re: Columbus Crew possibly moving to Austin, TX if a stadium deal can't be reached

There is one thing that makes the whole expansion team dynamic interesting in American soccer compared to our other major sports. The fact that well-run soccer clubs can produce their own talent with academies, and the fact that soccer in the United States is nowhere close to meeting its development potential. There are massive areas of the country that don't have fully professional teams, and that will remain the case for some time.

The MLB (or any other league) could declare tomorrow that they plan to expand to have 40 top-league, professional teams by 2030, and we would all justifiably think that would be incredibly stupid. There aren't magically enough MLB-caliber players to fill out the rosters for 10 more teams without suffering a massive dilution in quality.

However, with soccer in America, the leagues have steadily improved, despite mostly experiencing a net addition in the number of teams. This is because soccer is so underdeveloped still in this country, and there were massive markets like Atlanta not being tapped into even 5 years ago. I think we can expect to see more and more professional teams established in the country over the coming decades to the point where we have several dozen of them and some system of partial or full promotion and relegation becomes implemented. There is a hunger for local professional soccer in this country that won't be satisfied for a long time. That doesn't really apply for the other sports. I'm not gonna make the 4-hour trip to Houston to watch the Dynamo play, but you better believe I would support a pro team in South Louisiana.