Carnival of Soccer 5 : Colorado Rapids – Stuck in Mediocrity

The following post is my submission to the Carnival of Soccer 5. The Carnival is hosted over here by my friends at It's a Simple Game.

If you’re new to the league, think of the Colorado Rapids as your third cousin, twice removed. The one who you met once when you were twelve at a family reunion in Fargo, North Dakota. You know the one. You kind of forget he exists. You don’t want to visit that side of the family often and you’ll be surprised if one day he does something exceptional, like get his name in the local paper. That’s the Rapids.

The Colorado Rapids are one of the original MLS teams, now in their 11^th season. The team has made most of the playoffs, making it to the championship in 1997. However, each year they are never expected to win it all and no one outside Colorado seems surprised or disapointed when they lose to LA in the semi-finals. The only other honor earned by the team is making it to the final of the US Open Cup, and being the only team to lose to a lower division club in that event’s final match. The Rapids lost to the Rochester Rhinos in the 1999 final. Each season fans are treated to soccer with nothing special attached. We typically see a lot of 1-0 results due to a strong defense and weak offense. Somehow that describes most seasons.

At this point the team is on its fourth manager (1996: Bobby Houghton, 1997 – 2000: Glenn “Mooch” Myernick, 2001 - 2004 : Tim Hankinson, 2005 – present: Fernando Clavijo), not too bad considering the revolving door out in New York. The Rapids have had some of the more exciting players in the league cross through the locker room (Chris Henderson, John Spencer, Carlos Valderrama, Paul Bravo, Marcelo Balboa, Mark Chung and Anders Limpar to name most) but none of those players have been magical gifts like some other teams have received (Youri Djorkaeff ending up in NY being the first to mind).

As per usual we’re currently locked in a battle for both second place in the division and our playoff lives. Honestly, as a Rapids fan I feel like every year we’re teetering between greatness and despair. A couple wins on the road and we get some home field advantage. A couple losses on the road and we’re not in the post season. I guess league parity through single entity ownership is achievable.

The biggest recent news is that the Rapids are moving to a new home to kick off the 2007 season. The Rapids have done a great job with the design and construction of the new facility. The stadium is part of the Prairie Gateway development in Commerce City, Colorado which is about 8 miles from downtown Denver. The facility will include something like twenty soccer fields around the stadium, making it one of the biggest soccer facilities in the world. Year round there should be a place to go grab a meal and soak up some soccer action whether on the field or in the club’s pub.

An additional recent development has been the rivalry developing between the Colorado Rapids and our neighbors to the west, Real Salt Lake. Most people living outside the region have a hard time believing there is a natural rivalry between the two cities, however if you put residents of both cities in a room together you’ll get to the typical “my skiing is better than your skiing argument.” Once that argument is resolved, a Coloradan will take a pot shot at the Salt Lakers having ten wives. So the bad blood was there and with the creation of the Rocky Mountain Cup the supporters clubs of both teams have involved the players. Colorado has won the past two years (both editions of the competition) and at this year’s final match the bad blood was evident as Salt Lake owner, Dave Checketts, threw what can only be described as a hissy fit over the celebration of Rapid captain, Pablo Mastroeni. The Cup was created by both teams’ supporter groups and seems to be creating the passionate rivalry as envisioned on both sides of the Rocky Mountains.

A dubious distinction held by the Rapids is that they are probably the worst drafting team in league history. Over the years the Rapids have traded away first round picks and selected future league no names. Jean Harbor, Tahj Jakins and Andrew Mittendorf highlight first round picks by the Rapids who have gone on to not have a career in the league. To give credit, the Rapids did draft Ross Paule, Steve Trittschuh and Tyrone Marshall…I guess the distinction is self explanatory.

Another poor decision by the club is the fact that the Rapids are one of the only clubs not to have most, if not all of their road games televised. To add insult to injury, the Rapids’ owner, KSE, owns a television network, Altitude Entertainment. Altitude is often showing professional bull riding or classic motor sports as opposed to the Rapids because the club doesn’t spend the cash to get a crew to each road game. The league is backwards for making it the road team’s responsibility to televise matches, but it doesn’t take the Rapids off the hook for not spending the money to help the fans watch the away games. With the new ESPN and FSC tv deals, I am hopeful this will change in 2007.

So, that should give all you readers a good idea of the Rapids. Until they win a league championship, US Open Cup or Supporters’ Shield they’ll probably continue bubbling along as one of the more mediocre clubs in MLS. But hey, we’ve won the Rocky Mountain Cup twice now, so at least RSL is below us.