MLS to PDX: Update...kinda

Just to follow up on yesterday's anguished post, I thought I'd chuck the latest word on Major League Soccer (MLS) expansion to the Portland area. It ran in this morning's edition of The Oregonian.

Some highlights and curiosities:

- Merritt Paulson, the current owner of the USL-1 Portland Timbers (who I'm going to go see tonight!), sounds like he's fairly separate from the relevant transactions. He says he "thinks about it (e.g. MLS expansion to Portland) a lot," but this one line tells me something else:

"The bottom line is that it's no shock MLS is interested in Portland," said Paulson, who planned to attend the MLS All-Star game in Colorado today. "And I'd certainly be very excited about being a part of it at PGE Park if that makes sense. And I think it would."

I'm just saying, note the passive voice.

- The chatter of the "players" involved isn't all that reassuring either. Here's the paragraph on the most high-profile "player":

"James Keston said this week that upgrading Hillsboro Stadium into a facility suited specifically for soccer "looks far more feasible." A makeover would more than double the 7,000-seat facility, add space for more concessions, restrooms and parking, and replace four softball fields that currently surround the stadium with amateur soccer fields."

Having recently visited the site, I think it's going to take quite a bit more than that, especially where parking and access is concerned. If, on the other hand, they try to do this on the cheap, getting in and out of that stadium will friggin' suck. I also have to admit that I'm far from an expert on stadium construction and infrastructure, so we're dealing with a laymen's view here.

Still...

That's where things are today, anyway. About where they were before, but with a rumor tickling our toes.

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MLS to PDX: This Is Driving Me Nucking Futs!!

So, MLS Rumors, some site I found while wading through BigSoccer, in the depths of what can only be described as profound desperation, reports that:

"Ahead of tomorrow's State of The League address by MLS Commissioner Don Garber, MLSR has learned from a trusted source that the next three cities for expansion will be San Jose (which will be announced), Portland and New York City for the 2010 season."

Is this true? I'm ripping out my fucking hair (I'm bald) waiting for the transcript for MLS Commish Don Garber's speech to show (because I will not watch the goddamn video; I can skim faster than I can watch him pause for applause, godddamit!). So, I saw the announcement on San Jose (swell), but GIMME MY FUCKING Banana bread recipe, DAMMIT!!"

Of SJ (congrats, I think) & LA

I'm sure everyone who cares enough has posted about Major League Soccer (MLS) returning to San Jose for 2008 - and that's good for a lot of reasons, as laid out by Ian Plenderleith in his space on USSoccerplayers.com. You can also get a pretty good "wise-guy" background on how this all came together - most notably, the waiver of the soccer-stadium clause - from Jonah Freedman's latest for Sports Illustrated. (Whoops...second latest; the a-hole turned out something on John Terry that, no doubt, doesn't interest me; and "wise-guy" is a compliment.)

Count me thrilled with the league getting to 14 teams, welcome back San Jose (you're coming to Portland for the Open Cup), and all that, but one notion that kept recurring in San Jose area write-ups on the deal (like this one) appears in the discussions of where a San Jose team will play until they get their stadium built:

"Instead, the source said, the team will divide its 15 home games between two sites - McAfee Coliseum in Oakland for top-caliber foes such as the Los Angeles Galaxy with icon David Beckham, and a smaller facility for more routine opponents."

Did the parts in bold have anyone else squinting their eyes and saying, "suck what, now?" Beckham-mania will wear off at some point - a point before San Jose finishes their stadium, I'm guessing - which makes it worth examining that word "top-caliber" currently being applied to the Galaxy. Turning to last night and LA's first game in the World Series of Inanity and Profit, here are some descriptive passages:

"It's not good," [LA Galaxy head coach Frank Yallop] said. "It's not good. I think we were very nervous, to be quite honest. I think we were very — how can I say it? — scared to get on the ball and scared to make a mistake."

