The Antithesis of Pro/Rel

Oh hi! I’m Jiggly. And it’s a Tuesday.

So… it’s been a while…

I’ve been going through something the last 42 days. In all honesty, I haven’t been in a good headspace since the start of the season and that's not even the big reason why I haven’t been writing the column. Really, it’s been hard for me to find anything new to talk about with the Chicago Fire. I already wrote my article last season on why we shouldn’t have hired Frank Klopas permanently, I already wrote my main takeaway this season about our inability to put together a proper attack this season, and there have been countless other issues that I’ve already spoken about that simply just haven’t been solved. It’s a never-ending list. And with that, combined with other outside struggles, I had nothing new to say over the past month and a half. Until this week.

This week, I did one of my favorite things in the world and casually stumbled on something incredibly stupid and specific about the Fire. It doesn’t even involve this season. This is a story that’s been developing over the past decade. And I find it absolutely hilarious.

The Antithesis of Pro/Rel

So, in order for anything that happens in this column to make sense, you need to understand what “Pro/Rel” means. I know that you probably know what a promotion/relegation system is, but I’m talking about the people who have consistently talked it up on Twitter, Reddit, the parking lot of a Target. Anywhere that annoying people exist. They really have their talking points down on this thing and the biggest one is that MLS, being a league without pro/rel, has no way to financially incentivize teams at the bottom of the table to improve. Owners with teams that suck will be allowed to continue to suck until they sell the franchise at a massive profit. But with the threat of relegation, these owners will be forced to spend (wisely) on their teams or be forced to see the valuation of their investment plummet. This is something that we can all see, and it isn’t a bad thing. I, personally, love watching shareholder value plummet.

The Chicago Fire, under Andrew Hauptman, were the poster child of mismanagement and the need for relegation in MLS for over a decade. And to this day, some people still view them as such. Especially Fire fans and others within the Fire diaspora. This is obviously anecdotal and probably a bit biased based on just knowing more Fire fans than anything, but looking around at many outspoken pro/rel supporters, the largest concentration of “former MLS fans” seem to be “former Fire fans” more than anything. There are a whole lot more pro/rel supporters who’ve never held an interest in an MLS team in the first place, but it seems like the Fire created the perfect environment to convert their own fans towards fans of seeing the Fire relegated. There have been jokes about how much the Fire needed to be relegated for a while, but not as much as there were in the 2015 and 2016 seasons. In the final game of the 2015 season, the Fire would allow a Jesse Marsch-led New York Red Bulls team to pound them into the ground at Bridgeview, allowing them to win the Supporters’ Shield. Meanwhile, Fire fans were chanting “We’re staying up!” Which was true, with the Fire’s last-place finish being utterly meaningless. And the next season, Fire fans decided that their second last-place finish in a row shouldn’t be meaningless anymore. And the Wooden Spoon was introduced.

According to texts and disparate documents from the time period, the “Wooden Spoon” award was created at the University of Cambridge sometime in the late 18th century. Back then, they’d post the test scores in a ranking, making it very clear who barely got their degree. So, students began awarding “Spoons” to different levels of who earned “honours.” The lowest score among the “First Rank Honours” was given the “Golden Spoon,” the lowest score among the “Second Rank Honours” was given the “Silver Spoon,” and finally, the lowest score among the “Third Rank Honours,” the lowest level of “honours,” was given the “Wooden Spoon.” They really liked to make a show out of that one, even carving a massive spoon to present to the winner and waving it around during graduation (until somewhere around 1816, when school officials decided that bit was a little mean). When Cambridge changed the way they posted scores and removed the visible ranking, the Wooden Spoon was no more. The final one was given out in 1909 (and it was about the size of the dude they awarded it to).

But, in popular culture, the phrase “Wooden Spoon” has lived on as the award you give the worst team in a competition. And Fire fans embraced it so hard that they made their own Wooden Spoon trophy for MLS to award to the Fire twice, once for the 2016 season and retroactively for the 2015 season. Hell, other MLS supporters embraced the Spoon, and now the Anthony Precourt Memorial Wooden Spoon is an actual thing (the name is a long story). Unfortunately, it is not the size of a full-grown man, but that does make it easier to transport.

