Who Remembers The NASL?

[regnaD kciN]

3. There were many problems with the NASL...

...but the biggest came when the Cosmos decided to emulate their baseball neighbors up in the Bronx and start splashing the cash for European superstars. Within a very short time, they had build up a team that dominated everyone else, and all the other clubs had no choice but to try to do the same, without the financial resources to do so. This is one reason why the MLS has a salary cap, and limit on the number of "designated players" each club can carry.

The second biggest problem with the NASL was that it peaked just before the days when cable became a force in broadcasting. Television was limited to the "big three" channels plus PBS in most places, with a smattering of independent channels in the bigger cities. There was no ESPN to beam games into homes, let alone a Fox Soccer Channel. Nowadays, in every MLS city I know of, you can watch their games on a regional sports or independent channel; back then, I'm pretty sure the only game broadcast anywhere was the championship final and, because the market was perceived to be so small (because there was no broadcast coverage -- talk about your vicious circle), few if any teams had radio broadcasts, either. I attended a couple of Boston Minutemen games in the mid-'70s, but the only way I knew how they were doing outside of those two games was to look up the score in the next day's sports section.