Backpass: The Rapids Overton Window
What to expect about ... expectations themselves
Probably because MLS and USL are between seasons, and also because we’ve had an, uh, interesting couple of weeks (really, years) here in America, I’ve been listening to a lot of politics podcasts. And a term they’ve used recently is ‘The Overton Window’. It’s a concept that was defined and popularized in just the last few years by Joseph Overton and Joseph Lehman regarding the shift that occurs from between when a political idea is introduced and seen as ‘radical’ to the time when it becomes 'mainstream’. In politics, both the left and the right have successfully moved the Overton window in the last 20 years in notable ways. Some Coloradans may not remember it, but there was a time in the mid-90s when buying an ounce of marijuana could get you 8-10 years in prison. Today, that same ounce would be considered ‘the start of a nice weekend, as long as I remember to order the pizza before the bong hits take hold.’ More recently, there was a time when Americans were extremely proud and confident that we were the best in the world at running ‘free and fair’ elections. In December, only 60% of those surveyed said that they trust the results of the 2020 presidential election. The Overton window has moved - from ‘Just say no’ to ‘pass the duchy on the lefthand side’ and from ‘full faith and credit’ to ‘stop the steal’.
As I enter into my 9th year as a Rapids fan, and in the process of helping Matt Pollard produce a retrospective of Colorado’s 2010 MLS Cup-winning season, it occurred to me that the ‘Pids have their own Overton window. And thus, I wondered aloud: has that window of what we come to expect of the Rapids been consistent? Or has it moved throughout time?
It seems reasonable for me to ponder what the fans of any given MLS team - or any sports team, really - expect as the reasonable and acceptable results from their team. In MLS, Atlanta United and Seattle Sounders both have high expectations and little recent Overton movement: the fan bases expect a trophy every year, and failure is not an option. Frank DeBoer’s record at ATL was 31 wins, 19 losses, 5 draws - a 56.4% win pct. - and that got him fired. Sigi Schmidt won Supporters Shield in 2014 and took Seattle to the second round of the playoffs in 2015. After a 6-12-2 start to the 2016 season, he was fired.
On the other end of the MLS spectrum, one would have to consider MLS originals NY Red Bull and New England Revolution. RBNY have three Supporters Shields, a relatively prestigious award no doubt, but have never won the whole enchilada. They appeared in only one MLS Cup Final, in 2008, and lost to the Columbus Crew. New England are really the gold standard in terms of futility: five MLS Cup Finals, (2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2014) zero wins; zero Supporters Shields; one measly US Open Cup in 2007. And… and! They are the only original MLS team still without a soccer-specific stadium. Unless you’re counting the Tampa Bay Mutiny, who ceased to exist almost 20 years ago. Being a Revs fan is to be the C-3PO of the MLS universe:
There are various and sundry other ‘MLS Overton Windows’. Vancouver are newish still to MLS, having joined the league in 2011. They’ve been consistently poor, and thus their expectations at this point are simply ‘please, let’s not finish last.’ The LA Galaxy were once the flashiest team in MLS, with Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane and David Beckham, and later Giovani Dos Santos and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. One could argue they were *the* dominant team in MLS from 1996 to 2014, having won 5 MLS Cups, 8 Conference Championships, 4 Conference Runners-ups, two US Open Cups, and one Concacaf Champions Cup. Since 2015, they’ve been mediocre-to-bad, including being recipients of the Wooden Spoon in 2017.
For Vancouver, they have yet to even establish a standard of any achievement - their Overton window has not moved. It is still firmly stuck at ‘achieve anything.’ The Gals, on the other hand, have dragged the level of normal from ‘where should we go on our tropical vacation this year?’ levels of fabulousness to ‘Covid-19 means our stay-cation involves buying a firepit for the backyard and binging episodes of The Office’. If that metaphor was too weird for you, what I mean is, the new normal for LAG is ‘don’t be terrible.’
And what of our beloved Rapids?
I can’t speak to what expectations were in the olden days of Mile High - I would submit that there were no expectations of MLS clubs from 1996 to 2005 other than ‘be entertaining’ and ‘don’t go out of business’. The Rapids have always scrappy and competitive, and have never been favored to win the league. Their two best years, 2010 and 2016, were such surprises that most fans regard them as aberrations. The 2010 team won it all with grit and heart after a ho-hum 12-8-10 record. The 2016 team were defensively impregnable, but statheads have argued that some of that was pure statistical over-performing flukyness, and they made it all the way to the Conference Finals with a leading goal scorer that had just 10 goals (Shkëlzen Gashi) and a Goal Differential of just +7. The 2020 Columbus Crew’s GD was +17.*
The 2014, 2015, and 2017-2019 Rapids were all bad. They missed the playoffs, endured or fired managers (there were five), unloaded and traded players, did not score reliably, and struggled to draw fans - especially beyond July. They endured some embarrassing scandals. In no particular order, there was Marco Pappa’s stabbing, young hopeful DP Juan Ramirez flopping, first-ever DP Gaby Torres’ floundering, Shkëlzen Gashi’s disappearing, and Stefan Aigner’s beefing with his manager. And can anybody say ‘prairie dog plague’? The fans’ expectation of the Rapids in 2013 was this: defensive-minded football, one or two name-brand stars worthy of showing up at the stadium for, consistent mid-table finish. They weren’t going to be Bayern Munich or Barcelona, but they could at least be Southhampton or Everton, or in a good year, Leicester. But after five-of-six bad years, the Overton Window had been relocated from ‘finish fourth in the conference and give us some playoff games’ to ‘give us at least an outside shot at the last playoff spot.’
I remember writing pre-season prediction articles, year after year, where seven teams made the playoffs in each conference and somehow I willed myself to believe that a weird hodge-podge of players that were unimpressive would somehow squeak into the last playoff spot. They did not, dear reader, squeak in.
And then we get 2020, the aberrational season to end all aberrational seasons. First things opened great! Then there was a pandemic and we thought - oh no! Soccer’s toast! And there was the MLS is Back tourney, and we were all ‘how the hell do I feel about this? Never mind, the Rapids are out after two games.’ And then the season, with its ups, its downs, its Covid breakouts. And the playoffs! The word I’m thinking of here is ‘whipsawed.’ I don’t know what a whipsaw is, but the Rapids in 2020 were very whip-saw-ey.
Where are we, the fans, then? I think most of us like Robin Fraser, tentatively - managers have broken our hearts many, many times before. I think we LOVE Lalas Abubakar and Cole Bassett. I think we are cautiously optimistic about Younes Namli and Andre Shinyashiki. I think we feel pride in Jack Price - a dime-dropping d-mid who truly seems to care and genuinely loves playing football. And we think - ‘they basically kept the band together for 2021… ok, ok, this could work.’
Which means we are back to ‘The Pre-2014 State of Rapids Overton Windows’ - fourth in the Conference and two playoff wins is enough.
And that is enough for 2021. We aren’t yet a regular success, or a big-spending club. So the ‘damn the torpedoes, let’s win the league attitude’ would be misplaced, no matter what that drunk on the barstool at the British Bulldog tells you at 1:30 am. The Overton window was in Vancouver Whitecaps territory for a while. It is not yet in Atlanta United status. And that’s absolutely fine with me.
*: To be fair, the 2019 champion Seattle Sounders had just a +3 GD, but that was a pretty fluky aberration.