http://democratandchronicle.com/spor...8_rhinos.shtml
Rhinos rushing to move up to MLS for next season
By JEFF DiVERONICA
STAFF WRITER
Frank DuRoss [Day in Photos]
(November 8, 2003) — The Rochester Rhinos and Major League Soccer are discussing bringing an MLS expansion team to play in Rochester as early as next season, Rhinos owner Frank DuRoss said Friday.
“We have a very short opportunity to do this, but MLS and the Rhinos have agreed to try to work out an arrangement before Nov. 30 to bring a team here,” DuRoss said from Tampa, Fla., where he and general manager Chris Economides are attending annual A-League meetings.
“This wasn’t really on our radar, but if it (PaeTec Park) will be ready at some point next year we are very interested (in Rochester),” MLS Chief Operating Officer Mark Abbott said Friday. “We’ll sit down and talk more firmly with Frank about it and hope we can work something out, but it’s still preliminary.”
The Rhinos have played in the second-division A-League, one step below MLS, since their inception in 1996, and this is not the first time they’ve talked about big plans and joining MLS.
But at Friday’s A-League executive meeting, the Rhinos asked league officials to compose one 2004 schedule with Rochester in it and one without Rochester in case the Rhinos jump to MLS, the country’s top professional league.
“We had an obligation to tell the A-League in case this happens,” DuRoss said. “This is something that has come up relatively quickly. If everything can be worked out on both sides before Nov. 30, the MLS will be in Rochester in 2004.”
DuRoss would not offer specifics about the discussions. When asked how the Rhinos could afford an MLS expansion fee that reportedly would be at least $20 million, DuRoss said: “We are not going to comment on any of the financial arrangements being discussed.“
He declined to answer a question about a possible supplemental player draft to fill out a team in Rochester or whether current Rhinos will remain under contract. DuRoss did say a potential MLS team in Rochester next spring would have to play at Frontier Field until PaeTec Park is ready. Groundbreaking on the 17,500-seat stadium a few blocks from Frontier initially was supposed to have taken place late last summer but has been delayed.
The recent discovery of potential artifacts has forced the latest delay.
That means there is no way the stadium could be ready by the Rhinos’ target date of June 15.
DuRoss said August is more likely, and because the MLS season runs into November, if Rochester is in MLS, it could play possibly two months at PaeTec. Although it would be a small-market team in MLS, Rochester Rhinos’ attendance figures at Frontier have been better than those of some MLS teams for several years.
MLS currently has 10 teams and has said it probably will push back expansion until 2005. Rochester, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City, Seattle and Houston are cities Garber cited as recently as last week as top candidates. Cleveland also has been mentioned.
A strong possibility is adding a Mexican club. Two weeks ago, MLS reached an agreement with Jorge Vergara, owner of the Mexican team Chivas, to put a “sister team” in the United States. That franchise reportedly could play in MLS in San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago or Houston.
“This is a very storied and famous Mexican club that has millions of fans here in the United States,” Garber told the San Diego Union-Tribune about Chivas, which plays in Guadalajara. “To expand their brand into an American soccer league will give us the ability to tap into their current fan base and give us a very credible and meaningful team.”
That team “hoped to be in place for ‘04 but we’ve struggled with location,” Garber told the newspaper.
ops: thanks for the nice words frank 
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