“This was a bittersweet situation for Mason as he really enjoyed his time in Ottawa, especially developing relationships with the Fury fans and local community, but Miami FC aggressively pursued Mason and created a package that justified Mason’s market value as one of the best defenders in NASL. Having represented Mason from his first professional contract to the present, it is a great testament for him to have Italian legend Alessandro Nesta seek him out to be a leader on defence."

But, having more teams in the southeast will only serve to increase the travel bill for the Eddies, currently the only NASL team in the Mountain time zone. Just with the four Florida teams, the Eddies are looking at four road trips of 3,000-4,000 km (one-way) each. It’s given wisdom that flying an NASL team and paying for hotels and meals costs north of $20,000 a trip. But Fath told me that, when the Eddies faced Fort Lauderdale in the playoffs back in the FCE’s inaugural season, booking seats and hotels last-second ballooned the costs to over $40,000 for that trip.

According to the NASL, the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps can field affiliated teams in Div. 2 as early as 2012. While neither team has concrete plans in place to have affiliated teams in NASL, Vancouver has retained its membership in the league and Montreal plans to do the same when it leaves NASL for MLS in 2012. This is consistent with previous indications from the league.

After a close board vote on Friday, the decision to give NASL the Division 2 sanction was ratified by the membership of the United States Soccer Federation Saturday in Las Vegas. But the sanction is only good for the 2011 season. According to a release from the league, “The NASL will need to meet certain requirements defined by the Board of Directors to be granted full sanctioning beyond the 2011 season.”

It's making its rounds throughout the soccer media. But seven of the eight NASL teams are represented (by supporters groups) in this open letter to U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati, urging him to grant the league official Div. 2 status. The USSF meets next week. Two weeks ago, the USSF stripped the NASL of its provisional acceptance as the official Div. 2 of soccer in America, but the NASL has carried on with business as usual, and is confident it can win back the status. The league has stated that going down to Div. 3 is not an option.

Even though both the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps are moving to MLS, both are retaining their memberships in the second-division NASL. NASL chief executive officer Aaron Davidson confirmed that MLS is aware that both the Impact and Whitecaps are retaining their memberships in NASL, even though Vancouver makes its debut as an MLS city in 2011 and Montreal makes the move in 2012. “They can still have teams in NASL; those teams can have synergies with the MLS franchises or they can be standalone teams,” said Davidson Tuesday, over the phone from Paraguay.