firing it right back and on and on and on and on …

After 10 minutes of that the Arsenal fans grew restless and started to try and fire back, but every time there was a silence or lull in play, and for the entirety of the half time period, West Ham could be heard … and the bastards were getting louder, and Highbury’s home faithful a lot quieter. They kept going and going and going …. 10 minutes turned into 20, 30 … and the stadium was theirs, it belonged to West Ham United.

In the face of such belligerent, unyielding noise there was nothing to be done, there was no pausing in between the lines in their simple damned chant, there was no choice but to sing over the top of them but they never stopped. Highbury – and its famous North Bank – quit, and as the home field advantage became West Ham’s the game changed. West Ham managed to start playing, and finally in the 77th minute nodded in the game winning goal via Leroy Rosenior.

They changed the game … and they never quit singing the John Lyall song for the remainder of the game. I have no doubt to this day that they made the difference that night. Sometimes at Highbury it felt like if we made enough noise on a given day we could also force Arsenal to be better, and I’d never seen Arsenal fans shut down at home that way whilst there was still a game to be played. The West Ham fans were magnificent ….

Last night after the unveiling of the 2013 home jersey there was what essentially amounted to a mini-pep rally at Sporting Park. Robb Heineman talked about aspirations of the team and how the fans needed to step it up even more to help the team towards those goals. Peter Vermes reiterated the same speech, talking about an Assistant Coach in MLS who had said that a game at Sporting Park was the longest 90 minutes in MLS.

I thought about this on the way home, what we could really do to take things up a notch in a stadium that is already loud and proud. The obvious things jump out – the people that don’t sing and chant might consider it – but that is a lost battle there, not everybody goes to games for the experience that is standing in the middle of the KC Cauldron. People will argue about if we need more or less drums, more songs or less songs. I’ll just point to the West Ham fans on a given day who simply refused to see their team beat and simply never quit singing for even a second for close on 70 minutes.

What if Sporting Kansas City fans became relentless? What would that mean?

Maybe that when things are not going our way the support really shines, maybe that if we fall behind that we don’t get quiet, that we don’t lose heart even when it feels hopeless. That we simply accept that sometimes the support we generate is enough to push a tired player to one last burst that can change a game, that an injured player might refuse to come off when there are no subs left, or that visiting teams and officials could simply learn to dread and fear stepping into Sporting Park in a whole new way.

It takes effort, and maybe it takes an East London “we survived the Blitz and kept on smiling” attitude.

Maybe it just takes pride.

Part of the mentality of London, and West Ham – and maybe of England – over the years has simply been one of no surrender. The idea that you can take it in the shins, be hopelessly defeated and then shrug and stand up because … you are just not going to quit. Maybe it’s the way us Island Race folk live, maybe it’s just the way we have been conditioned to think. It translated to the terraces in the most abominable way, but as I said at the beginning I have seen the best and worst of fans.

Bradford City took a beating on Sunday, a League Two team playing Swansea of the Premier League in the English League Cup Final and boom … 5-0. Their EPL opposition finally showed the gulf in class and it was not really a fair fight, and 82,000 fans in the stadium split roughly down the middle – half from Swansea, half from Bradford – and in the second half it was the Bradford fans having a ball. They conceded the third goal, the game was over – and then ‘Stand up if you love Bradford’ echoes around Wembley Stadium – the tens of thousands rose to their feet and for the remainder of the game continued to sing, and wave flags so much so that it was an amazing thing to witness on television.

Sure they had much to celebrate, having made it to a final from the fourth tier of the English ‘pyramid’ but they’d been humbled. After going to bed the night before dreaming of heroic little Bradford getting it done one last time in a run that saw them beat Championship high flyers Watford, as well as Premier League Wigan, Arsenal and Aston Villa over two legs, it all fell apart. When it did, Bradford’s fans really did stand up, cheering loudly late in the game when they got their one and only shot on goal and generally having a party – they made a memorable day out of a horrible scoreline.

In KC … we have a tendency to wallow a bit. There, I’ve said it … things don’t go well and we huff and puff, rant about referees but when the shit really hits the fan we get a lot quieter. Precisely when the team needs a lift the most. It is easy to sing loudly and passionately when we are winning, it is a lot harder when you are down to 10 men and 3-1 down with 20 minutes to go. This doesn’t make us bad fans, this makes us human beings, but as supporters it does show us there is a little extra step we can take – getting behind the team when they are failing, and doing so in a way that changes games and days out for the better.

That is the step we can take. The question is … can we?

Sometimes things just don’t turn out the way you think they will. I went to bed last night anticipating a morning spent at Sporting KC watching fitness tests and very light practice, and I did. I anticipated chatting with a player or two, shaking a few hands, shooting the shit with journalists and bloggers, and coming back and telling you all about ‘The first day of training’.

