u/SeanOrange

The USL and its men’s professional clubs have approved a new revenue-sharing model under which clubs will receive a share of centrally generated revenue, including proceeds from national media rights, leaguewide sponsorships, betting data and, most significantly, expansion fees. The new framework has been adopted for a five-year term beginning in 2027.

The move comes ahead of the USL’s planned introduction of a Division I league and a promotion-and-relegation system in 2028, potentially making investment in its clubs more attractive as it seeks to add new teams at the highest level. It is also the latest instance of second-year investor BellTower Partners, led by USL Co-Chair Kewsong Lee, influencing the organization’s strategic direction.

Since the current contract is coming to an end soon, this is definitely a bid to make Breese a relatively permanent home. The stage end locker room building may address what I’d heard about there not being dedicated women’s lockers for Rally.

Despite that inference, there’s no mention of any soccer-specific improvements. I was looking for any indication of alleviating whatever issues kept Big Top from being able to field a D1 women’s team, such as the seating on the Flock end not being considered “permanent” and therefore shy of the 5000 capacity minimum. (And just from personal curiosity I wouldn’t mind seeing covers for the stands.)

The area around the proposed stage can definitely use some sprucing up as I’ve noticed they’re not utilizing it as much as in previous years with the consolidation of the concessions on the existing covered end.

I’d heard on the 608 podcast that some announcement was coming, but was surprised by how fast details came out.

Thoughts?

With about eight games per team and a quarter of the season left to go, it’s coming into sharper focus how much season has been so different from last. It seems like competitiveness is way up, and the league really got a shot in the arm despite two teams folding — or maybe in part because of it.

The biggest difference from a stats perspective is the greater number of decisive games. There were so many ties in 2025 that there were fewer points to go around. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing from a competitiveness standpoint, but I wanted to go over some contributing factors:

A balanced table

This is the first time since I started watching regularly that the competition format is completely balanced where every team will play every other team exactly twice in league play, which still worked out even though Tormenta dropped after the schedule was set. It looks like in previous years to keep play at around 30 games per team they would play a handful of teams a third time. (I do see in 2022 that there were 11 teams, which I expect meant they all played each other three times, but that appears to be an exception.)

I don’t know how third teams were chosen in the past, nor who got to draw home field, but apart from the demands of being on the road and playing as many as five games in a two week stretch this does seem to be the most fair competition setup.

It also means there are no second chances, or rather the second game is the last chance to equalize against any particular rival or shut them down. I can’t speak for every club, but so far Madison hasn’t gone 2-0 against many teams, and 0-2 against none. Still, there are eight-ish games to go.

Five new teams

(Six, if you count Madison’s near-complete changeover in roster.)

I don’t think this impact can be understated. Tormenta left a hole in the playoff lineup, and two of these new clubs a have been consistently competitive to stay above the line (or three, if we’re counting Madison again). That means that clubs that were used to being in the playoffs have had to fight that much harder to regain that position, and clubs consistently above the playoff line can’t settle for many draws and remain competitive. There have been some incredible turnarounds in the last ten minutes of many games.

Most teams won’t make the playoffs

This is a first in league history AFAIK. In previous years there has at best been an even split, and most of the time there were more that made it in than were left out which meant any team had a better than even odds. (Madison was the bizarre situation of being a win away with 11 losses and 11 draws last season.). Now that’s no longer the case, and wins are a must to make it above the line.

Pro/rel could start in the 2027 season

There has been talk that League One and Championship could start promotion/relegation before Premier launches, and I think the top teams are feeling out how much they’ll need to do to prepare for when it comes — the sooner the better.

Even if it’s been mostly whispers and speculation for the last couple of years, it seems to be having the sort of competitive impact one would hope for. Still no idea how many teams will go up and down, especially since it’s expected USLC will lose a lot of teams to Premier and USL has stated they want 20 in USLC long-term. Also, despite four new clubs slated to start in USL1 next season, USLC is still the bigger league at present, and backfilling a lot of USL1 clubs who haven’t paid the expansion fee seems unlikely.

What I expect is more clubs will go up than down in the first few seasons of implementation, and be seen as a lower-cost barrier to entry. Getting two expansion teams to pay fees at USL1 is better than just one at USLC, so everyone comes out a winner.

