Blast Sandbag, pick up MISL Title

Say hello to your 2006 Major Indoor Soccer League champions:

Yes folks, that's correct.  Despite losing the second leg of the best of two championship… well, let me explain… maybe.  So they win the first game at home.  They travel the middle of the country and lose at St. Louis.  Instead of there being, I don't know, an aggregate goal situation or a best two out of three thing, the MISL rules stipulate that it's Golden Goal, sudden death time.  Yes, I'll admit it makes for fun TV (since it's hard enough to get this sport on TV) but there has to be a more logical solution… or not.

Either way, the Blast scored on a 7th minute goal, in spite of looking relatively attackless for the previous 60 minutes.  It was a pretty good goal to tell the truth.  Machel Milwood scored the goal on a nice onetime shot, right into the upper ninety… 

Since I have nothing else to add, it was nice to see Jamar Beasley looking like a dangerous soccer player.  I remember when he and DMB were supposed to be the next big things, along the lines of Judah and Micah Cooks (OK, bad examples).  Maybe this will be able to set Jamar right so he can at least get back to the MLS, though even playing in the USL may be considered a step up.

MISL Final on ESPN2 Now

Didn't notice this one.  The Major Indoor Soccer League championship is on right now.  St. Louis is up 4-1 in the third period.  I have no idea how many of those there are.  In an unfortunate development, it seems the St. Louis team is known as the Steamers, missing the obvious comedic chances with a Cleveland team named the Steamers.  Alas, for those of us who missed all of the games yesterday attending a wedding (and by all of us I mean myself), then this is the next best thing, at least until the 3 pm game.

Washington Post Releases 2006 MLS Salaries

Finally, I get to feel good that I'm making more money than a professional soccer player in America's highest league.  Still, I'd much rather be playing pro soccer.

Link to salaries, since I don't feel like being sued for reposting the whole thing. 

Of course, I guess we can take off Joel Kitamarike's salary… 

Also, sorted by:
Base Salary
Guaranteed Salary
Position
Name

Oh, and the base salary total for 321 players is $24,270,209; the guaranteed is $27,390,744.  The average base is $75,608.13 and the average guaranteed is $85,329.42.  And if your wondering, Palencia takes up 5% of the guaranteed MLS salaries. 

Preliminary Look at more MLS Time Numbers

Because there is actually more leg work than I thought, a brief look at where I'm going with this. Unfortunately, not all MLS match play-by-play is overly in-depth. The Hou-Col match includes info about injuries, but others don't.

So at the following link is an html table of the info I've cobbled together so far. WordPress couldn't display the whole table, so I thought this may be the easiest way to show it. Below is a key to help you out.  Note:  The totals and averages at the bottom only include the first 6 games of the season, so if they look odd, that's why.
Link to Table through week 1.

1st Half (s) – Seconds of 1st Half Stoppage Time
2nd Half (s) – Seconds of 2nd Half ST
Total (s) – Seconds of Total ST
Total (m) – Minutes of total ST
1st Stops – Total number of play stoppages in the first half according to MLS play-by-play
2nd Stops – Total number of play stoppages in the second half according to MLS play-by-play
T Stops – Total number of play stoppages in the game according to MLS play-by-play
1st H G – 1st Half Goals
2nd H G – 2nd Half Goals
T G – Total Goals
1st H F – 1st Half Fouls
2nd H F – 2nd Half Fouls
TF – Total Fouls
1st H C – 1st Half Cards
2nd H C – 2nd Half Cards
TC – Total Cards
1st H CK – 1st Half Corner Kicks
2nd H CK – 2nd Half Corner Kicks
TCK – Total Corner Kicks
1st H S – 1st Half Subs
2nd H S – 2nd Half Subs
TS – Total Subs
1st H O – 1st Half Offsides
2nd H O – 2nd Half Offsides
TO – Total Offsides

Follow up to stoppage time

So much for trying to analyze the past of MLS.  Turns out, MLS doesn't provide archived play-by-play for previous seasons.  Congrats MLS.  I can look at general numbers, but it seems indepth analysis is out the window.

Random ESPN2 Rant

OK, I really only like talking about the MLS and US soccer in general, mainly because I only follow the rest of the world during the World Cup and when I'm playing Football Manager (what the hell ever happened to Andri Sigþorsson anyway?).  That being said, I do enjoy watching some "footy" when I get home from work.  Now I could just fire up the 320×240 MLS feeds and catch up on previous weeks, but really, how many times can a guy watch New York not win (4 seems to be the number so far if you're counting).  So imagine my surprise, nay shock to find that tomorrow's Champion's League game between Barcelona and Milan is not on ESPN2.

Now, perhaps some people are content that there's 1 CL game on, the Villareal/Arsenal match from yesterday.  Sure, that's all well and good, but would it really have killed ESPN2's ratings to show the other semi-final match?  I mean, I forgot to set the Tivo today, so I have no soccer to watch when I'm washing clothes tomorrow… I'm going to have to play fetch with my dog and hope Katharine McPhee is wearing another amazing dress (and good God was that a great dress she had on tonight…).  Does ESPN2 expect to get a higher draw for the 2005 National Jumprope Championships (really, I'm not kidding) than a semi-final champions league game?  I mean its the middle of the fucking day.  This is a sport that ESPN/ABC is somewhat invested in at the moment… unlike say, jumprope, which I'm not sure if there is a league for at the moment (though the WNBA is still open, so I guess there's a market for anything).

