Austin maintains a prominent place in the US music landscape despite the city and its scene undergoing some growing pains (deaths at SXSW, expansion of ACL to two weekends) as jobs, money, and people flow into the town seeking to bask in what is now a receding vibe. As someone who can’t afford to get out downtown and who has roughly 113% of my daily energy sapped by the girl child, the best development of the past few years was the NPR station splitting to two: a news station and a dedicated music station. The music station, KUTX, was so good, we scrounged together enough money to make a donation despite lacking two pennies to rub together.
KUTX isn’t perfect, and my biggest issue is with one of their morning DJs, the languid John Aeili. This is a man happy to put on a classical album and go on a walk-about for half an hour. He’s also a mumbler, and that led indirectly to me really wanting to hear this song. I don’t know what John was playing Monday morning, but the female singer sounded a lot like Shannon McArdle from The Mendoza Line. Sadly John’s distant low rumble of a voice and the sounds of MoPac prevented me from even having an idea of what he actually played. So instead, have one of my favorite McArdle-heavy tracks.
The burned out song and quasi-mournful sound worked well with the weekend. I’m a parent to a healthy 21 month old, and reading about what AJ DeLa Garza and his wife had to go through with their son Lucas bums me the hell out. Seven days on this planet before a heart defect took him. That’s the sort of potential outcome that jumps to the forefront of my mind anytime the idea of additional children is floated.
I needed something to brighten the mood, and the light to chase away the depressing thoughts was the outpouring of support around the league. It made me feel warm and fuzzy, like I was sharing a big group hug with every beardy, craft beer swilling soccer fan, MLS team, and the league office. And that is a really weird, itchy sensation. Why the hell would I feel this warmth for a league as a whole? They’ve given me a decent and improving top fight, sure, but fondness for MLS as a league is a phase that we the fans should have outgrown. When it was 2000 and contraction was the buzzword and no one really knew when the league would make it, that was a time for people to be fans of the league. Things are a little brighter now, and the fans need to keep changing with it, even if that means burning down parts of this soccer existence and building something new. I hope that the sense of community sticks around the league though, as it can be a needed mood lifter.
For the moment, we are of course stuck with our island system of leagues. Since playoffs are a whole separate beast and not something I’ll be adding to the inter-league rankings, this was the last weekend with updates for USL PRO. I was fairly pleased that the top eight teams in my rankings match the playoff teams, though the order didn’t quite match the seedings. Orlando City has to be the favorite, wanting to go out on top and develop even more momentum to get the city and club psyched for their MLS debut next year. For now, their performance ensures they are the highest ranked “minor league” team in the spreadsheet.
The weird Vancouver-DC United pairing wasn’t helped by their scoreless draw over the weekend. Vancouver’s lead is down to a much higher SOS score (.333 versus DC’s .249), and that actually holds true for each conference. Consider that the highest SOS score in the East is Montreal (since everyone has a better rating than them) at .343. The Western conference has four teams with a higher SOS score: RSL at .348, Colorado at .349, Portland at .361, Chivas at .387, and San Jose at .404.
Rankings at end of USL PRO 2014 Regular Season
Libero or Death 
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