[SNIP]

"Former Galaxy player Mauricio Cienfuegos, who was a midfield key in the days when the Galaxy threw fear into the opposition, said it appeared that the current team has no heart.

[SNIP]

"The Galaxy players, with Beckham in the room, were told in no uncertain terms what Yallop thought of their performance. The offense was virtually nonexistent and the defense was stumbling blindly in the dark."

[SNIP]

"The heart and the desire and the determination should be there every game and it just wasn't tonight," [Galaxy midfielder Kyle] Martino said. "Everyone needs to go home and kind of look in the mirror and really do some soul-searching."

If this were a unusually poor performance, well, that'd be something. But go back and read what was said by various LA players and officials after the losses to Columbus and the Richmond Kickers and you'll see familiar themes; hell, the Martino quote matches something Landon Donovan said after the Kickers' loss almost verbatim. Sucking looks like the steady state for this bunch. Doesn't the appellation "super club" take more than Alexi Lalas' blessing?

Am I bitter? No. I'm a little nervous is all. The league put a lot of eggs in the Beckham basket and the current Galaxy team is like a slop of horse manure amid all the dyed eggs and chocolate bunnies.

The All-Star Game & MLS to Pac NW

In a attempt to discover whether Major League Soccer (MLS) would make an announcement on expanding the league during next week's MLS All-Star Game, I did one of the feeblest things an information whore can do in the 21st century: a google search (doubling down, I did so under both "News" and "Web" categories).

I am ashamed. And lazy.

But if you look at the (let's see...one, two, three...) fourth item in the Web search list, you'll see why I'm interested in such things: when real estate investor James Reston was awarded exclusive rights (e.g. first crack) at expanding MLS into the Pacific Northwest, I remember hearing something about an announcement on that coming "within a month" or "by the end of the month" - I can't remember which. And the All-Star Game seems to fit neatly within that time-frame.

Given that I slip into a drool-inducing doze when the words "all-star" and "game" are combined in a sentence (I'm lukewarm on exhibitions generally and, Lord, do I hate all-star games; looking forward to a peaceful Thursday evening next week), has anyone out there heard any rumors about expansion announcements during the All-Star Game?

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MLS Expansion: I Have Seen Hillsboro Stadium...

....and it's gonna take more work to make that venue fly than I had originally anticipated.

Here's the deal: my daughter attended a breast cancer event with her Girl Scout troop, one that happened to be based at Hillsboro Stadium. That's significant becuase, assuming Kevin McGeehan has it right in his piece on likely candidates for MLS expansion (in which he endorses the Las Vegas bid; for the record, I endorse his endorsement), Hillsboro stadium enters into the equation for many observers:

"The situation is fluid, and the ultimate decision may hinge on whether the SuperSonics decide to follow through on their threats to leave the Emerald City. At the moment, though, it looks like Portland may have a slight edge in the race due to plans to expand an existing stadium in Hillsboro, a suburb of Portland. If this plan works, it’s conceivable that a club could play in Portland next season."

Which brings us to what expanding that stadium will entail. Hillsboro Stadium is smaller than it looks from the four-lane highway that buzzes by it; the turf will likely need replacement as well. It's surrounded, at this point, by softball/baseball fields - will those be replaced by soccer fields, or will "America's game" hold its place? Tough as those issues sound, they're nothing next to figuring access to the stadium.

Finding the access to the stadium is hard enough, especially from the highway; to get past a Fred Meyer (local grocery chain) suburban complex signs will need to be put up at the very least. Once you find the right road, you find yourself on a stretch of via twisting, narrow one-lane pavement pinched by lava boulders on one side and lines of parked cars on the other. I happened to show up during a softball tournament of some kind, which had people stopping and parallel parking all over the damn place. In other words, given MLS's preference for Saturday games, it's pretty clear that those softball fields and a regular events drawing 15,000-20,000 cannot co-exist.