Last year I wrote about quiet determination and the tough road draft picks had. The year before .. well, I can’t remember, but I threw out some video interviews with Stephane Auvray and Craig Rocastle, which in hindsight, clearly doomed them both. Sorry guys. This year? A lazy old day.

Huh?

Yeah, sorry, I know you might want to hear about grown men kicking a ball around but … I want to talk about something else. I don’t even know who won the beep test. Nobody was maimed. There isn’t much to say about the ‘action’. Off the plastic practice surface, however, was Sean Dane, unofficial KC Cauldron hype man, occasionally checking his smart phone and looking at donations pouring in for Hector Solario. You might not know the name, but if you are a Sporting Kansas City fan, you probably know him as the half-naked Mexican guy in the Indian headdress that stands behind the goal in the Members Stand at Sporting Park.

Hector Solario. Photo courtesy of Thad Bell/Backpost.net

Hector was in a terrible car crash just before Christmas. He broke his pelvis, he spent a month in hospital, and he’s not going to be walking for a little while. It is not a fun thing, and being America in 2012, the burdens of extended medical expenses take a toll, especially when you are a small business owner than cannot work.

Meanwhile, to our right, Robb Heineman was in the middle of a media scrum. It sounds amazing given the verbiage I have put into LIVESTRONG the last day or two, but I was surprised to see them all on a day usually attended by a few bloggers, with ‘the media’ turning up right at the end of proceedings for a few sound bites and some B-Roll. I lamented about the old days when nobody cared about Sporting KC before somebody mentioned Oprah and Lance. The chatter turned to Robb, how we felt for him having to deal with the mess.

I popped my camera on my monopod and started to snap a few pictures. Peter Vermes gesticulating like Al Pacino in the Godfather, Dom Dwyer, Claudio Bieler …I was looking for faces that I didn’t have in my collection. Kei Kamara sauntered into practice late, said hi as he walked by, and kept rolling. Practice wound down. Sean Dane let us know that another $600 had been raised. Aurelien Collin stopped by to bump fists and say hi. Robb Heineman sauntered over for a chat. I spent a few minutes talking to Kurt Austin about my kids. Traded a head nod or two with players I hadn’t seen for a while.

For some of you, this might sound like a big old name drop, but for fans who have been around for awhile, meeting the players and ownership is kind of par for the course. Don’t believe me? Just stick around awhile. Its a trip at first but nobody is really stand-offish. I felt comfortably within my element, happy that pre-season was rolling and then it was all over.

The media scrum closed around Peter Vermes, smaller than earlier, but most stuck around. The players completed their stretches. I chatted with Thad Bell, who gently suggested that I be a bit less like Jim Rome, who swears a lot. It was time for interviews … on the only local media day before media day in March or late February, I didn’t want a formal interview with a player spitting out formal answers while other folk shoved mics over my shoulder or while I felt rushed. I instead checked to see if I could get some access over the Arizona and Florida breaks. Thad needed to see Jimmy Nielsen.

He had a set of donated gloves that would be put up for auction for Hector. Thad and I explained what had happened. Jimmy signed the gloves happily, I dropped back to take a few pictures. Sean stopped by again … another update. Nearly $2000 … wow.

Thad moved on to do an interview. Robb stopped by to ask about Hector, not a casual chat but a real ‘what is the plan’. After the last three days, I’d have forgiven him for simply escaping, but he sought Sean out for details and then it happened, that moment in training I remember from every year.

A tall, skinny black kid was sneaking up on Robb. He looked kind of cautious, kind of shy … Ike Opara wanted to introduce himself to Robb “I’ve never met you before, I wanted to say Hi”. He looked so young, his body language was ‘timid’. Robb introduced him to Sean, Sean mentioned the Cauldron. “I’m glad to be playing for you instead of against you!”. He smiled, broadly, warmly, and I instantly liked him. I found myself thinking “You’re gonna fit in just fine around here … welcome to the family”.

Slowly, we made our way outside; I found myself with Sean, Thad, Andy and Todd Palmer. Just like every other first day, nobody seemed to want to leave. We stood in the warm sun and talked about the team and soccer, about work, and a thousand random topics before going our own separate ways. An hour with the team had turned into three and reinforced the idea that the friendly, warm, community made up of players, coaches, and fans is something so much more than football.

The last update from Sean? $3,670. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Get well Hector.