Look, Fire fans saw the club suck so hard for two straight seasons that they invented a new piece of “silverware” so they could win something for the first time since 2006! That’s kind of an insult to MLS. Maybe they should’ve done something about it.

Let’s imagine a world where MLS sees this happen and says, “Alright, you got us. We’ll implement pro/rel so teams like the Fire are actually sent down to figure themselves out. We’re still gonna keep expanding, but we’ll make sure that teams are relegated.” In a 22-team league, it would make sense to relegate three teams from the Supporters’ Shield standings. So, it’d work that the bottom two are relegated automatically, while the 3rd bottom and 4th bottom teams play in a relegation playoff to decide who stays up. We already have more teams than most major European leagues at this point, and it’s only gonna get worse with expansion, but we should really keep things to three relegated teams max instead of getting too crazy. So, at least a relegation playoff adds an extra slot to that danger zone. MLS is going to try to relegate the Fire. This is what their fans seem to want, so let’s see them finally do it in 2017.

Okay, nevermind. The Fire somehow pulled themselves together in 2017, finishing third in the league and making the playoffs for the first time since 2012. I guess that incentive did something? Or not, since this happened without the hypothetical threat of relegation. But the addition of guys like Nemanja Nikolic, Dax McCarty, and Djordje Mihailovic made a huge difference. But no difference was bigger than Bastian Schweinsteiger, who changed everything about this club’s culture from the ground up the moment he stepped into the building… At least in 2017. In 2018, the Fire hit a problem.

Chicago finished 4th bottom in 2018, putting them right into the relegation playoff against 3rd bottom, Colorado Rapids. A devastating skid from the beginning of July all the way into late August is what really did them in, as Nikolic’s scoring dried up when David Accam was replaced by Aleksandar Katai. Personally, I never really liked Katai as a player and blame him for Niko’s lack of production this season, but that’s not important right now. The important thing is figuring out who would win in this relegation playoff. And luckily, the Fire played against Colorado that season so we can just use that result. But unluckily, the result was a 2-2 draw, which is something that we can’t really use in a situation like this. So I guess we can check in other areas.

Colorado ended the season snatching up 7 points out of their last 3 games, while the Fire only got a single point in their final 3. But, when you look at the context around it, the Fire were a bit “meh” going into those games, while Colorado slid right in with their own months-long losing streak. So let’s consider how they’d done in elimination games that season by looking at their performances in the US Open Cup. The Fire’s 2018 US Open Cup run was honestly a fun one. It started with Richard Sanchez’s dark arts in the penalty shootout victory at Columbus, sped by with a forgettable 1-0 victory in Atlanta that remains our only victory at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and really hit its peak with a 4-0 clobbering of Louisville at home where our favorite player in the whole world scored (Elliot Collier). Sure, they lost 3-0 in Philly, but that was the semifinals at that point, and Philly was a good team. Meanwhile, Colorado… Lost in the first round to a Nashville SC team that wasn’t even an MLS expansion team yet. They were a USL expansion team at that point.

Look, they may have had more momentum going into a relegation playoff, but just think about it. The Fire would’ve had home-field advantage, one thing that they could actually utilize. The Fire had proven that season that they could win in high-pressure elimination games against most opponents, especially if it went to penalties like in Columbus. And like… Colorado’s top scorer that season somehow maintained his lead in the club after being traded away mid-way through the season. Dominique Badji had 7 goals before July and was traded away, with the closest guy who played the whole season only getting to 4. The Fire were not good in 2018, but they could’ve won this game handily. If you disagree, please tell me how Colorado would’ve been able to do it on (what would’ve been on the weekend of November 3rd-4th, 2018) a cold rainy night in Bridgeview.