The set up in the parking lots that currently exist is insane, Those one-lane stretches of pavement (I can't bring myself to call them roads; they're too narrow) extend across the tops of the parking lot, but they go through these weird traffic cluster-fucks that confuse motorists to the extent of creating a sort of free-for-all - e.g. cars head on these extensions going both directions making it really hard to tell which lanes are supposed to go which way. That said, the parking area isn't all that bad and, really, would require some clearing to boost the number of available spaces (though additional construction will remain necessary).

While I'm sure the parking/access equation can be remedied - albeit at a cost in dollars and, essentially, starting over - limitations to the physical space cause additional concerns. I've implied the issues in play: the Fred Meyer shopping complex and the highway completely rules out growth in two directions; existing office parks take out another one, leaving exactly one direction for expansion - and that wouldn't be easy. The softball fields will likely have to go as well - either that, or the events on them scheduled away from potential MLS games.

None of this is to say that settling a Portland team in Hillsboro won't be possible. But the site means this will be more complicated by far than simply expanding the stadium: an overhaul of the infrastrucuture surrounding the stadium, almost completely revamping the parking set up, not to mention doing battle with local interests from Fred Meyer to whomever organizes softball games will be required to make this work. And these are expenses I didn't take into account the first time I posted on this (link below). I'll tell you one thing: unless we run the construction with the brutality of an old Soviet five-year plan - and with several times the efficiency as well - next season is definitely not an option.

And after all that the market that may prove fairly lukewarm in the end.

Junk Drawer, 06.20; Vergara on Sanchez; KC News

And, to round out my day, here's a quick round-up of other items of interest (now limiting myself to five...yes, I'm growing...)

- Count Jorge Vergara among the Mexican fans taking a dim view of the early days of the Hugo Sanchez era.

- While New England adds a player here, another player there - and two years later...and grudgingly - the Kansas City Wizards can't stop adding 'em...and they're attacking players! Dammit! There's also some interesting chatter in that same Down the Byline post about a soccer-specific stadium in the KC area.

- The Columbus Dispatch ran a little piece (carrying a curious, though applaudable, lead) on Guillermo Schelotto, who sounds happy about his move to Columbus. All I know is I've never seen a less enthusiastic goal celebration than the one he turned in last Saturday. Oh, and it sounds like Gaven will start in place of Robbie Rogers this weekend...should be interesting.

- Bill Urban wrote a good piece on the apparent tension between talent and expansion. For what it's worth, I say roll the dice. God meant for expansion teams to suffer; Toronto has it all wrong. They'll catch up in time.

- Finally, the Las Vegas Sun builds an article on a Big Soccer thread. Suddenly, I don't feel so bad about all those book reports written from Cliff's Notes*.

(* OK, for the record, I've never once used Cliff's Notes; I enjoy reading too much.)

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MLS to PDX: Slice, Dice & Doom

What appears below is more or less an argument as to why any “money man” would be insane to try to establish a Major League Soccer (MLS) team in the Portland, Oregon metro area. The bottom-line of this argument relates more to what the picture looks like heading into the investment; I’m neither pretending nor claiming to know what will happen if the decision to move into the Portland area occurs - though I do have my guess.

I’ll wrap up by saying where I think the present suitor - a real estate developer named James Reston - would do best...and that’s not going to be popular...

To begin with a full disclosure, here’s where I am on the whole question of MLS coming to PDX: I’m for it, but with no strings attached beyond the team being sufficiently successful to sustain itself. I don’t care if they put it in PGE Park, Hillsboro, Gresham, or the left side of my ass; if it works, it works. I am partial to PGE Park and for some selfish reasons - e.g. it’s central, there’s “stuff” around it, including adjacent public transportation options; I like that stuff plenty, but it’s not the controlling issue for me. But I’m not going to ignore a team in the greater Portland area, either. I like the game too much and for its own sake; if I notice the “atmosphere” that means I’m bored; typically, the action on the field gives me enough to yell about. Also, I’m perfectly happy with the status quo; I don’t have to live in an MLS market ‘cause that’s why god made TVs, right?