I like to think of myself as an observer and informed critic. I don’t just take what is spoon fed to me and go forwards, I like to check things out a bit. I like to question, and probe, and listen. I like to watch body language, I look for eyes that smile, I’m good at picking up the small things people say and do that would be considered tells in poker. When the myriad of questions have been asked and answered, once I have confirmed and reconfirmed, once I’ve bounced ideas of friends and colleagues I feel like I have a pretty good handle on where we are. I’m not just talking about facts, I’m talking about mood, emotional state. I read people well, I feel like my bullshit meter is dialed in and it has afforded me a lifetime of amazing friends and relationships.

I might never be a rich man, or a famous, or appreciated for much more than this little space by the broader world but I can say, hand on heart I have never been let down by anybody I’ve put my faith into. I ask questions, I get answers and in return I can share what is on my mind in return. I try and bring that to bare on the work I do on Sporting Times, the work I have done for the team on the Radio, on the Podcast. I figure if you as a reader are going to put your faith in me, that I can give you a no horse shit account of what I think the case is. Where it has lead me to surprises me, I thought this site, when it was launched was going to become the all singing, all dancing one stop shop for Wizards fans. In 2013 I am a post or two a month opinion guy who only writes when he feels moved to. I don’t feel I need to throw out 500 posts a year to be heard, and what you hear reflects exactly what is on my mind.

Yesterday’s anti-Lance Armstrong tirade was weeks and weeks of growing frustration and fatigue boiling over into a piece that I guess reads well but I’m not so proud of today. I happen to think the guy is a cheat, and a liar and that should be no revelation to anybody with a pulse. While I am not going to list the article amongst my favorites, this is my space, I don’t have editors that will try and neuter my opinions, deadlines that force me to hit publish on things that I’m not happy with, just a Like box, comments and my analytics to let me know how I’m doing. I’m happy with it. In another world I might have discovered my love for writing before I had two kids, a wife and a mortgage and wanted to take on journalism as a profession. Given the constraints, salary and uncertainty that seems to pervade traditional print media I just can’t imagine it. Reporting facts without being able to go op-ed on things … that isn’t for me.

I respect the guys that do so. Occasionally I’ll butt heads with them, but I have many friends within the profession both inside Kansas City and outside. In a world where the newsrooms are shrinking and the guys that wear many caps are deemed to be more valuable than the one trick pony standards are dropping. Newspapers that I read these days (.. a rare event) leave me frustrated. The content has been replaced with fluff, half of it from the AP and it seems like opinion pieces have devolved into the written equivalent of the shock jock. I get it, you turn a few heads, you create a buzz, people engage and in a world where they can do so via social media instantaneously it is a commodity. I’m not sure if Sam Mellinger was trying to make ripples on Tuesday or write an honest piece about the Livestrong mess. Factually, he pointed out he was correct on many points but the tone and tenure of the piece left me angry. After reading it I put it down and got on with something else. I wanted to come back and look at the fallout later – to see how it was taken.

Sporting Kansas City Fans are a fierce bunch at the best of times. Fiercely protective of the team they love and any small slight can be elevated to hysterical levels. People were angry about the piece but that isn’t particularly unusual. I read the article later for a second time to see how it fit into a landscape where many fans and people I respect around MLS were talking about Sporting Club’s split with LIVESTRONG being unfortunate but necessary. Nobody of any standing seemed to be mocking, or painting Sporting KC too badly. But Sam Mellinger was talking about the organization earning its first “skid mark.. right across the face”. Delicate lead in .. I went on.

Humbled … Inexperience … naivety … star-chasing …. tarnished … blown to bits …. kick to the crotch … Sporting got dumped … Sporting looks the fool …. Sporting’s brand is sullied, it’s message diluted … and on and on and on.

I was frustrated again. As crazy as I get on here, and remember I likened Lance Armstrong to an unflushable piece of shit yesterday I like to think there is a line where even if I am hyperbolic, or crude, or judgmental, that I am still not too far away from reality and mood my audience is looking for. I am one of the SKC crazy’s. This piece didn’t fit that mood. It felt like misdirected and spiteful.

I wanted to pick at it .. to pull it apart paragraph by paragraph, instead I decided to chat with a journalist pal of mine who suggested that my Kansas City fandom might have been getting in the way of my objectivity. It stung a bit … I am not that guy. I’ve had Robb Heineman thank me for glowing praise written here .. I’ve also had him flat out slug me in the back, I’m a royal pain in the ass and I know it, but I like to think I am fair to almost everybody but Lance Armstrong. I’ve had my fill of that guy …. and it felt like Sam Mellinger’s piece fit that tone … the article felt like he was tired of having perfect Sporting Kansas City shoved down his throat and wanted to lash out now that he had a chance. Time to swing for the fences … Sporting KC have left one out over the plate.

