Sorry for the delay in getting this up, MLS just happened to decide to release the schedule right in the middle of the Portland Timbers Kenny Cooper presser. As such, I was busy jotting down pages of notes when my little phone "bzzzzz'd" me the new schedule. Oh well...
Anyway, onto the schedule at hand. You can go ahead and view the full thing HERE. I won't both relaying every single home and away game, instead I'll just make note some interesting games and other oddities that I found interesting with the schedule.
So, first our Cascadian rivals games are fairly spread out over the course of the entire season. Makes sense since MLS won't want to bunch them all up. It is, however, worth noting that both our Seattle games come before even our first Vancouver game. Here are those games:
- Away - May 14th vs. Seattle Sounders ESPN2
- Home - Jul 10th vs. Seattle Sounders ESPN
- Home - Aug 20th vs. Vancouver Whitecaps Local TV
- Away - Oct 2nd vs. Vancouver Whitecaps Local TV
No surprise here that MLS and ESPN are anticipation big numbers from the heated Cascadian rivalry we have with Seattle. Both game are being broadcast nationally, with our home game being broadcast on the big ESPN, not the slightly smaller ESPN2. Good stuff.
You'll also note that many of our games merely say "Local TV" for our television rights. This sort of lends more credence to the rumor that Fox12 will be ahndling our local television broadcasts instead of a regional broadcaster like FSN NW or Comcast. Definitely cool.
Aside from that our only other nationally televised game will be the one against Chicago for our home opener, which we all already knew about.
One other thing worth noting, and this is league-wide, not Timbers specific, but you'll note a distinct lack of Fox Soccer Channel coverage here. This basically means that negotiations are still happening and there's no telling how long we could go without an additional national game coverage provider.
Finally, just so you are aware, our other big games against arguably the biggest teams in the league (Los Angeles and New York) are as follows:
- Away - Apr. 23rd vs. Los Angeles Galaxy Local TV
- Home - June 19th vs. New York Red Bulls Local TV
- Home - Aug. 3rd vs. Los Angeles Galaxy Local TV
- Away - Sep. 24th vs. New York Red Bulls Local TV
So, that's that. We may see some slightly television coverage changes depending on negotiations, but that remains to be seen. Until then, start scheduling your vacations NOW!