William Fisher Palo Alto, Calif. I see so many suggestions on how MLS can improve itself. Most sound trivial to me. The major goal of MLS should be to make itself attractive to a nice television contract. I think eliminating schedule uncertainties in the playoffs could help. A solution exists that is even soccer-centric. To the shorten the playoffs and add creditability to the determining the champion, how about using a home-and-away aggregate score playoff? Then you’d know the winner will be decided in two games. It also assures the two finalists would get a match at their home stadium. It is ludicrous that the playoffs are best two of three, but the final is a single-game elimination. It seems MLS and U.S. Soccer are always trying to bury the differences between soccer and other popular American sports. Is it time to try to sell the differences rather than hide them under a rug? Mike Woitalla: Let’s start with your final statement: I have always believed that soccer in the United States should be sold on what is unique to the sport. Soccer can impress the American public with what it has that other sports don’t. No commercial interruptions, for one. But more importantly, traits of the sport that can’t be found anywhere else. It used to frustrate me to no end when American PR people would try so hard to show what a tough sport soccer is, as if they were worried about accusations that it’s for sissies. So we got an official MLS commercial showing brutal fouls. If a fan wants brutality, he’s already got ice hockey, boxing and NFL. But back to your point. Indeed, an aggregate score format is an excellent way of deciding a playoff winner, while giving each team a home game and not worrying about these “if necessary” third games and whether they might be on TV or not. The response from American soccer powers-that-be has always been that Americans fans wouldn’t understand aggregate scores. It’s an argument that makes me laugh. First of all, American soccer fans are in general familiar with international soccer and the aggregate-score format. Secondly, it’s pretty damn simple to explain. (Add up the scores of the two games!). This dubious notion that American soccer has to do things like other American sports so the fans understand was addressed in the Oct. 25 issue of Soccer America Magazine in Paul Gardner’s SoccerTalk column. Gardner grouped decisions like not allowing regular-season games to end in ties among the “Americans-won’t-accept-it” things. I quote from Gardner: “The idea that Americans would not accept tied games — that the NASL, and later the MLS, were doomed to failure, need not even bother to start up, if they were to allow ties. “No, not merely an idea — this was a fact . And like so many marketing facts, it is not a fact at all, not based on any research — even the biased, unscientific research that marketeers employ (they call it a survey) would be better than nothing.” I also agree that it is odd — to say the least — to have a one-game final after best-of-three series for less crucial rounds. The only redeeming part of the best-of-the-series that I can think of is that the third game is played in the stadium of the team with the better regular-season record. With such a long regular-season and so many teams making the playoffs, I do believe there should be some reward for the team that had a superior regular-season record. For that I suggest the Mexican League method: The playoffs are home-and-away, aggregate winner goes through, but if the teams are tied on goals, the edge goes to the team with the better regular-season record, rather than the away-goals leader. (If you have a question for a Soccer America Magazine editor, click “Q&A with SA Editors” in the left column of the home page under “Interactive.”)