I linked the article to Jason Davis, national soccer writer in a thousand places, host of The Best Soccer Show, a guy I respect, a guy who will just as soon jump on a cause as he will hammer fans who go over the top. He is one of the few folk around the game I follow and unconnected to Sporting KC or LIVESTRONG or me. I wanted to see what he thought.

@davisjsn Yo Jason … kansascity.com/2013/01/15/401… … as an outsider to the SKC scene how does this read to you? Fair or sneering or?

— SportingTimes.net (@Sporting_Times) January 16, 2013

@sporting_times Reads like a hatchet job from someone who didn’t like Sporting from the start.

— Jason Davis (@davisjsn) January 16, 2013

I was almost disappointed when he came back talking “hatchet job”, I wanted him to pat me on the head and say “simmer down James, it seems fair …”. Hatched job … according to the Collin’s English Dictionary .. “a malicious or devastating verbal or written attack”. It was exactly on par with my gut feeling, except there appeared to be more malice than devastation. I’ve learned that the more extreme I am the less credence folk give me. While I have seen Mellinger go balls out in the past it fit, watching him throw Scott Pioli under the bus fit, watching attacks on the Royals fit – everybody could relate to those frustrations yet here he was faulting Sporting KC in the most inflated way.

“Sporting KC’s brash and innovative brand is now tarnished.”

The detached from reality nasty tone and the idea that Sporting KC as a brand now had what amounted to shit in its face and didn’t do anything but reinforce the simple idea that if things are going to be done right. I’m going to have to do it. Andy Edwards is going to have to do it. Teenage Grace Rogers who approached this with more maturity than the Star Columnist … will have to do it. The un-pros have this covered.

If I were in Mellinger’s spot last night I might have started by saying:

“When Robb Heineman and Co climbed into bed with Lance Armstrong and the LIVESTRONG foundation it was an exciting time, a bold decision from a team who have made bold decision after bold decision.

Innovative might be the buzzword they have chosen to describe themselves with but I prefer hell bent and determined to make Sporting Kansas City the premier franchise in sport in any measurable category. Instead of building a cookie cutter stadium they went big and built the Taj Mahal – they wanted to make a serious statement of intent to Kansas City and MLS, it was bold. They took an established if under-performing American brand and switched it up to a European ‘Sporting’ which was a risk that has paid off tenfold. It was bold, bold enough that Heineman acknowledged that some fans would hate it and that Sporting KC might lose them. Sporting did lose some, they gained tens of thousands more.

They went big on the US Open Cup bidding and beat out Seattle for home field advantage … bold …. they changed the team colors … bold … they put fans in charge of ticket sales in areas of the stadium … bold … they stand with the fans in the section … bold … the US OPEN CUP is given to FANS to cart around the city to show off to people … BOLD … they have unashamedly campaigned for World Cup Qualifiers and the biggest games. They’ll get a qualifier and the All Star Game this year … BOLD BOLD BOLD … etc etc etc….

And one move fails? The most admirable of the lot? the altruistic one? The one where they get into bed with a charity hoping that the charity will help them get concerts and events into LSP through which they can generate and donate tremendous amounts of money for said charity as well as via ticket sales and merchandising on match days? Instead of taking the first major corp to throw a million or two at them they stuck LIVESTRONG across the front of the crown jewel of stadiums?

Naive they were maybe, to believe that Lance Armstrong’s downside basically didn’t exist – underestimating it was the mistake, but maybe when you are a positive, forward thinking company that makes bold decisions it is by your very nature and character normal to look the beast in the face and go for it anyway.

Fortune favors the brave, befriends the bold, and in the words of the Bard himself – Boldness be my friend. Sporting Kansas City have no egg in their face, it simply didn’t work out and we all know that Lance Armstrong had a big part to play in it. They deserve nothing more than a pat on the back, and a thank you for trying something so unusual in this space. If it had worked, if Armstrong had gone quietly away and everything had worked out how Heineman and LIVESTRONG had wanted it to this decision would be lauded, and why not? I can’t imagine any other reason to grind the axe here but to be spiteful unless being touchy-feely in the face of defeat does not sell enough pop-up ads.

It was a good thing the team tried, a really really good thing. As a fan I’m proud of them, just as I admired Barcelona for the UNICEF shirts back in the days. It was a solidly commendable move, on par with the Chiefs quietly doing work in Joplin and Matt Besler being a prom date to a Highschool kid with cancer. With soccer players going to Soccer night in Newton. If only more of our organizations and teams did these things. Can you imagine a world where sportsmen and teams as ‘role models’ did more than point to the heaven’s and mutter ‘all the glory’, a world where more people cared enough to simply step up because there was a need? If my team wants to occupy that space and lead it in a visible … even risky way,to be bold enough to name their stadium after the endeavor? Well that is the kind of team I’ll happily follow for a lifetime no matter if they succeed or not.

