— As the North American Soccer League approached the end of its 2011 season—its first as a Division II soccer league sanctioned by the U.S. Soccer Federation—the still-nascent breakaway association already found itself at a crossroads.

The Montreal Impact was on its way to Major League Soccer. The league already owned and operated the NSC Minnesota Stars, and it was pumping money into the Atlanta Silverbacks and Puerto Rico Islanders to buttress those floundering franchises. In December 2011, Selby Wellman, one of the original team owners who broke away from the United Soccer League in late 2009 to form the new NASL, dissolved the Carolina RailHawks’ corporate entity. Traffic Sports USA, which already owned the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, eventually purchased the RailHawks’ brand and reformed the club for the 2012 season.

Meanwhile, the NASL was engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions with MLS about a possible marketing and club affiliation partnership. Months of negotiations culminated with a meeting in New York City on June 10, 2012. Revolving around a scheduled gathering of the NASL’s Board of Governors. the meeting was attended by various MLS officials including Commissioner Don Garber and President Mark Abbott, NASL Commissioner David Downs and NASL club owners, including BOG chairman Aaron Davidson.

Davidson surprised MLS brass by abruptly declaring that the NASL had decided to pull out of any potential partnership. Two days later, the NASL announced that the New York Cosmos were joining the league. By January 2013, MLS and USL had entered into an affiliation partnership.

Last month, a published report revealed that Jeffrey Kessler, a New York-based sports and antitrust attorney retained by the NASL, delivered a 13-page letter dated July 23 to the U.S. Soccer Federation objecting to proposed changes to the USSF’s minimal standards for sanctioning a Division I outdoor men’s league. These proposed changes reportedly include increasing the minimum number of league teams from 12 to 16, and requiring that 75 percent of teams be based in cities with a population of more than two million people, up from the previous standard of one million.

The letter also revealed that the NASL applied for D1 sanctioning with the USSF last January, a request that remains on hold. MLS is currently the only sanctioned D1 men’s league.

Notwithstanding the propriety of the NASL’s D1 application, the relevant question for fans and observers is whether the league believes D1 sanctioning is essential for it to thrive, or even survive.

Kessler’s letter contends there is a ceiling to the level of investors, owners, sponsors and media partners that the NASL can recruit absent the imprimatur of Division I status. However, there are existing deep-pocketed owners in the NASL investing millions of dollars into their clubs who expect an eventual return on their investment. For many of these owners, that expected return is entry in a D1 American soccer league.

In March 2015, WRALSportsFan conducted at least a dozen interviews with past and present officials representing both the NASL and its individual clubs, including Aaron Davidson nearly three months before his indictment and arrest as part of an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department into FIFA corruption. Circumstances contrived to delay an article based on those interviews. Then news of the FIFA scandal broke in late May, which seemingly rendered moot any observations in those interviews about the league’s posture in American soccer.

However, Kessler’s recent letter and and its revelation of the NASL’s application for D1 sanctioning revived a particular topic addressed in nearly every interview: the designs of the league and its clubs for Division I participation, including their interplay with MLS. The responses shed a revealing light onto the varying ambitions the NASL’s power brokers harbor about the direction of the league, and raise the question of whether their long-term aspirations constitute inspiration or tommyrot.

D1 OR BUST?

The most bullish rhetoric, perhaps not surprisingly, comes from the New York Cosmos, whose entry into the NASL ushered a sharpening in the league’s tone and approach.

Erik Stover, the Cosmos’ Chief Operating Officer, believes the NASL “can grow and be in a position of equal or greater footing than MLS in this country.”

“Our primary focus is growing our club and league to be first division in the United States,” Stover says. “Because there isn’t promotion and relegation and there are laws in this country that talk about competition and having free trade, that creates opportunity. If you don’t have promotion and relegation, what keeps any league in first division and any other in second, third, fourth and however it goes?”

Stover’s observations come peppered with legal buzzwords, many echoed months later in Kessler’s letter to the USSF.

“I don’t think MLS will ever support promotion and relegation, and I’m not advocating for it,” Stover says. “But if you don’t have promotion and relegation, there are basic minimum standards that the NASL can reach in a short amount of time and have a very valid argument that it’s first division. In this country, you can’t not have promotion and relegation and also arbitrarily and capriciously say, ‘Well, your league is second division.’ You can’t do that—it’s an antitrust violation.

“Certainly we’re not in a position to be arguing right now about first division, but that’s our ambition.”

