Don Garber Really Seems To Be Misunderstanding Critiques Of MLS Playoff System

I’m not sure if it’s on purpose or not, but MLS Commissioner Don Garber seems to be totally misunderstanding people’s critiques of the MLS playoff system. Garber recently sat down for a wide-ranging interview with AOL Fanhouse’s Brian Straus and, predictably, was asked about the recently unveiled playoff system. Almost as predictably, Garber insisted on framing his answers in a way that deflects the specific criticisms and instead focuses on the whole idea of playoffs.

GARBER: Take the Seahawks this year. What did they finish, 7-9? And could have been the Super Bowl champion. How’s that any different?

FANHOUSE: I think when you have a sport (soccer) that’s low scoring and can be decided by a sliver, by milliseconds and millimeters, individual results can be more fickle. I think the better team usually wins a football game. I think it’s going to be almost impossible for a substandard team to win four consecutive NFL games against superior opposition. But in soccer, where the best team doesn’t always win on the day, it’s much easier for a substandard team to advance in an abbreviated format.

GARBER: Was Greece a deserving winner of Euro (2004)?

FANHOUSE: That may be apples and oranges because there was no regular season connected to the tournament.

GARBER: But still, you have a situation where a team, arguably not the best team in Europe ...

FANHOUSE: I think they were. I think they were deserving winners of that particular tournament.

GARBER: Because they played really well in the tournament.

As you can see, Straus did an admirable job of trying to keep Garber focused on the specific criticism: That the MLS playoffs as currently constructed do not do a good enough job of ensuring a deserving champion. But Garber repeatedly wants to make it about something different. He seems to acknowledge that playoffs are somewhat flawed, but he’d also like us to believe that what we got is the best we can hope for. And that’s where many of us get frustrated.

I’ve made various proposals of my own, but the best system anyone has come up with, at least for my money, was Straus, himself. He proposed a system where the top four teams from each conference play in what amounts to a group stage, with the top seed hosting three games, the second seed hosting two games, the third seed hosting one game and the bottom seed hosting no games.

The top two teams from each group would advance to the semifinals with each group winner playing the other second-place team in a two-game aggregate goal playoff. If the top seed won the first game, there would be no second game. The winners would then meet in a one-game MLS Cup championship game.

The only tweak I’d make to the entire system is qualifying the eight best teams, rather than the four best from each conference. Since you’d have to award the conference champions at the end of the regular season anyway, due to the cross over after the group stage, there’s really no reason not to take the eight best teams. Heck, if MLS really wanted 10 playoff teams, there’s no reason it couldn’t be adjusted to allow for two more.

In this system, the eventually champion would play either five or six games (or up to seven if there were 10 teams), as opposed to the maximum of four they played last year or up to five they would play now (if the winner comes out of the wild-card round). It would have the potential to be exciting, as well as clearly providing a benefit to regular-season performance. The regular season might have to be shortened by a game or two, but with balanced schedules likely going out the window after this year, that doesn’t seem to be a huge hurdle.

In a sense, it would meet all the criteria Garber claims to want in a playoff. Unfortunately, Garber seems to prefer to deflect suggestions like that, presumably because the structure would be unlike anything else in North American sports. I see where he’s coming from, but the reality is MLS does not have much to lose by adopting a more radical approach such as this. Playoff ratings are already pretty bad, and there’s little reason to believe this year’s system is going to really change that reality.

The good news is that MLS is still a relatively young league, and there’s obviously an appetite for change. There’s really no reason to believe that MLS is not at least open to the idea of further changes to their playoff system. At the very least, let’s hope Garber understands that almost all fans of MLS are OK with the idea of playoffs, it’s the particular system the league has chosen that upsets people.