The fact they tried is everything.

Right?

—-

Footnote

I have tried to steer clear of the blistering personal attack on Sam Mellinger that he threw towards Sporting KC … I hope I have achieved that. Obviously this is a critical piece but ultimately I wanted to swing this more towards Sporting KC’s unsuccessful yet highly commendable endeavor than mud slinging. I feel like taking pot shots at Armstrong are fair given his track record but I felt no need to hurl insults at Sam or any of the Star writers many of whom I have met and a few I count on as friends. I greatly appreciate the Star’s coverage of Sporting KC and I don’t want this to be an anti-Star rallying cause. I feel that judging a publication on the basis of one regretful article isn’t really kosher but the press are also not in a lofty enough position that they cannot be held to a standard that is fair. I believe Mellinger stepped beyond fair at this point and the language and tone he used betrayed the basic facts he reported and exaggerated the failing way beyond its stature.

There is one phrase I have used time and time again over the last few weeks. “I just want my football to be about football” … the malaise had set in. My fantasy that Lance Armstrong would slowly walk away into the sunset leaving his admirable LIVESTRONG foundation to carry on doing the good work it has and continues to do died with it. Walking away just isn’t his style. Whenever you think he might just wanna stick his head in a noose in a quiet garage he has a way of popping back into the news. He is that annoying bit of crud you just can’t seem to scrub off of your Pyrex. The annoying lump of shit that simply won’t flush because it has a bit of peanut stuck in it.

Vitriolic? Yeah, that is me. Hostile? Extremely.

I don’t hold the same animosity towards Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire or even corked bat, steroid shooting Sammy Sosa. Diego Maradona punched England out of World Cup with his ‘Hand of God’, got kicked out of another for juicing – I freaking love the guy. Ditto for Thierry Henry who hand balled France into the last World Cup at the expense of the Republic of Ireland – they were in their time villains for show but none of them went onwards to form a spectacularly big Cancer Charity and proceed to gut it by simply being himself.

While Bonds, McGuire, Sosa and co. haven’t all come clean, they are not constantly in the media the way Armstrong is – they are simply gone and all that will happen legacy-wise for them is inevitable arguments over moral character by old men voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Maradona, on the other hand, has simply turned out to be mentally flawed, with an eccentricity at its cocaine-fueled best that rivaled his talent. That talent was undeniable, however; he was simply a little fat genius. Henry? He is a small freedom fry, but it is my fundamental belief that most of his pratness emanates from being French, if he simply popped his collars and injected just a little more Cantona into his being the world would learn to love him as a person and not just this guy who was really good when he played at Arsenal a long ass time ago. Hell, as an Englishman I rather enjoyed what he did to the Irish. It made up for Jack Charlton.

But Lance? …. Lance is still front and center. Bobbing around like a cigarette stub in a urinal. A target that will not go away. Trying to pick a public figure that fits him wasn’t easy – If Landon Donovan hadn’t assumed the mantle of being soccer’s Princess Diana then Lance Armstrong could have fit in there nicely. He is always in the news, albeit without MTV Real World confessional booth crocodile tears and the all-too-public angst. It didn’t feel right. I instead opted for Don King. A man you know would look you straight in the eye and lie … and then try and sell you a shirt. It fits, right down to the day Lance Armstrong arrived in Kansas City.

I sat in the press conference the day the new stadium name was unveiled, wondering if it was possible that a man could look any more reptilian than Lance did without having scales. He looked … dry … sinewy, like and bit of jerky, like a 180 year old dried up Croc. I sat there, knowing that the barbs about his cheating would not be too long coming, that sooner or later we’d be dealing with issues surrounding his cheating, but they were smothered handily by something else. We – that is Sporting KC – would be playing in a stadium running under the name of a noble charity, a charity that supported survivors of a terrible disease, one that has ravaged and killed every family member I have known in my 37 years that have died bar one equally dried up looking alcoholic uncle.

It felt good. It felt right that a nugget of altruism had found its way into my footballing world, that the team I support and love were looking to herald and raise money for LIVESTRONG just by virtue of our stadium existing rather than going for a simple cash grab. I was proud, very proud of my team even though I learned as the days, weeks and months rolled on that that altruism also came with a tremendous bump in being associated with LIVESTRONG, and that the team hoped LIVESTRONG would point partners towards LSP as a venue and destination. It didn’t take long for talk to emerge from within the Sporting KC camp that LIVESTRONG were not meeting that side of the agreement, that although the commitment to raising revenue remained, Sporting Club didn’t feel like they were getting the benefits they ought to. It was all off the record, all “hush-hush, my job depends on this.” I didn’t really care though – I wanted money to be raised and I was proud we were doing it. If Sporting Club getting the shaft meant that millions of dollars went to a good cause, I could live with that; it wasn’t like the PR buzz included the tremendous networking opportunities LIVESTRONG could export to Sporting Club on an executive networking level.