Then we get to 2019 where the Fire are nowhere near the drop zone, in fact they finished 17th out of 24. Although, points-wise, it was still only 4 points. But they were only 3 points out of the playoffs after a fantastic unbeaten surge late in the season. Their last loss of the season would actually come in August against the New England Revolution, the team that finished 3 points ahead.

Like I’ve said in the past, 2020 is when we hit the current era of the Fire, with the arrival of a new owner and a new GM. And it was a really weird year for everybody. I’m not sure what MLS would’ve done with relegation. The J-League, who has a fairly comparable vibe when it comes to their overall rules systems to MLS, actually canceled all relegation just to make it fair to teams that lost games due to pandemic cancellations. They just called up the two teams from the J2 and waited until the next season to relegate four teams. But, we must give the people what they want. And if they desire blood, so be it. Besides, MLS used points per game in 2020 to try to account for the lost games. But, despite the calls for blood, the Fire managed to stay just ahead of the drop, finishing just one point (and 0.05 PPG) ahead of Atlanta United in the table. In fact, once again, the Fire were also just one point (and 0.04 PPG) away from making the playoffs instead of Inter Miami. But, they were doomed in the final game of the season by a deep shot into left-center field by Taty Castellanos.

2021 ends in roughly the same way for the Fire’s relegation chances, finishing two spots and 3 points ahead of the drop. For the second year in a row, despite clear fundamental issues, the Fire narrowly avoid relegation. Fans are left wondering how to even approach this team anymore. Outside of a decent stretch from late June to early August, the Fire are struggling in a biblical way, but even in this pro/rel universe they manage to stay up. And it’s entirely possible that a big moment in that was the 93rd minute game-winner from Luka Stojanović against FC Cincinnati, which becomes a six-point game in this world. In 2022, we replaced Robert Berić and Nacho Aliseda with Kacper Przybyłko and Jairo Torres (and Shaqiri, but he doesn’t fit the motif), and things remained largely the same. Despite sucking out loud for a large portion of the season, the Fire narrowly avoided the relegation playoff, finishing just 3 points ahead of Houston. Which, I guess Houston would have to blame the Fire’s 1-0 win at home over Philadelphia in a game that was so wet and gross that it’s the only home match that I’ve missed since that one time I was in a beauty pageant back in high school (which also happened to be a weird weather game against Philly).

Anyway, the point is that the Fire continue to cheat death. They mock the very concept of pro/rel at this point. In this reality we’ve created where MLS has finally embraced pro/rel, they are the living embodiment of the issues that pro/rel cannot solve. A team in a constant state of mediocrity, unable to grow into a better team or collapse under its own weight. In 2023, the Reaper of American soccer, the Great Equalizer of our sports world, the device that was designed to punish poor performances and replace the consistently poor performing teams with newer, hungrier teams from the lower divisions, has failed us once again. Because the Fire have finished a whole 4 points ahead of the LA Galaxy and the relegation playoff. In fact, the Fire go into the final game of the season with some vague hope again, and after a loss they end up finishing just 3 points out of the playoffs. Somehow, despite those numbers, they finished just two spots ahead of the Galaxy and four spots back of a playoff spot.

Now, I don’t know how the promotion aspect of this whole thought experiment would work. Maybe some promoted teams would’ve done well enough to get ahead of the Fire and push them down. Also, maybe I should’ve expanded the relegation zone as time went on because of expansion. But that’s just a lot of excuses. The team that apparently exemplified a need for pro/rel apparently only had just a single appearance in a relegation playoff game and that was it. And despite any protests about that, we both saw the storylines leading into it and I feel like I could confidently call it for the Fire.

But now that I mention storylines, I feel like we’ve left something behind.

This experiment to try to relegate the Fire would have consequences. Because if the Fire aren’t getting relegated, then who is? MLS, as it is in the real world, is built on pretty much no logic. Teams’ fates change in the blink of an eye. Numbers go up and down with no real reason. I find it highly entertaining, and maybe that’s where a bit of my resentment for the Fire’s performances comes from. They don’t have those wild swings of fate too often. But then again, with relegation, there are a few teams that would also miss out on those swings of fate. Too many people don’t consider the actual impact of the “financial incentive” of relegation, a reality that may soon be coming to teams like Schalke 04 and Leicester City in Europe. That the money lost in these scenarios can doom a team more than “a bad season.”

