The Review of PDL.... and Why the Bohs Need to Leave or Push for Change

The Professional Development League (PDL) is, according to its Twitter bio, it is "The top U23 men's league in North America". It also boasts 64 teams in 4 conferences. Here are the divisions and alignment. Obviously, something is deadly wrong here. The Bohs play in a 10-team division, the highest-numbered division in the entire league. The PDL season lasts from mid-May to mid-July, which is not nearly enough time for an 11-team division to play every team once home and away. So, teams don't play some opponents twice, which is not necessarily a problem, but it does cause the league's legitimacy to be questioned. No team should ever play a game on back-to-back days (exception being condensed tournaments), especially with travel involved. The next-closest PDL division to the Bohs is the Northeast Division, which has 5 teams. That division size may be too small for a 12-week league (estimating for the sake of simplicity), but the average division size is 7-8 teams, which is easily doable. Out of the 10 teams in the Bohs' division, 6 are in NY/NJ.

So, assuming that the LI Rough Riders go to the Northeast Division, here's an appropriate realignment:

Mid-Atlantic Divison:
Bohs
Lehigh Valley
Northern Virginia
DC United U23s
Reading

Tri-State Division:
FA Euro
Jersey Express
New York Red Bull U23s
Ocean City
Westchester


This would ameliorate schedule-makers' efforts to make it so that teams could play each other twice, while still allowing them free weeks to schedule friendlies etc.

If the PDL does not do anything about the ridiculous scheduling efforts, the Bohs need to find a league that will address those concerns. The other concern is that players do not get better simply by playing a half of soccer to determine a game. The league's weather policy needs updating to better reflect MLS rules (after all, it claims to be the "#Path2Pro"). There is no excuse for events such as Saturday night to happen again to the Bohs, so I hope the PDL at least reads this and gives it some consideration as they discuss the future of their league.