But Lance … oh Lance … the allegations kept coming, investigations, new story after new story, and MLS fans and news outlets started to question the link. Was this bad for Sporting KC? Does this agreement need to end? Resoundingly the answer was no. You don’t just dump an entire cancer charity because the guy that set it up is as honest as a two-bit Las Vegas whore on the hustle. No no – you make sure people appreciate the two entities are separate, you make sure you let everybody know that LIVESTRONG is LIVESTRONG and Lance Armstrong is Lance Armstrong. The divorce ultimately, finally happened. Lance stepped down from the charity, left the board and finally there it was – a little daylight between good and evil and never the twain shall meet … again at any rate. The moment felt like a rebirth for the embattled charity, and Sporting KC continued to make noises indicating that there was no desire to change name. I thought it would all blow over. Naively maybe.

Mounting allegations against Lance kept him in the news however and slowly chipped away at me. My growing negative sentiment reflected the growing feeling that we unnecessarily complicated life by getting in bed with a sponsor that was a charity, that when these things go south it is hard to manifest a divorce without somebody having to be the good guy, and somebody having to be the bad. Who wins in this situation? The answer is nobody.

After spending much of the first year of the deal wearing my LIVESTRONG bracelet and making sure that I always always used the correct stadium name when I tweeted, wrote, broadcast I found myself worn down a month ago… News that Lance was going to finally confess on Oprah was the tipping point. I, as a fan, was no longer proud of the arrangement but exhausted by it. I began to realize that for me LIVESTRONG and by association Sporting KC were never going to get out from under the yoke of Lance, that he’d be our stinking cross to bear for as long as we had ‘that name’ on our stadium and my charitable inclinations went out of the window.

“I just want my football to be about football” … not altruism, not charity, not politics and certainly not about a crusty old cheat. Unlike my surface nugget with the peanut there was no laying a sheet or two of four ply over this son of a bitch and flushing it away … no no … if only this was that simple. Armstrong had proven himself the all-singing, all-dancing evil Mr Hankey and somehow Sporting Kansas City, my perfect escape from the world had become part of his messed up little circus tour. Hi-De-Ho Oprah … frigging Oprah. Friends opined, that only in America could such a fundamentally flawed character could make money out of going on TV and confessing. I wonder if the sum Oprah is paying him covers the $5 million CBS are reporting he offered the feds to make this go away.

Of course tonight we heard that LIVESTRONG and Sporting have parted ways. It has come with the mess you might expect at the end of the High school romance. LIVESTRONG accused Sporting of only paying $250,000 of the $1 million they had agreed to in 2012, and Sporting KC accused LIVESTRONG of putting it in an untenable position and seemed content to allude to Lance Armstrong time and time again in statements. Who managed to pull the plug first is up for debate, but in the best spirit of being 16 it really does feel like Sporting KC are yelling “You can’t break up with us, we are breaking up with you”. Whether payments have been made remains to be seen, I would earnestly hope they have been despite any shortcomings LIVESTRONG may or may not have had as an organization. Whether the commitment to charitable work continues is a whole other thing. The pledged figure of $7.5m is still being generated by fans – if the team truly wishes to put this stink behind them I’m guessing The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and any number of other brilliant organizations can and will accept donations gladly.

Ultimately when this is all done, the furor will finally die down. Lance Armstrong will be remembered as a cheat, a liar, and a charlatan. Unfortunately the world might forget that he also founded one hell of a great organization and then helped near kill it by refusing to simply walk away early when the writing was one the wall. If he had, LIVESTRONG would still be a part of the landscape of Sporting KC, and the charity, which almost seems doomed right now would be a damned site healthier and would have continued helping millions. Whatever good he did there seems undone right now, we’ll have to wait and see how LIVESTRONG do going forward. As for me? I am glad this is all but over. I’m sure we’ll hear about it from rival fans, and from commentators for a while but nothing they can say or do can top the stink created by Lance. That said, as a fan, I feel like this was our organization’s Icarus moment. Lured in by the potential of grand ideas and associations and ultimately burned by it, we flew too close to the sun. I would like a nice simple sponsor (if we go that route at all) that pays the team some money so they can keep on keeping on … sometimes simple profiteering really is best.

Now can we get back to the football?