In 2017, we would’ve automatically relegated D.C. United and the LA Galaxy. In this universe, they would’ve been forced to cut a lot of payroll, work with smaller budgets, and would have less opportunity in the transfer market. In real life in 2018, both teams turned themselves in a major way. D.C. went out and brought in Wayne Rooney midseason in a push to make the playoffs, barely losing in the first round against Toronto. And while the Galaxy didn’t make the playoffs, their acquisition of Zlatan Ibrahimovic was massive for the profile of the league and in getting LA back on track. Without staying up, neither of those two things could’ve happened and it’s unknown if either player would’ve come to MLS in the first place.

But it’s not just about players, it’s about teams. 2019, after Colorado lost to the Fire in the relegation playoff, they wouldn’t have been able to finish around midtable after letting go of their coach midseason. Same with the Quakes, who would’ve been relegated automatically. In 2020, you’d have to lose either Orlando City or Sporting Kansas City from the actual playoffs because one of them would’ve been relegated the prior season with the relegation playoff. Atlanta could’ve been sent to the CONCACAF Champions’ League from the second division after winning the Open Cup while finishing in the relegation playoff. They would’ve had to off-load prime Josef Martínez and miss out on bringing in Luiz Araujo if they were relegated. Austin FC’s massive (and annoying) turnaround in 2022 could’ve been completely avoided if they’d lost to Houston in the relegation playoff the prior season.

And finally, we get to the biggest success story: FC Cincinnati. How many more years would their rebuild have taken if they were relegated all those times since they’d come up? Would they have ever rebuilt themselves? Would they even exist in some way? I’m sure Luciano Acosta, Brandon Vázquez, and Yuya Kubo all would’ve looked elsewhere if they were still in the second division, and Brenner wouldn’t have lasted more than a season before a relegation release clause kicked in. Cincy was able to rebuild in just three seasons. How long would they have had to have spent clawing their way back up or worrying about simply “staying up”?

Even this past season had some weird implications. Houston was in the “relegation playoff” in 2022 against San Jose, meaning a loss could’ve tanked their roster and led to a completely different winner in the U.S. Open Cup (good for the Fire, maybe, but that’s another story). And at the end of last year, MLS would’ve had to have said goodbye to either Riqui Puig or Lionel Messi in the relegation playoff between LA Galaxy and Inter Miami. Ya know, the two teams that are currently on the top of the Supporters’ Shield standings in this current season?

And all of that happens to a bunch of teams that actually got their shit together. They figured out how to improve (for the most part). And then there’s the Fire. We created this experiment to relegate the Chicago Fire for their sins and we barely got one chance to do so in a game that, arguably, they would’ve won anyway. All that “incentive” that pro/rel would’ve provided to remove the trash from the bottom and bring in fresh teams does absolutely nothing to the Fire. I mean, maybe it would’ve lit a fire under the ass of other teams, there would’ve been more jockeying for position. But even without the “financial incentive”, I want you all to ask yourself this: What professional athlete goes out and says “I want to lose this game”? What dumbass MLS club thinks that they’re gonna get some game-changing generational talent in the draft if they just continue to tank? So the “lack of incentive” becomes just as meaningless as the threat of relegation seems to be to our hypothetical Chicago Fire.

The Fire are an anomaly. They are the team that seems to be most deserving of relegation and yet they are completely immune. They aren’t good. They aren’t bad. They cannot live and they cannot die. They are dirt and yet they cannot be crushed. The perfect “Dead Man’s Float”.