The next two months

I haven’t looked at the schedules for all the teams, but if Madison’s is anything to go by then there aren’t a lot (or any) matchups left between the top four teams, so their current positions are theirs to lose. It’s been wild to watch Omaha draw to teams further down the table, but then shut out Charlotte who is the #1 offense in the league. It’s no foregone conclusion that things will stay the same, but there’s still some large separation between different groups of teams that will make leapfrogging difficult in the final weeks.

It’s been cool to see Cosmos and Sarasota rally, even if the former most recently came at the expense of our Henney Derby opponents Richmond. Madison vs Omaha is going to be a match to watch that will determine how both teams end the season unless something crazy happens before then — and it certainly could. The lower half of the playoff berth has been relatively volatile with the last position currently within striking distance of several teams below the playoff line.

I can’t make any firm predictions other than this season is going to continue to amaze.

This is the time we find out if these new Mingos are a number one team, or if we top out at the top three.

I say this because even though Union Omaha is currently at the top of the table, I really felt like we could have won that game if not for the flop in the box and the penalty that followed. Not to mention the boys have really rallied and gelled since then. It’s also the last game of the regular season, and what a way to end it.

(EDIT: I’m also confident we can beat this team since we won at home 4-3 in the USL Cup, but the stakes were very different there.)

Knoxville is also really close, but we know we can beat them. They’ve also been pulling more draws than any other team in the top half of the playoff line, so there’s a chance there.

While we need to beat all three to have a chance at the top spot, Charlotte in particular feels like the hardest to me. I feel like if Breese can stay a fortress through this game, then it can stay that way for the rest of the regular season. But if we fall here, maybe we’re looking at #2 at best — which is still a heck of a sight better than last year.

So how are we feeling? Anything to look out for? I already love that there’s another thread about pumping up the cheers and making it as inhospitable as possible to a visiting team. But ultimately it’s gonna be down to what happens on the pitch, of course.

Portland is the only team we haven’t faced at all yet this season. It looks like they lost to or drew against teams we’ve beaten (or also drawn to), but have also won against teams we’ve also won against. That doesn’t tell me much except their place on the table makes sense in comparison.

It does seem like they’re struggling compared to last year, and certainly well below their seventh place finish. But we’re also just had a hard time at a first away game since the undefeated home stand.

I suppose I’m expecting a W here, but haven’t really seen the Hearts play much this season to make a more nuanced assessment. I do love their stadium, though, and look forward to seeing the match; it’s one of the venues that really stuck out to me when I started watching Mingos games on TV last season.

Let’s go, Fortress Breese. 🙌

NWSL announced they would move to a summer-spring schedule before announcing “lol j/k”.

USL Super League is changing to a spring-fall schedule, with a mini-season this fall before beginning the new schedule in 2027 — done partly to align with NWSL for potential inter-league cups, and announced after they backed of their planned schedule change.

Now MLS has announced a change from spring-fall to summer-spring to “align with the global schedule”, do transfers in the summer off-season, etc, doing the opposite of USLS with a mini-season this spring to ease the transition.

Call me selfish, but I like the spring-fall schedule. There’s not much overlap with American Football, because as one is winding down the other is starting up. But probably more importantly, playing in winter is just infeasible in North America, even with a planned January break. (November post-season Varsity games in Wisconsin can be miserable; ask me how I know.)

I don’t see the men’s side of USL making this switch, especially with the plans for a three-tier interconnected pyramid, and the inertia the existing two leagues already have. This summer has been hot — and it’s only getting worse — but that can be mitigated. You can’t fix cold, at least not on the budgets of D2 and D3 leagues.

This new team was hot out of the gate, but I’m overjoyed by how well they’ve gelled during and leading up to this undefeated streak.

Just this season we went from almost dead last in both goals and shots taken to having the best goal difference in the league. As of last Wednesday’s game, we have the best PPG in the league. We’ve been at the top of the power rankings for weeks. (I heard someone say the team has been outperforming xG without stating what it is.)

Half of the season’s games have been played, and we’re one more win away from the top of the rankings — assuming no one else wins today.

