• Major League Soccer conference finals kick off Sunday with the New York Red Bulls visiting Atlanta (4 p.m., ESPN) and Kansas City playing at Portland (6:30 p.m., FS1). The two-leg nature of these matchups always makes the first game a cagey affair. The tiebreaker is away goals scored, meaning that preventing the road team from scoring is almost a bigger focus for the home teams than scoring a goal themselves. MLS needs to get rid of the away-goals tiebreaker, an archaic rule that serves no purpose in today's games and makes the first games of the series worse.
• While the saga of the Columbus Crew appears to be set for a happy ending, with a local group stepping in to buy the team and keep it in Columbus, current owner Anthony Precourt seems to be reaping rewards, not consequences. Precourt tried to kill the Crew so he could move the team. Having been denied, he will still get his new team in Austin while his sale of the Crew pays his expansion fee. It doesn't seem fair that Precourt should prosper from this situation.
