Open Letter: August 5, 2017
Hello all; this is another in a series of open letters. I
started out urging Miami Beckham United (MBU), David Beckham’s project to
launch an MLS club in Miami, to consider talking to Bill Edwards and the other
owners of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, as an alternate backup plan if the Miami
situation did not work out. As we now know, it was not possible for Beckham to
switch cities once he had made his choice; and in any case it now looks like he
will get his MLS team in Miami (may I suggest a name? AFC Miami). I had started
this campaign to draw attention to the Rowdies and to urge them to go to MLS,
before Bill Edwards had made his MLS plans public; and so I continue this
campaign as part of #MLS2StPete #MLS2TampaBay #Rowdies2MLS. This is my ninth
letter; the first letter was sent September 7, 2015.
As I mentioned in my previous letters I am documenting this
letter writing campaign in my blog (http://supportyourlocalfootballclub.blogspot.com/). Things are
coming to a conclusion this year; St. Pete voted 87% “yes” for the Al Lang
Stadium for the Rowdies back in May, and St. Louis voted “no” on their MLS
stadium proposal; Beckham is close to finishing his stadium deal in Miami, etc.
This past July I visited Orlando to watch the Rowdies play Orlando City B and I
visited St. Pete again to watch the Rowdies play Charleston Battery; downtown
Orlando is nice, but downtown St. Pete is even better – as Fox Sports’ Rob
Stone observes, people really need to go look at downtown St. Petersburg, and
attend a Rowdies game at Al Lang Stadium, in order to “get” it. Tampa Bay
Rowdies in MLS playing at Al Lang has such enormous potential yet so many
naysayers just can’t see it. Rowdies at Al Lang is a hidden gem; Tampa Bay
Rowdies vs. Orlando City vs. Miami is another “Cascadia three way rivalry”, in
Florida.
Why am I writing these open letters? My motivations for
doing this are part nostalgia and part loyalty. This below explains my attitude
I think, in doing my part to help save the Seattle Sounders name, before they
joined MLS, back in 2008 when they put their name up to a fan vote but without
the “Sounders” option:
What if they weren’t
the Sounders?
I myself, I am proud
to say, "stuffed the ballot" multiple times with the Seattle Sounders
name as the write-in option, and I encouraged others to do likewise. I've only
visited Seattle once and I don't support the Sounders, but as a Rowdies
supporter since 1975, it was my sacred duty to help keep another old North
American soccer brand name alive.
Wisely, the owners
listened to the fans and picked the Sounders name, but we should never have
been forced to write the name in, in the first place. It should have been the
automatic name choice without a ballot, and the fact that it wasn't even on the
ballot was the final insult. Decades of soccer history and legacy potentially
washed down the drain as though it were worth nothing!
I should not have to
explain why something like this is important to USA soccer in general and to
Rowdies fans in particular.
We here in the USA are constantly forgetting our history,
destroying our past, and trying to start over from scratch; this is doubly true
in soccer. Consider the vanished history of the original American Soccer League
(ASL) of the 1920s and in particular the Bethlehem Steel Football Club:
Pastor Keeps History
of Storied U.S. Club Bethlehem Steel Alive
Until a few years
ago, one of America’s most successful soccer clubs had been reduced to
whispers.
Florida also has a forgotten history in soccer, going back
even before the creation of the Tampa Bay Rowdies in 1975; for instance how
many people know the name of the only Florida soccer club to win the USSF Open
Cup?
St. Petersburg
Kickers
Founded by Kurt
Herbach in 1957, the Kickers won their first national title, the 1967 Over-30
championship. By 1989, the team had won eleven Florida Suncoast Soccer League
championships and four Florida State Cups.[1] The clubs most prestigous victory
came on the national state winning the 1989 National Challenge Cup (aka US Open
Cup).[2]
But of course nothing can compare to the original magic of
the Tampa Bay Rowdies, in Florida soccer:
Original Rowdies gave
Tampa sports fans a 'kick in the grass'
TAMPA - Three words from a time capsule. Three words from a wonderfully colorful era. Three words guaranteed to bring a smile, a nod of recognition. Tampa Bay Rowdies. "What was it like?" asked Rodney Marsh, once the "Clown Prince of Soccer," who is now 65. "It was wild. I'm telling you, wild." "We captured some magic," said Mike Connell, known as "Iron Mike."
But, I can hear people saying: MLS can’t survive on
nostalgia. Didn’t MLS “fail” in Tampa Bay already?