Part I: Why We're Doomed

Consider the following scenarios as investments and - this is crucial - think of the money and risk as being yours:

Scenario 1: Move into a decent facility smack in the middle of the city with respectable public transportation access, but lousy parking (I anticipate a rejoinder about bikes, but would only say, don’t over-estimate the extent to which your lifestyle decisions and preferences are shared). A secondary problem arises from the fact the facility is already in use by: two club teams, one of which you’d likely supplant and another that plays not only in another league, but another sport; there’s also the nearby, rather large public university, who have ambitions for their football team and, as such, the need for somewhere to play - e.g the same facility. The current contracts for the two club teams run one year past the generally understood window for getting an MLS team (I think, the Beavers/Timbers are there till 2011 and MLS is looking to get to 16 teams by 2010; after that, who knows?), which make negotiations with multiple entities both necessary and complicated - oh, and the city leaders, they don’t give a shit about any of this. You’ll also have to pony up for some kind of bleachers to get around the field - though that can wait - and refurbishing the turf, which, in all honesty, can’t. If you do grass - which the locals, sensibly, want - you’ll have pay for upkeep in a wet, rainy environment.

Scenario 2: There’s a stadium that sits immediately adjacent to a freeway that knots up, oh, two to three times daily. Unlike that highway/freeway (it’s not an official interstate, I suppose), no public transportation comes close to said stadium - and that means parking, which means driving, which, under current arrangements, means congestion. The parking, of course, will be built, but negotiations loom on paying for and providing for general transportation infrastructure to reach said parking. Arrangements could be made to ease congestion with the local transportation agency - perhaps by setting up shuttles from the light-rail that does, in fact, run not so far off - though that’s more negotiation with a partner with different priorities. Making all this more complicated is the fact that a fair chunk of the die-hard support for the current local club team is explicitly hostile to a suburban stadium and for reasons that run from sincere to delusional. Said support turns out in impressive-for-second-tier soccer numbers (and, frankly, that’s it; it’s no Rochester or Montreal) and they provide nearly all the color and noise at the current team’s games; that won’t matter so much as they say they’re not showing up in any suburban venue. Oh, and you’ll have to pay to refurbish the field here as well, not to mention chuck up another set of stands opposite the one that exists. Oh, one more thing: the youth soccer fields that seem part of the league model - you’re on the hook for those as well.

OK: Would you choose #1 or #2? Now, here’s the real question: why would you choose either one?

Expensive and complicated as both scenarios sound, the bigger rub is more fundamental: Portlanders - e.g. the ones who live in the city, work there and value the lifestyle - don’t seem to like professional sports, neither in terms of funding nor as a top choice for recreation, at least not much beyond the numbers that show up to see the USL Division 1 Portland Timbers. Can I prove that? Not really, but, assuming it’s at all accurate, it forms the decisive part of the problem. What follows from here is an attempt to explain why I’m thinking an MLS team in Portland won’t fly. The arguments grow from nearly nine years of residence in the Portland area (sigh...if you must know: 1995-97 and 2000-2005 in Portland proper (inner NE and Overlook neighborhoods); 2005-07 in Hillsboro) and, to some extent, the comments I’m seeing on local blogs and message boards tells me that a combination of factors would scuttle a Portland MLS franchise. On the most fundamental of levels, however, a curious intersection of competing lifestyle choices lays at the root of the situation. Is that wrong? I’ll get into this more below, but...are you fucking kidding me? Since when is supporting your local team a civic obligation?

