A follow-up to my commentary a few days ago on soccer and the situation in the second tier. The breakaway league formed by the Team Owners Association has taken a name: the North American Soccer League.

Yes, that name is familiar. It was the name of the top-tier soccer league that existed from 1969 through 1984. The original Tampa Bay Rowdies, who were placed in Tampa as an expansion franchise in 1975 and existed in some form or another until 1993, won the Soccer Bowl in their first year in the league. The TOA bought the rights to the name to pay homage to the original league.

With the new league all but official (only USSF sanctioning remains to be taken care of), hopefully it will be sooner rather than later that the talk of returning pro soccer to Orlando fires up again.

The announcement came today that the Tampa Bay Rowdies, which were to be a new side in the USL First Division, have officially jumped ship and joined their mates in the Team Owners Association in forming a new second-tier soccer league.

A little background…the USL First Division is the highest level of the United Soccer Leagues, and make up the second tier of soccer in the United States (the only tier higher is Major League Soccer). Prior to 2004, they were known as the A-League, and have existed since 1993. This is the same league that held the Orlando Sundogs in 1997.

In the past year or two, many of the team investors in the USL First Division have grown discontented with USL Executive Director Francisco Marcos and CEO Alec Papadakis. They formed a kind of union called the “Team Owners Association”. Particularly, the owners of the teams in Vancouver, Miami, Montreal and Rochester banded together, as well as the expansion Tampa Bay Rowdies, an inactive team in Atlanta, and a prospective ownership group in St. Louis.

When Nike, then the majority owner of USL, sold their shares to NuRock, it all came to a head. It got worse when USL decided to unilaterally release the players of several of the TOA teams; these were overturned by the U.S. Soccer Federation. Attempts at mediation failed, and on November 10, the TOA seceeded from USL. Vancouver, Miami, Montreal and Rochester left, in addition to a non-TOA team in Raleigh-Durham, with Atlanta and St. Louis joining in as well. Today, it was announced that the Rowdies were going with them, along with a third-tier side from the USL Second Division in Baltimore. More info on their league will come out next week, and they have sworn to begin play in April 2010.

The USL has promised legal action, claiming the TOA teams have contracts to play in the USL in 2010, and have misrepresented their grievances with the USL. I won’t get into the back-and-forth of their claims against each other because it makes my head ache.

But I can tell you one thing: I am glad there is an alternative to USL now in the second tier of soccer. Here’s why.

I have it from very good sources that the USL has sold the territorial rights for Central Florida (meaning Orlando) in the First Division to a side in the Mexican First Division, C.F. Pachuca (Pachuca is a northern suburb of Mexico City). Although Pachuca teased placing a USL First Division side in Orlando at the beginning of the year, everything has fallen silent since then, and the story from sources inside the USL is that they have no plans to exercise their territorial rights. There are rumors that Pachuca also teased at placing an MLS team in Phoenix, but that was also a bunch of broken promises.

So, as you can see, I have zero sympathy for USL and their current predicament.

It is my hope that the new TOA-sponsored league gets through its early challenges and begins play in 2010, and hopefully looks to Orlando to give us a chance at a team.