Foreman Maintains His Optimism About Future of MSL : Soccer: Commissioner calls next season a ‘threshold year’ for league.
Earl Foreman has this chisel. It’s called indoor soccer, and he’s trying to use it to chip away at the National Basketball Assn. and National Hockey League.
Though he has been at it off and on since 1978, he still hasn’t managed to carve a niche for the Major Soccer League.
Success has always been right around the corner. It still is.
Foreman, who has owned a National Football League team, an NBA team and a sports arena, invented the sport and introduced it as the Major Indoor Soccer League in 1978.
He predicted success for it then, enjoyed it, then saw it drop off.
After a four-year “retirement” following the 1984-85 season, a year in which the MSL fielded 14 teams, Foreman retook the helm before the 1989-90 season after the league had dwindled to half what it was when he left.
Foreman has been faced with questions ever since he returned. He took time out recently to answer some.
Question: Socker owner Ron Fowler has not said if his team will be back next year. Does that concern you?
Answer: I’ve got a relationship with Ron Fowler that I know what his position is and where he stands and what he feels he’s going to do six months down the road. It has always been that way from the first day I met him. As for his plans for next year, let’s put it this way: That’s a local matter. But he does keep me posted.
Q: Then you know whether he will be back?
A: I’ve been visiting with Ron, and we’re discussing the matter. We’re working on it. As far as what his plans are, that’s something he should disclose.
Q: One of the problems Fowler has often cited is that the league is East Coast-based.
A: That’s a concern, but I think what you have to do with our league--if you want to know the future--you have to study the past. Take a look at the expansion patterns of other leagues.
Traditionally, it’s a migration from the East to the West. I would really love to have three or four teams in California.
The future is there. We’ve got to hold onto San Diego, keep our anchor down here. I think it’s a matter of time before we get out (West), but I have every confidence that we will. I think we’ll be in Anaheim. Maybe we’ll be up in Portland. At that point, then Sacramento becomes a more viable opportunity.
And the other thing you can’t discount is that there is an economy in numbers. Just as a Buffalo-Cleveland-Pittsburgh-Baltimore travel quadrangle is very effective, so will a Sacramento-San Diego-Los Angeles arrangement. There are some buildings in place, such as Sacramento. There are some coming on line, like Anaheim. And there’s always the opportunity to get back into Los Angeles.
I would think that the (Los Angeles) Sports Arena offers a very possible franchise, not for this coming year, but for the next year. I’ve talked to potential owners. It’s just something that we can’t focus on for this year. The building is available to us. Cincinnati and Los Angeles are right at the top for next year.
Q: Why would Los Angeles be considered? It was such an utter failure before.
A: This time it would be at be at the Sports Arena, which is about to undergo a multimillion-dollar renovation.
Q: You also mentioned Cincinnati. There have been rumors an existing team might move there.
A: Cincinnati would like to have a team in the (Riverfront Coliseum). The carpet’s out. They would give it great dates and provide a lot of support at the arena level as far as marketing goes. I talked to them (recently) and they told me that if we have a team that isn’t happy with its lease, that they’d love to have it. They’d give it better dates and a better lease. Hopefully that will be a good market for us next year.
Q: As for expansion this year, Buffalo has been a hot rumor, but a report out of that city said the potential owners have now decided to go into the National Professional Soccer League.
A: Well, Buffalo is still very interested. I am still talking to the people there and I’m very excited, but there are still questions.
Q: What’s the situation in Dallas, where the Sidekicks folded last month?
A: There is still interest there. The reason for the optimism in Dallas is that Dallas has potential as good as any team in the league, perhaps more. Dallas came close to breaking even two years ago with a tremendous amount of contribution coming from their gate receipts. They did very well at the gate. But they dropped off drastically this year and there are a lot of reasons for it.
Now this isn’t being critical of anybody, but I’ve got to deal in facts. Dallas nearly broke even two years ago so they looked at the season and said, ‘Hey, we’ve arrived.’ So what did they do? They went in and cut their sales staff by 50%. They increased their prices substantially. They had a $22 ticket down there in some instances. And the third thing was they went from being a big contender and almost right from the get-go they turned (into a last-place team).
So you had an accumulation of those things happening and unfortunately in a new league like ours, you’re vulnerable.
Q: Apparently more vulnerable without national television?
A: TV helps, but, you know, as the lady once said, ‘A rose, is a rose, is a rose.’ Income is income is income. Whatever the source is, it’s there to sustain you. When you talk about national TV, people overlook one thing: You’re not talking about a billion-dollar contract. So you’ve got to get to the realms of TV nationally as I recognized it when I was in the NBA when we had nine teams (in the late 1960s).
We had national TV, but it still wasn’t enough to keep us alive. It was a dribble, and the way the NBA stayed alive in those days was they went out and sold franchises. They kept afloat with the expansion money. I was in the league with nine teams and as I recall we got up to 15 in a hurry. It was the money that those people paid to come in the league that took care of all the losses everybody had in basketball.
Television offers to our league something that is just as important as the dollars that come in. It offers exposure.
Q: And, of course, for the league to be attractive to television networks, it has to get back into the major markets: New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
A: The major markets have always been a key to any league’s success, always have been, always will be. But we have to be very careful about any expansion into those markets because we’ve failed in them before and lost credibility. The next time we go in, we have to make it stick. We have to learn why we weren’t successful before and not repeat our errors.
Q: As far as that goes, can the MSL hope to gain the stability that the NHL and NBA now enjoy?
A: I call (next season) a threshold year. And by that I mean I think we have to get up, get off, get running. And if we do a good job this coming year, we’re at the threshold of a period of time that I compare to the NBA when we went from nine to 14 or 15 teams.
I see it happening (because so many new arenas are being built around the country). Arenas are the mortar, the protoplasm, whatever you want to call it. It’s the rock upon which this church is built.
I look at Portland, Philadelphia down the road, San Jose, Anaheim, Memphis, when those things are totally available to us, it becomes a two-way street in that we want to be there, and these cities are all not going to have two of the other indoor sports in their buildings. It offers a wonderful opportunity to us. And it comes at a great time as we build for the World Cup.
Q: Everyone in professional soccer seems to be banking on the World Cup to draw interest to the sport. But won’t that interest fade as soon as the international stars go home?
A: I look at the fact that we (the MSL) have five young men on the national team right now. How can that not be good for us? I figure what’s good for soccer is good for us.
Q: After you “retired,” the league went backward. Do you feel you’re rebuilding what was once there?
A: We’ve got people coming back that left (after I did). I’ve got the press guide from the last year I was in the league with all the logos of the teams (14). It’s like we were walking, but on a treadmill, at least from a personal standpoint. I stepped off of it and I’ve gotten back on it. And someone just revved it up four times the speed and I feel like I’m just running like this just to try to catch up and be back where we were.
Q: Did you expect the challenges to be so demanding?
A: It has been more difficult than I anticipated, but if we can get this thing structured, hopefully for this year, and off on the right foot, I think then down the road we’ll be darn close to where we stood when I left last time. I’m still faced with instability of the teams I came back to. That continues to be my major problem.
Q: Since you’ve been back, you’ve always stressed optimism. How real is that?
A: I want to be optimistic. I’ve got reason to be optimistic in some cases. And in some I don’t. But I don’t control it all. I don’t make all the decisions. I’m waiting to hear from Buffalo. I’m waiting to see what happens in Dallas. I think those things will work out.
I think we’ve got a wonderful sport. Somebody said where do you get your optimism from. You know we’ve had well over 25 million people come watch this game. If this game really weren’t a good product, we wouldn’t be around after 13 years.