I love my Dad. He is a charming guy who makes me laugh with him and sometimes at him, and my eldest daughter adores him. He is good to my wife, he cares about my family, but like all people Starritt, he has a touch of inflated self-worth about him. I resemble him. So I had a good chuckle at him a year or two back when he hatched the idea of forming a political party called ‘The Common Sense and Simplification Party of Great Britain’ with the sole objective of simplifying Britain’s archaic and confusing laws and turning them into simple things common people could understand.

I am sure somewhere in the back of his mind he saw himself as a graying elder waving to the press outside of 10 Downing Street shortly before being driven to Buckingham Palace to be asked by the Queen to form a government. I also have no doubt he told her she would soon be out of a job.

I too share his political bent and the idea that I somehow the world would be a much better place if only people bothered to listen to me more … except I channel mine into making Soccer the world over better and trying to make people on the internet feel stupid. I think fundamentally we both suffer from mild megalomaniac tendencies, a strong desire to be loved and appreciated, and ultimately, big doses of day dreaming.

This morning while I was wiping my butt, Sunil Gulati asked me to head up the USSF.

I declined, informing him that Don Garber was stepping down and that Major League Soccer had come to me to take over his work. He’d told me while I was in the shower. I liked this idea. But what would I do with it if asked?

I walked down the corridor of power into my kitchen and quietly sipped on my remarkably simple HyVee Colombian whole bean coffee and thought that it was so much easier making my own at home instead of doing the venti, grande, latte dance at Starbucks. I mean, this is America, why do coffee cup sizes have to be in Italian? Why does milk not just get called milk? Why do I have to deal with this secondary language just to order a coffee from a kid in LIBERTY FUCKING MISSOURI, WHOSE TRIP TO THE FUCKING OLIVE GARDEN WAS HIS BEST AUTHENTIC ITALIAN EXPERIENCE.

Fuck you Starbucks.

The truth is everybody needs to die.

I should be able to say … “Gimme a Colombian coffee with half and half … big. I want cream on top.” …

I sat down on my couch, and Albert Einstein started massaging my temples.

My coffee tasted good. MLS is too much like Starbucks. It is a simple thing with layers and layers of obfuscation. I suppressed this thought because, yunno, I thought it would lead to me re-writing the published rules of MLS and boundaries in an attempt to make them make some damned sense. I tried this last year when I published MLS 101 and quit after one article when I tried to adequately explain the roster rules. My succinct and to-the-point explanation of them topped 4,000 words, and I had not even really explained what a designated player was. I realized that it would take a series of articles, that if printed and laid end to end would stretch from Kansas City to Timbukfuckingtoo and back again. At this point Grace Park, the hot Asian Cylon, started getting frisky with me, and I sent Einstein away.

Grace told me that there was nothing sexy about the rules. That the game had changed, that I needed to help MLS fix everything, and the way forward was to make the rules simple. Simple enough that people didn’t need to blog about rules, that if MLS that was to go “mainstream,” little sad men would not need to obsess over the small print for hours and hours, that the two most popular and listened-to Podcasters in MLS would not need to ask each other why Benny Feilhaber was not in the re-entry draft. Laura Byrne, my co-host on Kick the Ball, asked me the same question the day prior, and I didn’t know why.

DON’T ASK ME QUESTIONS. I MEAN I HAVE TWO KIDS AND A BUSINESS AND A WIFE AND A MORTGAGE I DON’T HAVE TIME TO KNOW EVERYTHING AND EVEN THE PEOPLE THAT KNOW EVERYTHING ONLY THINK THEY KNOW EVERYTHING.

EVERYBODY NEEDS TO DIE.

Grace Park you have warm, small, flattering hands. My coffee still tastes good.

What is a re-entry draft anyway? It sounds like bad news if you are on a space shuttle. It sounds like an odd queefer reference. It sounds like the kind of thing that lets Captain Trips out into a room of scientists while they play that funky music white boy right before the world stops spinning. The Major League Soccer 2012 Re-Entry Draft ….. First Round …….. what is it?

It is ‘simulated free agency’ …

Fucking hell. Then why is Benny F not included? Because to be a free agent you don’t just have to have your contract expire. You have to have played for a certain amount of time, be a certain age, need to know the Chinese alphabet backwards and what? Why don’t we just call it what it is … bureaucracy. A nice simple term, nicely at home in the Politburo … and I don’t know why MLS needs it because frankly .. ITS IS BORING AS FUUUUCK. MLS is evolving beyond the stage where the core fans are the ones that watch ALL of the extra features on the Extended Editions of the Lord of the Ring movies. Who has time for this? Adolescent males that live in basements do. Is this going to lure in Joe Public?

Hell no.