The tenor of the current debate, which is generally ignored outside soccer circles (see what I mean about the market?), effectively splits a sports-ambivalent population into still smaller chunks. Assume the key investor in this, James Reston, follows the advice most often seen on the Soccer City USA message board and goes for PGE Park. This plan relies on slivers within slivers of the general population to sustain the business side: urban dwellers, and largely liberal ones, who are not only generic sports fans, but soccer fans to boot. If Reston goes this route and centers operations in PGE Park, he’ll lose just about anyone who wants to drive to games (good riddance, you say? You’re an idiot, I say, unless you fit a sensible profile*). A lot goes into this: the local paper tells me families are fleeing Portland; declining school enrollments tell me the same thing. So, where will those fans come from who “grew up with the game” if their parents can’t/won’t drive them? Yeah, there’s public transportation, and, yeah, it’s easier to use park-n-rides to get the family into the city center as opposed to the other way around, but how many families will do that - and often enough to make the numbers tally? Lose the families, you lose a huge chunk of your market.

The flipside of this, and this could be specific to the Portland area, is the apparent reality that, by placing a team in the suburbs, a potential MLS franchise loses 5,000 dedicated fans right off the bat. While the odds are good you’ll retain a some of those fans (desperation will get a few of you), any kind of walk-up crowd will be lost outright (I swear, I’ve seen people at PGE Park exclusively and specifically to take advantage of the Thirsty Thursday promotion - which used to be much better, by the way). Whatever drives this - whether it’s an eco-conscious shunning of the suburban model, or just knee-jerk anti-suburban snobbery (hey, I thought like that till two years ago and feel OK calling it what it is) - the money to fund this thing belongs to the people who will spend it. And, if they don’t want to, fine; watching soccer isn’t a civic obligation - and, if one comes at it from the environmental side, that’s a higher calling...even if the steps one takes me be meaningless against the larger cultural backdrop (I’m just saying...). And, for the record, my environmental conscience isn’t sufficient to keep me from driving cross-town for the game.

The thing is, I see the tensions in play in the Portland area as, essentially, fatal to any potential MLS franchise. I don’t believe the “urban-only” crowd has the numbers to sustain a team - especially given the seeming preference among so many of Portland’s general population for the entire array of outdoor activities available in Portland. That crowd could, on the other hand, scuttle a suburban team by declining to make the entertainment commute. And I can’t see suburbanites pouring into Portland’s PGE Park for 15-25 games per season absent a parking and transportation infrastructure that will let them drive to the games. So, yeah, between this demographic/planning Charybdis and Scylla, I think we’re screwed.

Part II - in which I Think Like a Capitalist

If, on the other hand, I was compelled to invest, I’d go suburban. On the general level, America is still growing in the ‘burbs - and that pertains even to Portland, OR. Even with a good chunk of people relocating to Portland specifically, a big enough slice of Portland’s projected 1 million-plus future residents will fuel robust long-term growth in Washington County as well. And, sure, there’s an ongoing debate as to how well the re-urbanization/density boosting planning model will work here - and that’s certainly part of the appeal for people coming to the area - but, with a lot of that density looking set, again, for the Western suburbs of Portland (e.g. Hillsboro), planting a stadium out that-a-way keeps up with the reality that, in spite of global warming and Al Gore, we are still a car-based culture - (psstt...that drives demand for parking). Add a personal theory about where “mainstream” America wants to live (sorry...it’s the suburbs) and consider for a second what will happen if the MLS did go mainstream: yup, they’d cart the team off to a shiny new, publicly-financed stadium in the ‘burbs after all the families bitched about the lack of parking. Chuck in what I’d assume to be easier marketing to youth soccer teams (hey, can we have your mailing list? Sure!) and the whole thing just seems easier.

Against that, though, name me the segment of the population with the greatest disposable income: isn’t it the 20-35 range, y’know, before the critters come? They tend to favor cities, right? Then again, will the incoming population match the cultural profile of the people currently in Portand - e.g. lukewarm to professional sports? See? I’m back to the ‘burbs...messy stuff.

