MLS Does the Right Thing

Per an arti­cle on SI.com, MLS has given Lew Wolff the owner of the Oak­land A’s the green light to restart per­haps the proud­est franch­sise in the his­tory of Amer­i­can Soc­cer: The San Jose Earthquakes.

From the early 1970s onward the San Jose Earth­quakes were a bay area attrac­tion. The Earth­quakes along with the equally well sup­ported Tampa Bay Row­dies were the last sur­viv­ing NASL clubs when the league folded in 1984. In 1999 MLS renamed the strug­gling San Jose fran­chise the Earth­quakes (As dis­cussed in my pod­cast inter­view with Lind­say Dean had MLS taken the same steps with the Tampa Bay and South Florida fran­chises those teams would likely still be around) and the team almost instantly became a big­ger draw and more suc­cess­ful on the pitch. But in 2005, despite hav­ing won two MLS Cups, Phil Anschutz who owned half the league’s teams at the time moved the Quakes to Hous­ton seek­ing a bet­ter sta­dium deal. When AEG moved the team, MLS vowed to come back to the Bay Area, but for many the promise seemed hol­low. Thank­fully MLS has kept their word.