He doesn’t want to have to visit the Columbus Crew website to read about eligibility. He doesn’t want to spend hours trying to figure out the minutia. The fact that the rules change between rounds? Why not just punt the whole process … seriously? … if you want to simulate free agency why not just release these players into a pool, and let clubs that might be interested in them ping their agent an offer? If no teams are interested then their player rights just relapse and they can wander off into the sunset and get a job. It is the same end … just a simpler solution.

What is so hard about that?

Why have a draft staggered over weeks, just so Maicon Santos can go to the Chicago Fire and NOTHING else can happen? IT TOOK LONGER TO READ THE FUCKING RULES THAN IT TOOK TO DO THE DRAFT FFS!!!!

And for what?

Just so we can get to the point where teams can negotiate with players anyway?

Why not let just a little bit of America into the process and let teams that have a need for players compete for them just a little bit? Instead, no, it is staggered by how shit you were last season rather than how much you might actually want a guy. It is still all within the salary cap, so what does it change? Instead, we have the Chicago Fire picking up a guy who hasn’t earned his salary and giving him a raise … chances are MLS are paying more for him now than they would have otherwise. Yeah .. smart. This ‘stuff’ that requires MLS to have a learning curve, that has fans of the league saying ‘but foreign coaches will struggle here because they are not familiar with the system’, that causes people like me to shout ‘NO YOU ARE WRONG, READ THE FUCKING MANUAL’ at people who haven’t read up extensively on the league are getting in the way.

Check it out .. the 2012 MLS Roster Rules … http://www.mlssoccer.com/2012-mls-roster-rules … as well as including a year in the URL just to let you know it changes all the time, it even includes re-writing the laws of time. The age of a player is not governed by when he was born .. fuck that for a concept IT IS GOVERNED BY THE YEAR HE WAS BORN. So yunno, a guy that is almost a year older than another guy … they are the same age. I am surprised we do not have one homogenous birthday party for everybody. YAY … ITS YOUR BIRTHDAY YOU ARE NOW ELIGIBLE FOR THE QUEEFER DRAFT.

We have a thousand different constructs, the Designated Player, the Young Designated Player, the Homegrown Player, the Discovery Process … that one where you do not discover a player but you pay a sum to lay claim on him just in case another MLS team decides they wish to sign him. It is MLS’s way of calling “dibs”. Peter Vermes can go out and file ‘Discovery Claim’ on Lionel Messi and no other MLS team could sign him without pandering to Sporting Kansas City first.

IT MAKES NO SENSE. Why call it Discovery? Are you a Bloodhound Gang fan?  Is it because you like Space Shuttles? (noted on the two NASA strikes) NAH NAH NAH, I CALLED DIBS. Bollocks to that nonsense .. how about this? Drop ‘Discovery’ to … players you actually discovered … players from your academy that then go off to college so and if they are good enough you have a claim. Leave out Aurelien Collin. Discovery is a first come, first serve, system anyway; multiple teams can file claims on the same player anyway, and under the rules you have to sign a guy if he joins MLS, or you waive your right to the next team on the list to have ‘Discovered’ him. I am sorry Christopher Columbus, but Leif Erikson already has a claim on the ‘Muerica.

Does it change anything?

Nah .. I think the Native Americans pretty well figured they were standing on something other than ocean first, its all freaking semantics, layers, obfuscation … if you want it, claim it. Sign that Moldovan wizard if you want him … there should be no “I licked it, therefore it is mine” in MLS.  Shit or get off the pot, if you can’t get it done maybe somebody else will .. there is no need for a ‘Mechanism’.

Grace are you finished down there? … Are you following me or just getting bored? I want to watch Everybody Loves Raymond later. Its good simple fun ……

I think I need to run for MLS Comish next time it comes up.

Commissioner James Starritt …

It sounds rather good. It isn’t nearly as perverse as Grant Wahl trying to run FIFA. They don’t give that job to little bald men. You need a stomach. I have a stomach.

The Grande Don …….. moi.

My first proclamation? If you can’t explain it without having to use a video and a PowerPoint presentation or a whiteboard, it needs to go away. If you need a history lesson to understand why we need it, it needs to go away. If it needs 2000 words on web page, it needs to go away.

I want to make MLS about what happens on the field, not a constant head-scratching marathon wherein you are trying to figure out why strange things happen off the field. No more Battlestar Galactica, I promise. No more NYC2 until NYNJ is a success. No more bending the rules for LA. No more home field advantage unless home field happens to belong to San Jose. No more changing the playoff format every year so we need more edjumicational videos.

I will also fire Simon Borg. I promise, I promise, I promise.

Vote for me .. its time to take the sander to this bitch, or yunno … my Cylon friends will kill you all.

My Pa would be so proud. The Common Sense and Simplification Party of Missouri is born.