MLS Expansion and College Football Recruiting

Twelve cities have put in applications for an expansion Major League Soccer franchise. That includes two cities here in North Carolina along with my preferred sports city of Detroit. I am hoping that a new franchise gets added to one of those three cities to give me an MLS team to cheer for. I am also hoping that they are able to extend their video viewing options for the league.

MLS needs to put together a digital package that is superior to the other major sports leagues in the United States. They need the extra exposure. The best way for them to grow their fanbase is by exposing more people to their league. It has slowly been improving in past years, but they could really benefit by making a push towards live video on social media. I would like to see MLS put together some type of red zone styled channel that streams live on social media. Since soccer is tougher to predict when scoring is going happen, it could rotate between games showing corner kicks and teams moving the ball into the zone. Using something like this, they could also show scoring drives on a slight delay. This will help drive in fans as most major sites do not update MLS scores instantly anyway.

The other topic on the docket is college football recruiting. The top teams held their place as the USC Trojans slipped into the top five with a small class. It seems like the hype train is on USC once again. All of the major recruiting services reported late in the afternoon that the only team that could possibly move into the top five was LSU. Once the afternoon was completed, USC was the team that had slipped into the top five instead.

Richie Leahey