So my rant, in brief, is come on ESPN, get off your freaking laurels and show us some Champion's League soccer.  You can even have Stoner do play by play from a studio in Bristol or wherever he's stationed for the next Outdoor Games dog jump.  I guess 3 soccer games in a week is all the suits at ESPN headquarters can handle. 

A Brief Look at Stoppage Time

Perhaps I'll get a chance to work on this more in depth as the week wears on, but for now, I just thought I'd take a brief look at stoppage time for the first 22 games of the season. As you may have noticed, there are some on BigSoccer (see LA fans) who are making a bit of an uproar over the amount of stoppage time added to the games. Personally, it is a bit annoying, just because I have a fear of any number over 90. As it is though, I thought I'd take a look at it, since the entire thread in the "News and Analysis" section was nothing but a bunch of people bitching back and forth and not trying to actually analyze things (and if you read through 9 pages, you'll see where stoppage time numbers were noted exactly once).

Don't look at this as some sort of indepth analysis, this is really just a bitch slap to people who pretend to think they're analyzing the MLS when all they're really doing is trolling each other. I'm just presenting numbers in this original posting. It had started out as more than that, I was intending to compare last season to this season (through 22 games). Then I was going to try and break it down by fouls/shots/offsides… but that was taking too long and I need at least 5 hours sleep before work (so I don't have to sleep at lunch and can watch Scrubs on the PDA). So for the first night (hopefully of many, which I'll ask my fiancee to remember that phrase on our honeymoon) I'm just presenting numbers. I intend to flesh them out the second night and compare them on the third night. Hopefully by Friday I may actually have something meaningful to say on the subject.

So without further Freddy (and if you have to know why it's a .jpg, it's because wordpress hates me and won't let me copy in an excel table):

Week	Teams	1st Half (s)	2nd Half (s)	Total (s)	Total (m)	Ref
1	DAL-CHI	52	258	310	5:10	Kevin Stott
	KC-CLB	60	172	232	3:52	Mark Geiger
	NE-LA	70	256	326	5:26	Abiodun Okulaja
	DC-NY	114	113	227	3:47	Brian Hall
	RSL-USA	78	10	88	1:28	Ricardo Salazar
	HOU-COL	212	136	348	5:48	Alex Prus
2	DC-USA	28	214	242	4:02	Marcel Yonan
	NY-NE	60	120	180	3:00	Baldomero Toledo
	HOU-KC	54	286	340	5:40	Erich Simmons
	DAL-RSL	88	210	298	4:58	Brian Hall
	COL-CLB	60	137	197	3:17	Terry Vaughn
	LA-CHI	114	240	354	5:54	Alex Prus
3	CLB-CHI	63	248	311	5:11	Erich Simmons
	DC-HOU	60	180	240	4:00	Abiodun Okulaja
	KC-NE	60	163	223	3:43	Marcel Yonan
	COL-DAL	241	174	415	6:55	Michael Kennedy
	RSL-NY	60	284	344	5:44	Jair Marrufo
	USA-LA	34	551	585	9:45	Kevin Stott
4	NY-DC	52	77	129	2:09	Kevin Stott
	HOU-RSL	114	117	231	3:51	Gus St. Silva
	LA-CLB	186	373	559	9:19	Mauricio Navarro
	DAL-KC	72	272	344	5:44	Elias Bazakos
TOT	22	1932	4591	6523	108:43
		87.8	208.7	296.5	04:56.5

So, what does all this mean? No fucking clue except there is an average of about 5 minutes of stoppage time a game, which I assume is reasonably correct. It is a bit odd that almost 2.5 times as much stoppage time is added in the second half than the first, but I haven't finished checking all the numbers to see why that is (I assume more teams roll around like its a jello wrestling contest and act like little bitches). Oh well, after fucking around with trying to get this table insterted for 45 minutes, I really don't care. Off to bed and to run some more stats tomorrow.

Recapping the Weekend

Not quite a full slate of games for the MLS last week, with just 4 games on the schedule. In the first time in like a week, the MLS split the games up over two days. They also had two games on national TV and by national I mean on the same channel that shows women's college bowling.

Well Damn, Pt. 2

You think I would have learned from yesterday and actually have watched the second half of a game. I had a massive headache, but I was able to last about 75 minutes. When I nodded off, Dallas was up 1-0 in a relatively uneventful game. I wake up, with Stoner yelling in the 4th minute of extra time, with Dallas scoring a solid goal to win the game 2-1 in the last seconds. I really need to work on my stamina.

Odd note on MLS.tv though. I clicked around today, and I could watch KC v Houston for free, or at least the archive. It didn’t ask for a password. I thought we were paying for the archive and live games. Since 90% of the time I probably won’t get to watch it live, I thought I was paying for the archives. If I knew I could get it for free, I may not have paid. Just a rant here.

Well damn

That's what I get for letting my fiancee wake up and control the remote for the second half.  Missed the whole thing.  Sounds like it was more exciting than the first half.  Just now getting to watch the final 5 mintues of the RSL-Houston tilt.  Had to watch "Asylum."  That movie was crap, but it did have gratuitous nudity, so it was almost a wash.