Chattanooga had me a little worried in the first half, ngl — no cow kits! — but this team of Carmichaels is on fire. I’m pretty confident today’s Westchester game will go our way, but there’s always a Greenville lurking out there. Including today there are only two teams in the league we haven’t played, and I think it’s reasonable to expect to outperform matchups from earlier in the season — especially with the wins against Naples and Cosmos bringing a close to competition with those sides this season.

Here’s hoping the boys can take this show on the road, because it’s been an incredible ride.

I need to cover some ground before I get there, but S3E2 told us a LOT about how the show will adapt Shift and Dust, which characters will get focus while others are discarded, and why it may be for really good reasons.

(Like last time, I’m gonna use spoiler tags around hyper-specific references to Shift and/or Wool so you can choose what to see.)

1 - The amnesia plot was already in the books, actually

I had an inkling after S3E1, but now with confirmation in episode 2 that “Vitamin D+” is in fact the memory drug, I think this plot line is meant to replace the section of Dust >!that goes into specifics about the previous rebellion in Silo 18, and the full memory reset that resulted!<. This was written two books after Wool, and was meant to show us >!the history of Silo 18!< in a new light after the revelations of Shift — but we haven’t gotten to most of those yet on the show.

Instead, we’re only two episodes removed from the events at the end of season 2; how much more frustrated would viewers be than they already are if the show introduced >!another POV character (whose name escapes me), a whole new cast, and different time period, repeating the same rebellion storyline we just watched!<, only to be completely discarded afterward? We don’t all of that to understand how catastrophic it would be if everyone in the silo lost their memories forever, and we don’t need to take our eyes off Silo 18 to tell the story of Shift first.

It makes more sense for Juliette to become the first victim of the memory drug, because we already know her and care about her relationships to the people of Silo 18 — which episode 2 really hammered home. Condensing the story this way allows us to stay focused on the silo all season.

2 - The main conceit of Shift can’t work on TV

Besides, we’re already being introduced to a new time period, characters, and relationships with Daniel and his cohorts. The parallels between Charlotte and Juliette help ground the story as we learn how it relates to the history of the silos. (The soft launch at the end of season 2 helped a lot, especially the Pez dispenser.)

In Shift, the first victim of the memory drug is not Charlotte or Juliette — in fact, neither of them is given the drug. Instead, Shift switches between Daniel’s story and >!someone named Troy who works in Silo 1 managing the other silos!<, but by the end we find out >!Troy is just what’s left of Daniel/Donald when his history is selectively erased!<. To any extent we see this in the show, it’s still going to be a shock, but we won’t have to unpack it as much when it happens because viewers should fully comprehend what it means once revealed.

But the show needs to juxtapose Daniel’s story with something else, because on TV >!we can SEE Troy, and we would either understand he was Daniel, or be confused the whole time and think he was a clone or something!< — which come to think of it might also explain how he lived so long. Many could also have guessed from a production standpoint they wouldn’t sideline the show’s star and principal cast for a whole season, so Juliette gets the drug instead of >!Troy!< in Shift or >!still nameless rebellion POV character!< in Dust.

If we do end up seeing any of >!the first rebellion and how Troy deals with it!<, it will be after this revelation. To what extent depends on if I’m right about what it means that the Pez dispenser ends up in Silo 18.

3 - Not even the second memory wipe, but the third

I wrote, and then erased several times, an assertion that we will only witness the events of >!the first rebellion in Silo 18!< as it relates to Juliette, but I think that’s wrong. I think we’ll see it from >!Daniel’s!< perspective, like we did in Shift as he tried desperately to keep >!the safeguard from being used on Silo 18!<. But WHY was he so desperate?

I have thought since we saw the Pez dispenser at the end of season 2 that >!Helen will go into Silo 18 on the show as one of its first residents!<. By contrast, in the books (can’t recall if it was Shift or Dust) we find out >!she went into Silo 2, got married, had kids,!<, and seemed to forget all about >!Donald!<. His drive to save Silo 18 then becomes something he doesn’t fully understand, but I think it becomes very understandable if >!Helen went to Silo 18, instead of Silo 2!<, and he wants to save it because >!it’s people, or a specific person, are all Daniel has left of her!<.