Before walking away for this subject, I do want to give a shout-out to one vocal sub-population in the local debate: the people who prefer the Timbers as they are. To put it crudely, they’d rather have a “boutique soccer team” that they can see and support on terms they prefer and enjoy. And I respect the hell out of that because it understands that losing the family crowd constitutes a trade-off and accepts it. What I can’t abide is the assumption that a team at PGE Park will somehow be successful because, hey, it worked in Toronto, right? And that’s based on - what? - the precisely nine games of Toronto’s existence and wishing away differences in the public life of both cities? The best one can say is what looks to be working for Toronto might work Portland....and I doubt that.

(NOTE: I thought I had read a post somewhere that did a really phrased the above position well; can't find it now...starting to wonder if I imagined it.)

Anyway, that’s my mental project for the past couple days all wrapped up. I spent a stupid amount of time trying to find useful population projections for Multnoman (Portland) and Washington (Hillsboro) county, but instead labored through a series of articles by people for and against Portland’s “smart growth” policy...and the quality of that work, as judged by my layman’s eye, varied wildly. If anyone has access to population projections - good ones, dammit - feel free to pass ‘em on; all this does have me curious. The thing is, I know what’s planned for the region - I read page after page of that vague, "build-it-they-will-come" pap and can tell you all about who participated and what we'd all really, really like to see happen...what I don’t know is what will happen when that planning meets stubborn, irrational human beings....God bless ‘em....

But, bottom line, I do think Reston would have to be crazy to invest in Portland. That said, I hope he stays off his meds long enough for a live test.

MLS to PAC NW: Maybe I DO Love Hillsboro...

One day after reports suggested a "leg-up" to Seattle in the quest to bring a Major League Soccer (MLS) team to the Pacific Northwest - and with a soccer-ready field giving the boost - at least one party in the Portland area fired back: namely, The Oregonian. My hometown paper chucked in a report today mentioning Hillsboro, Oregon - which is my, ahem, more specific location - as a site toward which James Keston is eyeing closely. Let's just say that, with this shift, an accident of geography has inched my view of this horserace a bit closer.

So, what can I say about Hillsboro - or even Hillsboro stadium? A couple things.

To begin, I've often driven by Hillsboro Stadium - it's immediately off Highway 26, which takes most Portlanders to the (stunning, totally kick-ass) Pacific Coast - and thought precisely what Keston did: they could play soccer there? They've already got the cantilevered roof to keep in the noise so all they'd need is, say, triple the capacity and, ideally, lay down a grass field (please, please, let it be grass) and - voila - let there be soccer. And getting to Hillsboro from downtown Portland on public transportation ain't bad at all, and I should know: I do it every....single...day...I go to work (ask me how I've nearly wrapped up all of Will Durant's History of Western Civilization, plus a score of books besides; I even know the good places to stop to take a piss when nature's calls get too forceful).

So, what's not to like? Mmm....a thing or two.

It's one thing to get to Hillsboro, but it's something else again to get to Hillsboro Stadium. First off, it's kinda in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere - e.g. not only does the train not go there, but there's not a lot for restaurants (OK, bars, places to get hammered, dens of sin - I'm a wicked, wicked man). On the upside, there's a Fred Meyer (grocery chain) within spitting distance, which would make tailgating about as uncomplicated and well-lubricated as anywhere I can think of. Now, it's possible there's a McMenamins not too far off as well (Cornelius Pass Road House, I think), but they're SO in love with hops that I'd take many, many cheap domestics over their entire collection of microbrews (seriously, their beer tastes like an amateur's 12th attempt at home-brew).

The geography of Hillsboro itself is part of the issue, which renders the fact I live there not all that significant. Here's the thing: I live in downtown Hillsboro, but, because the city's suburban-style growth (e.g. strip malls, single-family homes, gigantic apartment/condo cities) sprawls eastward toward Portland, downtown (which is damned charming, by the way, and has kick-ass and dirt-cheap Mexican restaurants to boot) sits on the Western edge of the city boundaries. With the train not running directly by the stadium, it would take me some doing to get to stadium.

