The Badge, The Players, The Fans Deserve Better...Have They Gotten It?

I mentioned before the season that I wanted to follow up on the Centennial 38 protest letter from last year to see what progress has been made, but I wanted to wait until we got into the season a bit.  Well, since March ends this weekend this seemed a relevant time to do it (more on the timing later).  To remind everyone, the letter from C38 can be read here, with the KSE response here.  Also, to state my biases up front, I helped craft the C38 letter and I stand by what was said in it.  But to be clear, this column is my personal opinion of where things have gone since then, this does not reflect in any way what C38's current stance is.

Starting right off the top, what the letter was calling for above anything else was investment.  Investment in money but also in time and just general 'giving a damn'.  What investment have we seen?

When it comes to the roster the club certainly increased their investment (we'll get to how well they did with that investment later).  Signing Zach Steffen, Sam Vines, Lamine Diack, and spending a club-record amount to bring Djordje Mihailovic represents possibly the biggest offseason this club has had in its history.  The choice of Chris Armas for coach however screams Smith not being given much of a budget after firing Mastroeni, Hudson, and Fraser. 

Another concern from the letter was subpar training facilities and an outdated stadium.  There have been no major announcements about investment in the training facilities, though Burgundy Wave did report the turf practice field and at least one of the grass practice fields were replaced.  

There have been minimal if any upgrades to the stadium that are noticeable to the average fan.  The scoreboard is still a running joke, and if the audio system was upgraded its hard to notice.  There are a few new food options but no major overhaul to reach the Footy Scran level shown by non-league clubs in England.  Most of the ad boards on the light poles and scoreboard still look like they haven't been cleaned since they were put up.  Anecdotally it appears there are still issues with Argus security hassling the fan section, based on the run-in I had on Saturday night.  That said, there have been a few positive steps, the most noticeable has been the addition of game announcements in Spanish.  The Spanish-speaking market has long been woefully underserved by this organization so its good to see them making that effort.

We've also seen a lack of interest from ownership above Padraig Smith.  The first comments from the new President of Team and Media Operations showed that he had no clue about the culture and experience of Rapids fans, despite claiming he had attended the game the weekend before.  Referencing a non-existent "pregame march" and integration with the community that there's been no evidence of suggests that he was given some bullet points to hit more than he was relating anything he actually saw.  The lack of any follow-up after that, even to clean up his comments, kind of shows where the Rapids stand in his (and KSE as a whole's) mind.

While we're talking about KSE's response, lets go back to the promises "Josh Kroenke" made in his response letter.

On the field, we are focused on returning the team to the level of competitiveness we expect and have seen in recent years

Well so far this season the team looks a great deal like the Robin Fraser teams of the past few years, with that level of competitiveness, so I guess that's been achieved, though not in the way they meant.  Chris Armas talked in preseason about "playing in transition" yet Joseph Lowery showed on MLssoccer.com this week that we're using the same slow possession game we've used the last couple of years under Fraser.

Off the field, we have already engaged Legends, Civitas, Perkins & Will, and Turner Construction on a number of feasibility studies and analyses around potential infrastructure projects as we assess a future vision for DICK'S Sporting Goods Park and the Club's training environment. We are also actively evaluating additional ways to enhance the gameday experience inside and outside the stadium.

The team did hold a couple of open house sessions with fans this offseason and sent out a survey to find out what the fans wanted to see at the Dick.  However, having taken the survey myself, what they seemed to be asking is "what amenities would get you to pay higher prices for tickets" when really what the fans need is for the basic experience to be brought up to a modern standard.  Making the North Boundary or the suites into a premium experience doesn't help the family of 4 sitting in section 110 having to choose between reheated hot dogs and stadium nachos.  It suggests that, once again, KSE has missed the point.

Over the next few months, we will be finalizing the master plan for our exciting Victory Crossing Project. When this is ready in early 2024, we will be hosting several open forums with supporters and members of the community to gather feedback on our plans for the club, stadium and entire project.

Remember that comment about the end of March being an appropriate time to have this conversation?  That's because its about the last point you can call it "early 2024".  Maybe you can stretch it into early April, or maybe they meant "early in the 2024 season" but either way, we're about out of time and so far I haven't heard anything about this master plan for the "exciting" Victory Crossing.  Well, that's not entirely true.  We did hear in the offseason that KSE was partnering with local colleges to have students help with drafting the plan as part of their education.  Which certainly suggests that when they wrote the above in September plans weren't nearly as far along as Josh made it appear.

Now all of this comes with the obvious caveat that its only been 6 months.  We weren't going to become a top-tier MLs organization in that time.  The frustration though is that there appears to be nothing but lip service given to the idea of improving.  We have a team that has scored one goal from the run of play in the first 5 games, have given 3 points away by giving up very late goals in the first two hone games (while only scoring a single goal, and that an own goal), and continues to try to sell a sub-standard gameday experience.  The very visible example of this is the failing scoreboard, while their opponents down I-70, Sporting KC, managed to do a complete revamp of their video setup in one offseason.  If more is coming, then make an effort to show it to us.

To answer the question I asked in the title of the piece, no, we haven't gotten better yet.  While we have some shiny new pieces on the field (that haven't yet changed any results), the rest of the organization is still far behind even a midlevel Major League Soccer team. This isn't an org that can expect to compete year in and year out, which is the bar Padraig Smith has stated on multiple occasions.