I said above that I didn’t think we’d see any POV from >!inside Silo 18 during the rebellion!<, but limited to >!Daniel!< talking to a character to find out what happened to >!Helen!<. This person turns out to be >!one of her descendants!<. But then, tragically, everyone’s memory gets wiped to save the silo.

But I also think we’ll find out this is the second time a full wipe was used, with the present event in Silo 18 being a third (and final?) attempt. The show itself strongly hint that a mind wile was employed as people entered the silos, because otherwise first generation residents would be too depressed to live there and create a new society. So >!not only does Helen go into Silo 18!<, but the Pez dispenser, so imbued with meaning, prevents that first memory wipe from fully working, and the memory survives until the first rebellion and the second wipe. Perhaps the Pez dispenser is one of the catalysts for that rebellion, leading to its status as a red level relic. Perhaps this rebellion is when >!Viktor finds out that objects can circumvent the mind drug!<, as he tells Camille.

In any case, >!Daniel’s fixation on Silo 18 will be because of Helen!<.

I really hope for a win over Spokane, if for no other reason I’m still disappointed that Zephyr folded. But also this is one of the first games against a team at the top of the rankings since the Mingos found their stride this season.

Thanks to the advice of other folks on this sub, I got a free Fubo subscription to watch tonight.

(Also I marked this pre-game even though it’s almost halftime now, hahaha. I still don’t like the cow kit as much as the Flock, which I was expecting to see tonight since it’s an away game, but I guess since it’s on CBS they wanted to put their best hoof forward.)

Unless it’s on ESPN 2. Or the CBS Golazo! Network, apparently. I don’t know the next time my team is going to have a match I can watch because it’s so far out that ESPN+ doesn’t even have it on the upcoming section for the club or the league.

It’s cool if matches get more national attention, but don’t straight-up lie to me to sell a subscription.

Also, this is the 21st century; I can’t watch everything live, and I shouldn’t have to.

Honestly, did it ever?

All the recent expansion news got me thinking of the distinct lack of teams announced for Championship in 2027. I know one reason (amongst others) that the Milwaukee expansion stalled is because the cost to build a stadium in the Iron district ballooned upwards of $100 million.

Something I didn’t realize until more recently was this expansion was awarded to Big Top Events, owners of Forward Madison. At the time, fielding a new team was the path of least resistance into Championship, but with pro/rel looming there’s now another, purportedly cheaper route. Even if it’s a long shot, it sure would create some problems to own two teams and have one promoted — or the new one relegated — only to face each other in the same division.

Even without these new factors I don’t think there was a lot of reason to expect Milwaukee Pro Soccer was ever going to materialize, and I don’t know if anyone else can create a team there so long as Big Top holds the expansion rights. OTOH New York sure is starting to burst with teams, but that’s also the biggest metropolitan center of the country.

(I also wonder if one of the reasons Big Top didn’t start a Super League team despite prior announcements was because it was tied more to the Milwaukee site than to Breese, despite Breese seeming to meet the requirements of the PLS, and there were other issues to overcome.)

Is there anyone who’s been around the growing pains of USL more than I have who has a take on this?

Anyone else excited that both Madison clubs have been actively recruiting to bolster their respective offensive lineups?

I don’t want to paint too rosy of a picture (no pun intended), because Rally is currently at the bottom of the Heartland rankings as the only winless team, but it was awesome to see them rally (pun very much intended) after their goal in the first half against Sioux Falls City, and control much of the rest of the game. Even the home team announcers were giving them props for adjusting on the fly the way they did.

With 2/3 of the season left to go, and most of those home games, I’m really hoping to see them on the ascent. Their next game is a rematch against Minnesota Aurora, this time on the latter’s home turf, which I expect to be tough, but they were held to only two goals on their first meeting when other teams fell much more sharply. I’d love to see Rally force a draw at least, which seems doable if they can overcome getting scored on in the first 10 minutes as happened the last few games.

I also haven’t seen anything on Malia Zillman’s injury that forced her off the field. Hopefully it was just cramping from playing in the heat, as the announcers surmised, and she’ll be fresh for Thursday.