#MLS2StPete—And why
the failure of the Mutiny doesn’t matter
https://medium.com/@JArnholz/mls2stpete-and-why-the-failure-of-the-mutiny-doesnt-matter-4c0c60b513a9
Why should Tampa Bay
get another MLS team?
The question is a
fair one. Tampa Bay, of course, was part of Major League Soccer when the league
first began in 1996—the “Tampa Bay Mutiny” were one of the 10 original MLS
clubs. The Mutiny saw success early on, winning the Supporter’s Shield in ’96
on the feet of star players Carlos Valderrama and Roy Lassiter. However, the
team folded in 2001. The death of the Mutiny will have many critics asking: if
the first round of MLS in Tampa Bay failed, why should the area be given a
second chance?
Well, basically Major
League Soccer didn’t give Tampa Bay a fair shake. The Mutiny were doomed to
fail almost from the beginning, arriving on unstable ground and faced with many
subsequent tremors caused by the poor management of the league.
First and foremost,
the league elected to create a totally new team identity for the Bay Area in
the Mutiny rather than returning to the historic name Rowdies. The Rowdies were
Tampa’s first professional team, and the first to begin the local tradition of using
the “Tampa Bay” moniker. They won a championship in the ‘70s and had crowds of
50,000+ in Tampa Stadium to see Rodney Marsh and the Rowdies take on Pele and
the New York Cosmos, arguably North America’s richest soccer rivalry. Rather
than capitalize on the nostalgia and recognition of the established brand,
Tampa Bay’s first MLS team was given a new name.
This YouTube video on the same topic is well worth watching
if you are not yet convinced:
#MLS2StPete - The
Rowdies vs. The Mutiny
On May 2, 2017, Tampa
Bay took a step forward in its bid to join Major League Soccer when residents
of St. Petersburg, FL voted overwhelmingly in favor of allowing the St. Pete
government to negotiate with Tampa Bay Rowdies owner Bill Edwards on a lease
extension vital to the team's plans to expand Al Lang Stadium should the region
be awarded a slot in MLS' league expansion.
With the #MLS2StPete
movement earning a major victory, many critics point to the failure of original
MLS team Tampa Bay Mutiny (1996-2001) as a sign that Tampa Bay can't support a
top-tier soccer team. This video analyzes the struggles the Mutiny faced and
how the current Rowdies bid has turned those weaknesses into strengths.
The relative lack of news coming out of the Tampa Bay
Rowdies MLS bid since the successful yes vote in St. Pete in May has some
Rowdies fans worried. Other cities seem to be making lots of noise and showing
progress while Tampa Bay Rowdies remain quiet. Some Rowdies fans chatter about
this:
Jones: Not sure the
MLS odds are in the Rowdies' favor (tampabay.com)
Miami Overtown SSS
isn't in a great location and Beckham could use another local rival in Florida
to help keep up local interest; this is a plus for the Rowdies not a minus.
In for a penny in for
a pound: if MLS is giving a vote of confidence to Florida in Miami, why not in
Tampa Bay as well? A three way Florida rivalry will be stronger than a two way
rivalry; Orlando and Tampa Bay hate each other much more than either hates
Miami.
It will build a
counter-narrative: MLS has reversed the contraction of 2001! Tampa Bay and
Miami are back! MLS has turned the corner!
This practically
writes itself. People can't see it yet but it is there potentially. [ . . . ]
Why a soccer stadium
is the last thing the Tropicana Field site needs (tampabay.com)
https://www.reddit.com/r/TampaBayRowdies/comments/6rbewh/why_a_soccer_stadium_is_the_last_thing_the/
Also he repeats the
trope that Miami getting an MLS team means the Rowdies won't be going to MLS.
I disagree; in for a
penny, in for a pound; in order to ensure Beckham's Miami MLS team is a success,
a second Florida rival in MLS is a plus, not a minus. With the dicey Overtown
stadium location, Beckham can use all the help he can get.
MLS can run a counter
narrative: by letting in both Miami and the Rowdies, they will be reversing the
contraction of 2001, showing that MLS has truly turned the corner.
This will make a lot
of sense in hindsight, but most of the current pundits simply can't see it yet;
they are too focused on the stigma of the 2001 contraction, and/or on the idea
that Florida can't or shouldn't have more than 2 MLS teams.
This is nonsense. If
anything, MLS owes us 3 Florida teams to compensate us for what MLS did to us
in 2001 - a contraction which, as the success of Orlando City has demonstrated,
was not the fault of Florida soccer fans. [ . . . ]
In the same vein.....
