Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber’s statements that MLS expansion will stop at 16 teams until at least 2010 before deciding if/when/how to continue with expansion makes it clear that there are literally just two expansion franchises remaining at the current $30 million asking price, triple what the admission fee was for the last round of double expansion that saw the arrival of CD Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake.

Handicapping the horse race for those two last franchises is a popular online parlor game, especially at places like Big Soccer #. For non-insiders the game is a bit like tea leaf reading, with all of us having to rely on what few scraps and shards of expansion-related information comes out in the local press and then matching them up against Mr. Garber's sometimes contradictory, often limited, and frequently confusing public statements. At any given moment town A could shoot from having a theoretically dormant bid to being an overnight favorite based on some of the slimmest and most theoretical of information.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have more than just a spectator/journalistic interest in this question. I grew up and played soccer in Collinsville, Illinois, the proposed site for the hoped-for St. Louis franchise. I most likely played at least three games across the field from the Illinois lawyer fronting the St. Louis bid, Jeff Cooper, who used to play for our arch rival high school team, Granite City. In the fifteen years up until our combined senior years of high school, 1987, our alma maters (and their ancestors on his side) represented 9 boys state championships, going on to win 5 of the next 6 before finally being overtaken in the mid-90s by more Upstate teams in the Chicago area (Illinois High School Boys Soccer Champions).

Further, the normal rules governing degrees of separation in a relatively small Midwestern area like the Metro-East of St. Louis means I wasn't surprised to discover that I've got multiple people I know/have known who know/knew Mr. Cooper without digging more deeply from the top of my brain than for where he lived in 1987 and where he lives now.

That being said, I believe that it's better to know the un-biased, possibly negative truth than to spout a bunch of homer-ism worth no more than highly polished crap like you often see in the media, so this is my attempt to present as objective of an analysis as I can as to how the race card is stacking up right now. So you can think of this as my right brain argument for where MLS is likely to expand.

First let's start with the most recent full list of possible contender cities as compiled from multiple sources:

• St. Louis (of course) | articles
• Philadelphia | articles

• Vancouver | articles
• Portland | articles
• Seattle | articles
• Milwaukee | articles
• Rochester | articles
• Atlanta | articles
• Miami | articles

• Sacramento | articles
• Phoenix | articles
• Las Vegas | articles
• San Diego | articles
• San Antonio | articles
• Cleveland | articles
• New York 2 | articles

Now here's how my untrained eyes break this down:

• There are 2 non-United Soccer Leagues* towns that are fairly advanced in their negotiations for a franchise with both known investor groups and publicly presented stadium proposals: St. Louis, Philadelphia.
• There are 7 USL-affiliated towns that could theoretically be candidates for making the jump, but none of their known owners are actively talking about that as a realistic possiblity, especially not with the specific of how to get a soccer specific stadium development off the ground. Rochester would need the least amount of modifications, but has the least likelihood of drumming up the $30 million entrance fee now required for Club MLS. Seattle has known investor groups, but they remain still at the very early stage ideas regarding stadia despite the longest track record of interest and claimed readiness for rapid launch of any expansion city, going back even before the Salt Lake/Chivas USA round of expansion.
  Similarly Milwaukee has stadium blueprints but nobody with $30 million to spare or any commitment to build on hand. That's ahead of Atlanta, that only has rumors of NFL owners wanting to own a soccer team. Portland just seems to get trotted out because they're logical candidates if you consider Seattle seriously, once upon a time even being pursued by the Seattle bidders as in the running for the home of the theoretical Seattle MLS franchise itself.
  Vancouver, along with occasionally named Canadian candidate city, Montreal, gets mentioned anytime discussion turns to Toronto's recent massively successful launch experience, but there seems to be little local current movement on that front so they'd come as a surprise.

Of the rest:

• Sacramento only seems to crop up in reference as a potential destination/temporary home for the recently re-located San Jose team, if owner Lew Wolff's required Soccer Specific Stadium can be found the second go-round with local politics (or third, depending on how you look at it). Otherwise there doesn't seem to be much energy there, similarly to San Diego. I've seen discussion of Chivas USA's owners looking at moving to San Diego from the Home Depot Center, which would make sense if they could get ownership of their eventual home, otherwise they'd have the same negatives of co-habitating that they have with their Los Angeles landlords the Galaxy.
• Las Vegas, San Antonio and Phoenix all seem to have some local official enthusiasm for soccer, but little other than vapor when it comes to acknowledged ownership groups, real fan base/public support, or actual stadium development plans.
• Cleveland has a publicly known ownership group in the Wolstein's with a long history of trying to bring MLS to town, but unfortunately they have just as long of a history of running into brick walls with just about every proposal they've yet to come up with. Current stadium prospects appear unlikely at best.
• As many have noted, it'd be kind of hard to justify bringing in a second team to a market that the first team isn't even successful yet, nor in their own stadium. That being said, New York will eventually happen, as I believe will a second in Chicago, so given the right set of circumstances, MLS's need for a 14th team possibly being one of them, it wouldn't be inconceivable to have another "exceptional" circumstance be created for a deep-pocketed ownership group to-be-named-later similar to that which allowed San Jose to get a franchise in 2008 without the requisite stadium deal already in place.