The desire for first division soccer is shared by Peter Wilt, President of Indy Eleven. Now playing their second season in the NASL, Indy Eleven leads the league in attendance, averaging nearly 10,000 fans per match. Wilt, a long-time presence in the American soccer scene, served as general manager for the Chicago Fire of MLS from 1997-2005 and their team president from 2001-2005.

“The dynamic that’s going on in America right now with soccer is that for the first time there are more investors than there are teams available,” Wilt observes. “It’s creating a bit of supply-and-demand benefit, making it a seller's market for the first time since I’ve been involved with the game in the 1980s.

“Since I’ve been with Indy Eleven, which has only been a couple of years, the NASL franchise fee has grown by 700 percent. Granted it started at a pretty small level, but if that continues—and there’s every reason to believe that it will—then the values of the franchises become high enough that it will offset the investments that the owners have made.”

Wilt says Indy Eleven shares the desire for the NASL to evolve into a first division league.

“The entire reason for the split with USL was that you had a group of investors who had a bigger vision of what they wanted the league to be,” Wilt says. “They didn’t want to be a developmental league for MLS. They didn’t want to be stuck in second-tier status. They had a vision for a first division standard league. How that looks may have variables from owner to owner.

“In Indy Eleven, we want to operate at a first division standard. We’re bullish on the NASL, it’s a very good league, it’s getting better. We would like it to get better quicker.”

Wilt says he still sees many positives in the MLS’ single-entity structure. However, that structure also makes chatter about a potential merger between the NASL and MLS quite unlikely.

“I don’t hear much [from league owners] in terms of merger,” Wilt says. “I see more about separate leagues, because the business model difference is an important factor for the NASL owners.”

Madison Stanford-Geromel, co-managing partner of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, says she and her husband, Strikers’ co-owner Ricardo Stanford-Geromel, also share the league's D1 aspirations.

“We firmly believe in the growth of the NASL, and we’re excited about working together with the other ownership groups to be perceived as division one by everybody.”

Steve Livingstone, President of the Jacksonville Armada, the league’s newest expansion club, says he and club owner Mark Frisch “support the NASL 110 percent … and we’re not just saying that because the commissioner [Bill Peterson] lives in the community.”

MAJOR LEAGUE LEANINGS

As Major League Soccer continues its stated expansion to 24 teams by 2020—and likely more beyond that—at least two NASL clubs have made no secret of their desire to join MLS.

Dr. Bill McGuire, former chairman and CEO of UnitedHealth Group, purchased the league-owned Minnesota Stars in November 2012. Later rebranded Minnesota United FC, the reborn club was awarded an MLS expansion team in March 2015. The club is slated to leave the NASL after the 2017 season to join MLS.

Minnesota United President Nick Rogers says the decision to seek an MLS expansion bid was born of necessity and survival.

“Getting into pro soccer in Minnesota wasn’t with the goal of getting to Major League Soccer,” Rogers says. “We have a unique circumstance in this market, where there was another group [the Minnesota Vikings ownership] who was vying for that opportunity to be part of MLS. We felt with the investment we’ve put into our club and all the hard work we did proving the viability of of this market as a pro soccer market, it didn’t sit well with us that someone would try to come in and sort of eat our lunch.”

Rogers claims that Dr. McGuire and Minnesota United never openly courted a jump from the NASL to MLS, unlike other lower division soccer teams.

“There are markets out there, even some in our league, that are explicitly marketing their product saying, ‘You need to buy tickets now and show that this is a great market for MLS. MLS this, MLS that,’” Rogers says. “We stayed away from that. We never [publicly] talked about MLS until we had a press conference and [MLS Commissioner] Don Garber comes and says, ‘These are the guys.’ Prior to that we never talked about Major League Soccer. I didn’t think it was the right strategic communication because we are in business with the NASL, and I know these owners and presidents and understand the investments they’re making in their clubs. I don’t want to denigrate their product or mine by saying, ‘I really wish I was in some bigger, better business.’”

The San Antonio Scorpions were founded in October 2010 and began NASL play in 2012. Gordon Hartman, the club’s owner, organized the team under the umbrella of a non-profit organization whose proceeds benefit Morgan’s Wonderland, an accessible amusement park for children and adults with special cognitive and physical needs.

Hartman says he remains as optimistic about the future of the NASL as when he joined the league at its outset.

“Anytime you have something that’s new, you’re going to have some stumbling blocks,” Hartman says. “I can point to any league that’s in its formative stages, which the NASL still is because we’re in a growth mode to get to 18 teams by 2018. The league’s running in a proper fashion for how long it’s been around, and I’m very upbeat about the level of ownership that’s now at the table. When I first got into the league that level of ownership was not there.”