We get crap for believing that Florida can support 3 teams. Yet no one blinks
an eye at a Columbus Cincy Detroit cluster in an area that is still shrinking
economically. FFS! [ . . . ]
Their reasoning for
"3 for Texas 2 for Florida"? Texas has a third again bigger
population than Florida, ergo Texas should have 3 and Florida only 2 MLS teams.
"Why, the
Dallas-Houston-San Antonio triangle alone has the same population as
Florida!"
Yeah, genius: that's
why both states can support 3 MLS teams. MLS is never going to have a Texas
team outside of the Dallas-Houston-San Antonio triangle (unless we go crazy big
60+ team MLS one day).
Therefore only the
population of the Dallas-Houston-San Antonio triangle is relevant to the
conversation; and as was just admitted, the population of the
Dallas-Houston-San Antonio triangle is about equal to Florida's population.
Therefore the two
regions that are actually in the MLS expansion conversation have roughly equal
population, so should support the same number of teams.
And as mentioned,
Florida is still growing very rapidly in population while regions like Ohio and
Michigan are shrinking.
It's not an accident
that the Tampa Bay Area jumped ahead of Detroit and Phoenix recently to become
the biggest TV market (#11) not currently in MLS.
It isn’t Miami vs. Orlando City that MLS should be looking
forward to: it is Tampa Bay Rowdies vs. Orlando City! They had a big crowd in
St. Pete for the first match of the USL season, this past March, between the
Rowdies and Orlando City B, with a big contingent of travelling fans from
Orlando (also note that the Rowdies have a small stadium with some of the
highest ticket prices in lower league soccer yet still draw comparatively well).
I was in Orlando a few weeks ago in July for the return match; the crowd was
much smaller in Orlando, but there was still a large contingent of travelling
fans from the Tampa Bay Area (even though it was a weeknight, on a Thursday).
Kartik Krishnaiyer explains the rivalry:
Orlando vs Tampa Bay
– The ultimate rivalry
July 16, 2017 · by Kartik
Krishnaiyer · in Orlando City SC, Orlando Pride, Tampa Bay Rowdies ·
The rivalry between
Orlando City SC and the Tampa Bay Rowdies is the ultimate Florida contest with
statewide supremacy and so much more on the line. Here is my 1,500 word soliloquy
for Prost Amerika, a Seattle-based national soccer site that is known
especially for its wall-to-wall coverage of the intense rivalries in the
Cascadia area. [ . . . ]
Orlando City SC vs
Tampa Bay Rowdies – Cascadia for Florida
Thursday night a
rivalry was renewed at the USL level. A rivalry that while relatively young is
no less intense than most other US-based soccer rivalries which are of course
all by global standards, young. It’s as much a rivalry between cities are
neighboring geographic areas as it is between clubs and that makes the competition
between the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Orlando City SC one where the intensity of
fans is unmatched in the southeastern United States.
Speaking of Kartik Krishnaiyer, I feel obligated to speak
out in favor of someone rescuing the Rowdies old time, long time Florida rival,
and Kartik’s soccer club, the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers:
Fort Lauderdale
Strikers: Looking forward and reflecting on why viable ownership bids were
rejected by NASL?
Last week’s transfer
via public auction of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers copyright and brand to St
Petersburg magnate Bill Edwards hasn’t sat well with some Strikers fans. But
the club which has been controlled previously by owners from Brazil now is for
the first time in its post mid 1990’s history in the hands of an American
businessman based in Florida. A more localized custodian of the brand who will
understand the proper value of the club’s trademarks in addition to the real
estate, political and soccer landscape in Florida better than foreign owners is
a plus for the Strikers. Some fans would like to see the Strikers name retired
for time being and not further run through the mud so to speak. This is a very
valid and emotional response to the disastrous downfall of the club, but it can
be argued with that in mind the brand is better off in Edwards’ hands (for now)
than in that of someone else.
We shall see what happens on this front. An MLS team in
Miami need not be the death knell of the Strikers; in the 40+ year history of
pro soccer in south Florida, the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers always drew much bigger
crowds than pro soccer clubs in Miami, until last year when a disastrous foreign
ownership destroyed the Strikers. Striker likers deserve a better fate than
this.
Well once again I am out of space. My final plea is for any
potential investors reading this to please do your part to partner with Bill
Edwards and successfully bring the Rowdies to MLS. The Tampa Bay Area needs you
to step up. The living traditions and history and legacy of the Tampa Bay
Rowdies needs to be carried forward into the future at the highest level of USA
soccer, which is MLS. #COYR
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