If the MLS product was anywhere near this entertaining week-in and week-out, we wouldn't have to talk about lack of interest or bad TV ratings.

Some people seem to get a thrill out of the league being niche, but I'd love to bring it into the mainstream. How do we do that?

Well, it starts and ends with an effort to make every regular season game mean something, which runs counter to MLS's philosophy these last 5-6 years, which has been to lift up the bottom teams and make it so that no team is out of contention.

With the benefit of a little hindsight, it's laughable that many others, and even myself, entertained the idea of so-called super teams in MLS.

Look at Atlanta, LAFC, or even RBNY. All of them were record-setting, then they lost one or two players and it all tumbled.

You have to reward ambition, or the league won't grow.

Every single new team is ambitious, then recedes to the pack once they look around and realize you can get by with balancing the budget, signing lower-end DPs and relying on academy development.

You can have both. You can produce a Tyler Adams and sign a Thierry Henry.

But what's the incentive to set records and lead the league in everything when a mediocre team can beat you in a one-off and declare it a better season?

The answers are clear. You need to make the playoffs a reward, not a baseline.

MLS has a leg up on other American sports leagues because teams can't and won't tank regardless of how many teams make the playoffs, because there isn't the incentive to get the No. 1 Draft pick.

That's one reason why you really don't need relegation (and it's a moot point regardless). You just need to raise the level.

Do people really think it's a positive that good teams are on auto-pilot for most of the season just so bad teams have more incentive down the stretch?

The justification for a long time not to do this has been how negatively it would affect the teams at the bottom with nothing to play for, specifically related to attendance.

But MLS has attendance issues across the board.

The league has teams consistently in the playoffs that can't fill up their arena. And, conversely, some teams who have struggled year-in, year-out who have some of the better attendance numbers.

It doesn't seem like the current strategy is working.

Fans are smart. They know that a regular season game is becoming less and less relevant by the year.

If you're a season ticket holder in your third or fourth year, what's your incentive to keep coming back?

You've seen all the bells and whistles of the "game-day experience."

Now, it's about deciding whether it's worth cutting out six hours or more of your day, while you have whatever else going on in your life.

What's going to keep you coming back is the feeling that the game you're attending means something, and that the intensity on the field reflects that.

I've covered countless games over the last three years where that was just not the case. And I'm talking about a playoff team!

Yes, there are great relationships that fans build, particularly supporters. MLS loves to play that up because it's their biggest selling point.

But the product is on the field. And that product has not improved anywhere close to the rate it needs to.

So, yeah, enjoy the excitement of MLS's knockout playoffs, but let's stop fetishizing the corkiness of MLS and start asking critical questions of how MLS can take big strides and break through into the mainstream, and why it hasn't in the decade since 2010.