In April 2013, Hartman opened Toyota Field, a soccer-centric stadium to house the Scorpions. According to Hartman, stadium construction was fully funded by his charitable foundation. While that gives the foundation full ownership of the stadium, it also represents a major expenditure by the foundation. Hartman has made open overtures about selling Toyota Field—at a profit—to investors interested in luring MLS to San Antonio.

“My approach to this is that if MLS comes to San Antonio, I will sell the stadium,” Hartman said in March. “Expansion of the stadium can be easily done because of the way we built it; we built it with the idea of expanding it to MLS specifications, so everything has been pre-done in that respect.

“The only reason I would remove myself from the NASL is if I felt it made good sense for what I’m trying to achieve to help special needs individuals and to bring the second major sports league to San Antonio. Outside that, I’m not going to do it.”

Still, Hartman believes that the ability and desire of NASL teams to develop into potential MLS members is not a negative towards the NASL.

“In my view, it’s a positive because it’s a great step to go from NASL to MLS. People say, ‘Oh my god, that means the league’s never going to be stable.’ No, it means it’s a strong league because people know if they get into the league, there’s an approach to ultimately getting to D1 if you want to go there.”

Rogers agrees, saying that Minnesota United’s impending move to MLS should be viewed as a net positive for current and prospective NASL investors.

“This move for us to go to MLS is pretty strong evidence that there are multiple pathways [to D1], that you don’t limit yourself by choosing one or the other, and that makes it a more attractive investment,” Rogers says. “That’s what you need to do to keep the league thriving, you need to make sure that investors perceive it as somewhere they can accrue value.”

However, several interviewees assert that NASL owners should concentrate on developing their league, not cast a wandering eye at MLS or other suitors.

“I think it’s detrimental to the league, honestly,” Stanford-Geromel says. “I think everyone should be working together and be proud of where they are.”

“I don’t accept people who jump onto something as a springboard to something else,” Livingstone adds. “At the end of the day, that can be counterproductive and disastrous. As a league, we’re still fairly young and developing. We’ve got some cracking examples of success around the league. We just need to stick together as a league and realize our potential and realize there’s something here.”

For Ottawa Fury President John Pugh, market realities have already cast his club’s lot.

“Our market size and the state of soccer in our market is not such that we could be [considered for MLS],” Pugh says. “With franchise fees upward of $100 million, you’re going to need a much bigger marketplace and supporter base to succeed in MLS. Who knows what the future of soccer in North America might be? We do have this divisional structure, which was put there because of things like stadium size, net worth of the ownership group, etc. It’s difficult to see where that will all fall out. In the short-term, we’re concentrating on our own market and making our own team successful.”

THE TACK NOT TAKEN

David Downs became the NASL’s first commissioner in April 2011 and served until October 2012. Downs, a former executive with ABC Sports and Univision, saw an important void the NASL can fill in the American soccer landscape.

“I had a particular vision of trying to be the best professional soccer team in the particular market, forgetting whether we were labeled division one, two or three,” Downs says. “We just wanted the product to be the exclusive number one in the market … That vision was going to allow each owner to maximize their revenues and see what the market would support.”

Downs says “the NASL was correct in not pursuing an affiliation with MLS,” a model he believes has “really damaged the credibility” of USL.

“The NASL could be an extremely profitable, fun and entertaining league serving as the highest level of professional soccer in these exclusive markets that the NASL operates in,” Downs says. “Coupled with our traditional global soccer business model where owners could spend what they want in their market and there weren’t league rules about salary minimums and maximums, I just felt that was a winning formula.”

Downs says stepping down as NASL commissioner was a personal and financial decision. Still, his prescient opinion of the league’s role in American soccer and relationship with MLS betrays the schism between him and other club owners.

“I was of the opinion that we should be on extremely friendly terms with MLS and coordinate, but not necessarily compete with them,” Downs contends. “I don’t necessarily think that the NASL’s optimal future is to try and fight tooth and nail with MLS for supremacy as the division one soccer league in the United States. And that may put me on a different page than some of the owners, or it may just make me more realistic.”

TRAFFIC JAM

In late May 2015, Aaron Davidson was indicted and arrested by federal authorities. Less than three months earlier, in a dark corner of a Durham, North Carolina restaurant, he wasn’t letting lunch interfere with evangelizing NASL dogma.

One minute he’s assailing the cozy relationship between the USSF and MLS in allocating their joint television revenue. The next he’s claiming the NASL and MLS are “reaching sort of a point of kumbaya.”