So does that mean it's a done deal for St. Louis in Philly? Hardly, but I think that if the two municipalities in question can come to agreements with the ownership groups on their respective stadia, they will get their franchises. One complicating factor that might increase the pressure on the second to consider the proposal, assuming the first is approved, is that they may have to move sooner than later if Seattle or Atlanta takes some radical step to change the dynamics, like have a rich native son/daughter announce their arrival on the scene with open checkbook and a stadium deal too good to be true.

St. Louis would appear to have the upper hand if Cooper has read the signals coming out of MLS headquarters correctly. His gamble is that the "agreement to make an agreement" that the city council will hopefully be approving on September 10 will be enough commitment towards a stadium that Commissioner Garber will need to be quickly making an announcement offering one of those two franchises to St. Louis United. Mr. Cooper certainly seems to think it will e enough, telling the Alton Telegraph: "Of course, the league can't give guarantees, but we're not going to build this stadium until we have a team." (Could This Be Soccer Heaven?) .

According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the discussions with the league are advanced enough that they've begun working out the nitty-gritty details of the mechanics of expansion, including hosting the All-Star game or MLS Cup, as well as the expansion draft. (Stadium Of Dreams)

Assuming all of that is true, then the final financing details would have to be hammered out and ground broken all in the space of less than 2 months to have a shot at starting play in Spring 2009, the target date.

MLS's lengthy public courtship with possible franchises in Seattle, publicly known at least as far back as 2003 and likely even farther, gives us a pretty clear picture that first and foremost in the minds of league executives is going to be the commitments to a stadium. Seattle has demonstrated fans, a successful USL franchise, the Seattle Sounders, with a lengthy history going back to the initial NASL days, built-in rivalries with the rest of the West coast should that expansion level ever arrive, and all packaged in a large, wealthy, soccer-savvy market.

Yet the one thing they don't have and have never had is anything resembling stadium plans at anything more than a theoretical level of development. Adrian Hanauer's group, the original option holders for a Seattle MLS franchise, only investigated Portland as a potential base for his franchise because they wanted to see if it was any easier going there on the stadium issue, but it wasn't, so his exclusive option on an MLS franchise in the Pacific Northwest expired.

That being said, if Garber and MLS lawyers see too much wriggle room in Cooper's proposed agreement before the Collinsville City Council, a hint of potential negotiating troubles that would leave the league with the potential of having serious egg on its face (something along the lines of the scenario with Real Salt Lake's struggles getting a stadium built that started the most recent soundings about MLS in St. Louis with the idea being floated of Mr. Cooper buying the team and relocating it), along with a very difficult situation should those final negotiations with the municipal authorities fail at the last minute and MLS ever wants to attempt to return to St. Louis, the league may look to raise the bar some for Cooper's bid.

That would certainly be a frustrating situation for all around, but it would at the very least give all interested parties theoretically that much more clarity as to where the end-line is for these franchises. Skittishness among elected officials towards any public risk on sports stadium deals abounds these days, so a cautious approach isn't too unexpected in the elaborate courtship ritual that is securing a franchise in MLS. The ritual is kind of a necessary part of the system since it actually has no practical and attractive enforement capability once granted.

What the league is doing, in addition to cashing a $30 million check, thank you very much, is accepting a proposed owner at their word that they have something in mind about acquiring a permanent home for their team that can be built fast enough that they won't risk going under and creating a long, drawn out, embarrassing implosion in the league. The only possible hoped-for positives of such an implosion would require either a new ownership group to take up the search, again ideally with completed stadium as close to at hand as possible, either way with a lot of drama, or moving/selling the franchise to a different expansion town, again with a lot of undesired drama.

Just looking at the difficulties established franchises like the New York Red Bulls have undergone to get their own stadium built, or even what Real Salt Lake has experienced out in Utah and you can see the reason to make sure that the "done deal" is as close to "done" as possible.

If the clarity of the leagues stadium commitment needs doesn't shake out any further realistic contenders, than St. Louis and Philadelphia would likely have a steady march towards teams number 15 and 16 in MLS. If St. Louis doesn't get a positive result following the Sep. 10 vote, there's one more argument in addition to the above why I think St. Louis and Philadelphia (or any of a number of secondary alternatives) make the likeliest options for successful MLS expansion bids: scheduling symmetry, plus a little payback.