In all honesty, though, it's not so bad as it sounds. The surface streets that take me to the stadium are like little highways in any case; they've also got bike lanes - big ones - which would allow for well-lubricated rides through the summer evenings, as opposed to being forced to drive.

In other words, on a personal level, an MLS team in Hillsboro stadium would work out just this side of ideal for me. For the league and a Portland franchise, it's a half-cheap way to build a stadium, though things like parking and the fields envisioned in the plan would take some doing to build; also, some upgrades to the highway infrastructure would likely be required. Still, that beats starting from scratch.

So I guess there's nothing more I want to say than pull the trigger, Mr. Keston.

And It's Seattle Edging Portland, and -OH! - Look Out, Here Comes Vegas Turning Into the Stretch...

...and, with that, I have composed my longest-ever title. Yesss....

If the evil, evil (oh, so profoundly evil) Oregonlive.com did not forbid my registration from taking, I might have stopped by the Timber Blog to see to Bob Kellett, "You monster. You beat me to the punch on this post." But it does, so I didn't...which is why I'm doing it here.

As you may have guessed, Bob Kellett did, in fact, note that, due to the existence of a soccer-ready surface at Seattle's Qwest Field, the Seattle area enjoys an early leg-up in the "qwest" (tee hee hee) to bring a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise to the Pacific Northwest. It takes a certain kind of half-baked thinking to read anything else into the language used by inside-track (only track?) investor, James Keston, when he says, ""I think the best opportunity to play immediately would come playing in Qwest." As such, it would seem Seattle's odds look a lot better - especially when one takes into account Kellett's point about the absence of action among Portland's political leadership.

Then again, the timer just went off on one particular half-baked line of thinking to make a long-shot counter-point to the apparent upside of Qwest. There's a reason why Keston should be wary of the situation in Seattle: Qwest Field could be a trap. Here's the thing: there's a very real risk that a Seattle-based MLS franchise would start play at Qwest Field, only to find the Seattle-area public unwilling to pony up for a soccer-specific facility.

So, the question for MLS and Keston is, what constitutes a bigger headache: the short-term problem of figuring out how, or even whether, to share a facility with two teams and a crappy field (PGE Park), but with (possibly) greater potential for making it their own versus the long-term problem of getting held hostage in a giganto-motherfucker of a stadium by a public whose fists tighten at the thought of spending on sports teams? So long as the equation plays out like that - and, honestly, I have no idea as to whether it does - I'm not sure that Portland looks so bad for a market.

At the same time, given recent developments in las vegas real estate, Nevada (not to mention the noises coming out of the Bay Area), it's possible that Keston will have a little more time than he may want to let events and actions on the ground flesh out a bit more. Promising as a return to the Bay Area is looking lately, the Vegas bid looks like it's coming together big and fast - in a word, like gang-busters. Put another way, given a solid bid on the table from Vegas, Keston has no clear reason to rush into either Pacific Northwest city.

Speaking for myself, I'm getting a little wary of that short dead-line of Keston's...

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MLS to Vegas: The Yeas Have It

I won't pretend to be the first to this story, but I do want to add my voice of commendation and support to the budding, yet amply enthusiastic effort to bring a Major League Soccer franchise to Las Vegas. Yes!

Both Blue-Blooded Journo and The Offside Rules have posted in favor, but it's the former who makes the obvious point:

"Besides, if you could only make one away trip a year, would it be to Las Vegas or Columbus? I thought so."

Before Columbus fans get uppity, let me just acknowledge the same statement likely applies to Portland, Oregon. Hell, in my book only one MLS market tops Vegas for visiting: NYC. So, yes, yes, yes, to a Vegas bid. They can make Gamblor the mascot (believe it or not, that's the first image that comes up on a google image search; the link explains the line).



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