“We can’t be out there trying to kill each other,” Davidson says between forkfuls. “But if it’s friendly and competitive, it makes everyone better. There’s no question that what we’ve done has made MLS shift, change and improve. And if they tell you anything different, then they’re being egotistical.”

He alludes to the recruitment of foreign investors into the NASL, an effort that continues today under the impetus of Commissioner Bill Peterson.

“All these foreigners are looking at soccer in this country and say, ‘Man, it’s starting to happen—I need a piece of that.’ Not too different from saying, ‘I want that condominium in Miami that today is worth $100,000 and could be worth $1 million in 10 years.’ Culturally and socially, soccer allows for multiple tiers and multiple teams in each market.”

And then there are cockeyed asides like this: “Today there are 20 MLS first division teams. They say they might cap it at 24. Would they go who to 40 and split into two conferences? At that point are they absorbing some of our teams so we’re becoming two conferences with the NASL teams that have what it takes and with USL teams that have what it takes?”

Although today Davidson is persona non grata, the platitudes he espoused for years—and over lunch last March—still run through the NASL’s present direction.

“None of our [owners] want to be second division for life,” Davidson says. “Gordon [Hartman] doesn’t want to, whether he’s in or out. [Traffic Sports] doesn’t want to. The Strikers’ owners don’t want to. Jacksonville and Tampa Bay don’t want to. Indy doesn’t want to … Even if we got rid of the second division tag, we still have to live and act like a first division to be considered one. It doesn’t help when people ask whether you’re second division.

“Most of the owners in our league still aren’t capable of paying $100 million to MLS on their own anyway. They might dream about it or market forces might force them to think about it, but I want to get guys in our league who can’t pay for an MLS team and say, ‘Why would I, when I can buy a team in your league and build this thing together?’”

Davidson contends that any defections within the league’s ranks are driven by market forces, not philosophy.

“We want this league to be as strong as it can get,” Davidson says. “If there are detours along the way, like getting challenged by another owner in Minnesota or in San Antonio where Gordon [Hartman] is ready to focus on something else but believes he’s already left his legacy, that’s their own prerogative.

“I believe all the owners sitting around the table today, if you ask them what they individually want to do, irrespective of market forces, they all would like to stay in this league and build it to the highest possible level. But it’s a competitive market like any business, and we’re not a vacuum.”

“WOBBLY HURRICANES”

“Who have thought 10 years ago there would be all this discussion [about second and third division soccer]?” Stover asks. “Nobody.”

The NASL has reaped tangible dividends from the trajectory it chose three years ago in New York City. Beginning with the San Antonio Scorpions, five expansion clubs have begun play since 2012, with two more—Miami FC and Puerto Rico FC—slated to open next year. New ownership has purchased existing teams in Minnesota, Tampa Bay and Fort Lauderdale. Average per game attendance league-wide has increased from 3,770 in 2011 to nearly 6,000 this season.

However, the league also suffered aborted expansion efforts in Northern Virginia and Oklahoma City. The Atlanta Silverbacks remain a league-owned club subsisting in the shadow of a looming MLS expansion franchise. Minnesota United is on its way to MLS. And in May, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Traffic Sports USA, the owner of the Carolina RailHawks and chief financier of the league’s original split from USL, pled guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in conjunction with the ongoing DOJ investigation into FIFA corruption. Davidson, the president of Traffic Sports USA and chairman of the NASL’s BOG, was indicted and arrested by federal authorities.

“It’s what I refer to as crawl-walk-run,” Hartman said in March. “The NASL was crawling two years ago. We’re walking now. We’re not running yet. The league itself is doing a pretty good job of maturing. People want everything to happen tomorrow. That’s where the misperception is: ‘Why aren’t you already there?’ That’s coming, but it’s not there yet.”

Wilt believes the key for the league’s growth is developing its marquee clubs.

“There needs to be a real example of a real success story,” Wilt says. “Certainly MLS is not a majority breakeven league, but they have enough examples that it gives everyone hope. And I think you’re going to see the same thing in lower division soccer. You have Sacramento’s success [in USL] and Indy Eleven’s version of success, and as long as you have those I think everyone else will say, ‘Hey, this can work.’”

Will the NASL’s stab at D1 sanctioning prove its pathway to riches or ruin? The future of American pro soccer at all levels, while evolving, remains unpredictable. In citing this endemic uncertainty, Davidson ironically forecast the legal storm clouds that would soon envelop him … and further prove his point.

“I sometimes describe a lot of things as wobbly hurricanes—you don’t know where they’re going to hit, but you know they’re going to hit.”