I went back in the past 6 seasons in Europe’s “Big 5” leagues to try to find any team that could be comparable to the way the Fire have been from 2018 to 2023. What unfortunate souls with the real threat of relegation hanging over them had to live like this for the same timeframe as we have? In Italy, Cagliari and Genoa tempted fate for a long time before being relegated together in 2022, while Bologna became a mid-table club after their time near the bottom. In France, you had a lot of teams doing this sort of thing right after being promoted, but that means they may have won silverware on the way and they wouldn’t count. In Spain, Celta Vigo started out looking like a match before becoming a more respectable mid-table club. England, the land of parity that it is, saw Southampton and Burnley relegated after flirting with death too many times and Brighton shooting up into the stratosphere shortly into their own time among the muck.

That finally brings us to Germany, where we finally find the Fire’s twin: FC Augsburg. Over the past 6 seasons (not counting this one), Augsburg has finished about an average of just 4 points above the relegation playoffs. While that sounds close, consider that in that same 6 season span, the Fire remained an average of just 2.5 points above the drop (with the relegation playoff season counting as 0 points above). At least, Augsburg would be the Fire’s twin; but unfortunately just as we found them they’re now closer to continental competition than the drop. So, I guess the Fire, now middling below the playoff line and above the relegation zone, remain in a league of their own.

You know, I think the Fire really do deserve that Wooden Spoon again. Not as the worst team in the league like how it’s been established, but in the original definition from Cambridge. Because the Spoon didn’t go to “The Worst Student”. It didn’t go to someone who simply got “The Worst Score”. The Wooden Spoon belonged to the student who got the worst score, while still making Honours. And it was possible to pass and get your degree without getting Honours, but this was something specially given to someone who barely snuck in to get recognition. It’s the same as Mr. Irrelevant in the NFL Draft. You weren’t “picked last”, you were the last person that was seen as valuable enough to be picked. There’s a skill in that, in being able to just squeak in.

But then again, it’s still frustrating. Because those awards are given once. To have a Wooden Spoon year after year, to show no progress, to refuse to change. That’s what relegation is supposed to fix. That’s why teams get sent down as punishment for refusing to make those changes. And the Fire are just… Not having any of it. The team that almost every Pro/Rel person on Twitter, Reddit, and a Target parking lot has said needs to be relegated simply wouldn’t be relegated. Somehow, the Fire simply existing as they are creates a model for how ineffective a system like that could be. Even with relegation threatening them, the Fire could continue to suck and still finish just 4 points out of the playoffs. They’d remain a top flight club, while other teams looking to improve could be banished to the shadow realm.

Isn’t that so stupid? The Fire are the antithesis to Pro/Rel. And I love it.

Miscellaneous Notes

But Seriously… Someone needs to get Cuypers some service out there. Flood the box, get bodies in there to screen, and then center it to him. He doesn’t work with his back to goal, he doesn’t run onto long balls. He sits in the box and waits to attack. How is that so hard to understand?

For The Children! I’m really happy about the literal high school marching band that Barn Burners has recruited for games. It’s made things a whole lot more fun and adds an extra dynamic. Plus, the kids are having fun, too. We’ve gotta grow the section and it starts with fun stuff like this.

Ricky on the Reds. I’ve been playing a lot of the new MLB The Show. Big fan of the fact that women are in the game now. But the problem is that I got drafted by the Cincinnati Reds. And while I’m great, I’m basically the second coming of Ricky Henderson with my power hitting and lightning speed on the basepaths, I have to live in Ohio. Which is less than ideal.

Song of the Week. I don’t know if I used it before, but I just really like the mashup of MF DOOM and Tatsuro Yamashita. The Supervillain’s rhymes over the master of City Pop’s melodies? It’s somehow perfect.

Kept You Waiting, Huh? In all seriousness, I genuinely just haven’t been able to write that much recently for my own mental health reasons. But it’s not like I’m done, I will still have opinions and thoughts (like this one) that I feel need to be expressed. So, the column won’t die, it just will be less frequent. It might not even be on Tuesdays either. But Tuesday is just a state of mind, right?

I love you.

And I’ll see you… when I see you. finger guns