Maybe Don Garber opened his mouth without thinking. It happens. And not only in Presidential campaigns.
So as the commissioner of Major League Soccer was speaking to a rather large group of soccer junkies at last weekend’s Blazer-Con in Brooklyn, N.Y., Garber rather stupidly used Chattanooga for his argument against promotion and relegation as it pertains to soccer leagues.
“Nobody looks at the NFL and says it’s not working because there’s no promotion and relegation,” he said. “If you’re investing billions and billions of dollars, which we are now at about $3.5 billion invested (in MLS) in twenty years, to build something in Kansas City and they have a (expletive deleted) season, to think they might be playing in Chattanooga in a stadium of 4,000 people on a crappy field with no fans, makes no sense.”
Garber reportedly made these remarks at 9 a.m. on Nov. 14. Perhaps a quadruple-espresso latte with a shot of truth serum would have saved him.
Instead, he missed the size of the stadium by 500 percent, could have field manufacturers AstroTurf sue him for libel and slander, and might even need to invest in some really strong eyeglasses, since the final two crowds of the year at the Chattanooga Football Club’s playoff games exceeded a combined 30,000.