In the last few days there's been renewed attention on which MLS team should be recognized as The MLS Champion. New York Red Bulls coach Hans Backe recently opined that he would rather win the Supporters' Shield than the MLS Cup. Bloggers at Sounder at Heart and Stumptown Footy have recently weighed in with their preferences that the regular-season champion be recognized over the playoff winner. That the last two Cup winners were teams that didn't even finish in the top four of their own conferences hardly has bolstered the case for the playoffs, either.
MLS Cup Vs. Supporters’ Shield: Like It Or Not, Playoffs Will Always Determine Our ‘Champion’
The Supporters’ Shield is probably the fairest way to crown the MLS champion, but there’s little hope of that formally ever being the case. At the very least, there are ways to improve the playoffs.
I just can’t help but feel a lot of this is futile, even if it’s a bit justified. The reality is that as long as MLS is run by Americans, there are going to be playoffs and as long as there are playoffs, the winner is going to be crowned champion.
We can probably agree that a fairer way to crown a champion is to have every team play each other an equal number of games over the course of a season. The team that ends that “tournament” with the most points will have clearly demonstrated that they are the best team.
But professional sports, at least in the United States, have never been particularly interested in figuring out who has been the best team in a given year. What league organizers, not to mention fans, are mostly interested in doing is determining a champion that strikes some sort of balance between who has been the best, who is playing the best and doing so in as exciting and fair way as reasonably possible. In instances where fairness can not be really assured, exciting almost always wins out.
Playoffs are the way North American leagues tend to accomplish this. Whether we’re talking about Major League Baseball, the NFL, NHL, NBA or even the Mexican Primera, we have shown a clear preference to crown our champions at the end of some kind of tournament (the top level of NCAA football being a notable exception). Even in leagues where there’s a formal trophy for the regular-season’s best team, like the NHL’s President’s Trophy, winning games “when it counts” is clearly prized over demonstrating excellence over a long period of time.
Which brings us back to the idea of MLS ever formally recognizing the Supporters’ Shield winner as its rightful champion. When the league was first going about deciding who would be its champion, we can safely assume that a playoff was the obvious and clear choice. In the first year, and actually not until 1999, there was no formal prize for finishing the regular season atop the table. Calling the Supporters’ Shield an afterthought, is probably being kind.
Despite that clear impediment, the prize has seemed to gain some real traction in recent years, to the point where coaches, at least European ones, openly claim winning the regular season to be their No. 1 priority. It’s probably not even a stretch to say that many fans of various teams would agree with Backe. In some ways, MLS already acknowledges that the Supporters’ Shield is a major accomplishment: One of the league’s two automatic berths into the CONCACAF Champions League Group Stage goes to the shield winner.
But I wouldn’t hold my breath on the league making any more material moves in that direction, perhaps ever. It’s been suggested that the league could simply start recognizing the regular-season champ as the MLS champion. The league could then treat the MLS Cup as some sort of separate post-season tournament. Problem is, that would pretty much defeat the purpose of holding the tournament in the first place. The league has enough trouble getting people to pay attention to the MLS Cup as it is. Can you imagine how many people would tune out if they didn’t even have the expectation of seeing a champion crowned?
While playoffs are almost certainly here to stay, and with them the way MLS will choose to determine its annual champion, that doesn’t mean we can’t fix the way the playoffs are conducted. The best “fix” I’ve seen suggested was by Brian Straus, who proposed the playoffs be conducted as two four-team “groups.” Assuming that’s too radical, and probably unfeasible now that MLS is apparently planning to go ahead with expanding the playoffs to 10 teams, there are still changes that can be made to more clearly reward regular season performance.
The easiest thing that MLS could do, while avoiding a replay of last year when two Western Conference teams played for the Eastern Conference championship, would be to guarantee the top three teams in each conference make the playoffs. The teams with the next four highest point totals would then be granted “wild cards” and be forced to square off in a one-game play-in round the Tuesday or Wednesday following the end of the regular season. The winners of those games would then enter the main draw with games the following weekend.
The following round would consist of one game, but rather than going to penalties at the end of overtime, the winner would be decided by higher seed. The conference championship round would then be a home-and-home, two legged playoff. Again, instead of going to penalties after overtime, the higher seed would advance if the series is tied. The championship round would remain a one-game affair and be played at the home of whichever team ended the season with the highest point total. After overtime, this game would go to penalties.
It’s far from a perfect solution, but this setup would at least create a clear advantage for finishing the regular season strong. It would also reward the teams that finished atop each conference with games against teams playing on short rest and create a scenario where lower seeded teams had to face a tougher road to the championship. If wild-cards were able to get through this gantlet, there would be little doubt that they are deserving champions.
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