"'I don't think parity is good in a professional league,' Arena said. 'You need elite teams. The parity issue has to be closely scrutinized because it doesn't make sense, unless you have 12 or 13 good teams. Elite teams have rivalries in other sports -- the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is good, some of the NBA rivalries are good.'"
I agree.
The other, from a guy named Kevin McGeehan, certainly fleshed out the idea further, but he's talking about an unsettling direction:
"Be warned, however. The day is coming when an American star player will refuse to play for his MLS team after an offer from a European team is rejected. He will hold out. He may even sue the League. It's not far off. This will be the end of the single entity contract system. It won't come after a decision by the MLS owners; it will be forced by the players themselves."
This is what McGeehan takes away from the trade conundrum afflicting Clint Dempsey - and I think he's nailed the fallout of that one perfectly; everyone loses and his reasons add up at least logically - Shalrie Joseph, and Josh Wolff. As much as I believe in the inevitability of the end of central-planning, I'd hate to see the league and players' union to go down the path McGeehan describes, even if unintentionally. If the league won't yield, then, yeah, blow it up; they'll have themselves to blame. But, surely, there's something the parties can figure this out.
Once teams have separate owners, or, failing total separation, a place where only a couple of teams have the same owner (are we there yet? It's close, right?), I'd propose something like this: a continuation of the current draft allocations to help out teams that bombed in the previous season combined with a hard-and-fast salary and roster cap for the first team. This cap would have no wiggle room. And it ought to be higher than today's ranges, but not so high as to swamp small-market teams (like Columbus). Using the Washington Post's, by now, old-ish salary numbers - and assuming I did the math right when I did it quick - I added up Chivas USA's payroll and came up with a figure of $3,632,403. So, going forward, why not establish a cap of $5 million, or thereabouts and bump it as needed. No, that won't get us competing with Europe - not even close - but that's not realistic just now.
Anyway, all that's off the top of my head. But I think the league only needs to stand in the way of teams going bat-shit crazy, but that everything else ought to be fair game. A rigid salary cap would get closer - and they should make the teams rise and fall, both as teams and businesses, on the merit of the decisions they make.
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