With MLS going to 14 teams in 2008, both conferences will now have 7 teams and schedules will be synchronized for 32 game seasons with a home-and-away series with every other team in the league taking up 26 games and an extra intraconference game for each of their 6 conference opponents.

However MLS gets to 16 teams by 2010, they will most likely still be divided regionally into an eastern and western conference, each of 8 teams. With each conference having 7 teams as of next year you could argue for an eastern team and a western team, which could be either St. Louis/Philly in the eastern conference and Seattle in the western.

One thing that doesn't look at though is that then you would have 4 expansion teams in the West vs. 2 in the East in the past few years. Why would that matter? With the playoffs schedule switching to only top two in each conference and the top 4 others you have a points benefit if you have to play more games against weaker opponents than teams in the other conference. In essence you'd have the college football arguments of power conferences like the Big Ten where Ohio State and Michigan and Penn State, et al beat up on each other every week, reducing the ability of more than a couple teams to come through with good-looking records each season, while teams in leagues with a more marked separation between the top and bottom of the league artificially inflates their winning teams' records.

It is true that this year Chivas USA seems to have finally gotten its sea-legs and learned to walk on its own 2 feet, but RSL is still the worst team in the entire league, and Toronto FC still has a long way to go as well. San Jose will struggle at first as well, so league officials will want in some way if possible to offset that impact I would think.

Remember though, this calculus only comes into play should there be a competition for the final franchises. If there's not a choice and MLS only has candidates that create an off-balance scenario, I'm pretty confident they'll take their money and figure out what's the least bad option to try until the situation can right itself naturally.

If MLS adds two new franchises to the East to repay the benefits provided to the Western Conference teams, they'd also need to shift one franchise to the West to keep the numbers at 8 each. Kansas City being the most recent arrival in the East outside of Toronto would be the most logical one, even more logical given that with the exception of St. Louis I would imagine more of their thoughts and rivalries tend to lie more naturally to the South and West.

Then with the same scheduling setup of home-and-away with the whole league and an extra game intra-conference, a 16-team league gives you 30 games plus and extra 7 intra-conference games for 37, then to keep things nice and round you give a final rivalry game like they did this year in the Western Conference.

For your 38th games you could have- Eastern Conference:

• St. Louis vs. Chicago (Cards/Cubs, Blues Blackhawks)
• DC United vs. Red Bulls (Orioles/Yankees, Nats/Mets?)
• Philadelphia vs. Columbus (Penn State/Ohio State)
• Toronto vs. Revs (Bruins/Canadiens? Yankees vs. Canucks?)

Western Conference:

• Galaxy vs. Chivas (natural)
• Houston vs. Dallas (another natural)
• Colorado vs. RSL (current rivalry)
• Earthquakes vs. Kansas City (Pony Express rivalrly? I know it's not St. Joseph's, but there's definitely 19th century connections and rivalries that could be mined here possibly).
• Possibly the last two could be switched to be KC vs. Colorado (like a Big 12 rivalry), then RSL vs. San Jose (proudly conservative utah vs. liberal bay area?)

As mentioned above though, all these calculations could be thrown off if one or the other of St. Louis or Philadelphia misses a step somewhere and slips behind one of the other candidates with a game changer, say like Mexico's Club America bringing a team to Phoenix or Chicago. They've certainly got the deep pockets for it, and an acknowledged interest in MLS, so they or Boca Juniors, or some other unknown club could come in at any point and change the equation overnight for cities like Sacramento or San Antonio. Or they could just buy into one of the second franchises of AEG and the Hunt Group: Houston or Columbus (I'm betting the Hunt family will keep Dallas over Columbus in the long run, and they are publicly committed to only keeping one team in the league).

UPDATED POSTSCRIPT (Sept. 7): I forgot to even mention in all of the hubbub above one additional factor that may play into MLS's decision as to whom to award a new franchise if there are competing bids: the proposed new women's professional soccer league. Unlike its predecessor, the WUSA, the latest attempt at women's pro soccer will be run with much more coordination with MLS, likely sharing stadia, thereby filling out empty spots in the schedule, much like how the WNBA and NBA complement each other. With Mr. Cooper also owning one of those new teams, it may be a further leg up on the Gateway City's bid, with the additional potential bonus of the two teams being able to share administrative/back-office facilities and staff. You can see all articles I have indexed about the new women's league here.

Think I've got it all wrong or just have a comment? Let me know here and I'll make any modifications/corrections necessary, giving credit where requested.

Back to Part 1: (Crunching the Numbers on a Collinsville/St. Louis Soccer Stadium)
Go to Part 3: (A Former Kahok Votes For Collinsville and St. Louis Soccer)