Lets play a game of "What if???"

A few months back Jon Townsend and myself had a nice discussion on twitter about what you could do with $100,000,000 in the US to build a soccer club.

He had written a great hypothetical piece called "The Cost of $100 Million" where he lays out a fictitious plan for a club with a budget that amounts to the cost of just the initial MLS franchise fee outlay for NYCFC.

With the recent discussion about a NASL/NPSL merger I thought today would be a great day to bring this subject back up...

What would you do with $100 million dollars in an alternate pyramid in the United States?

First lets snap our fingers and make up some pyramid ground rules and go from there.

NASL - National 20 team league w/ 10,000 seat stadium requirement
NASL2 - Two 20 team  (East/West) Regions w/ 5,000 seat stadiums
NPSL - Eight 16 team regional Leagues  w/ 2,500 seat stadiums
NPSL2 - 16 Regional Leagues consisting of 16 teams each (USASA Amateur Leagues)

Since today is the first day of this hypothetical pyramid....  you can still get in to NPSL without having to be promoted out of the future amateur NPSL2 division.

So what would you do????


Would you build a stadium first? Bonney Field where the Sacramento Republic plays holds 11,500 and cost $3m to build and $1.5m to expand for a total of $4.5 million. Would you refurbish an older stadium like St Louis FC did with their $1.5m expenditure at 5,500 seat World Wide Technology Park? Maybe even spend $16.5m on a state of the art expandable 8,300 seat stadium like Kennesaw State did? Rent something that already exists and save the money for something else?

Do you go after a big name Coach and/or Technical Director at $5 million + per season?

Big name player signings?

Do you start an Academy straight away?

Build a great front office?


Let us know what you would do in the comments!