Hello, hello everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and today I am joined by one half of the MLS Assist podcast.

It's Joe Lowry.

Hello, Joe.

How you doing, buddy?

I am doing great, Taylor.

How are you?

I am doing well.

You've gone to the Joe straightforward delivery, so I will respond in kind. Is that my brand? No, I don't think so. I just think we've had the comments about Joe never saying, um, I've now put you on the spot, so you can't do it this whole episode, whereas um is where I live, Joe, awkward pauses is where I exist. Um, yeah, no, I'm right there. I'm right there with you. I'm right there. I'm right there.

I do want to talk a lot of MLS with you, but first I want to start off. I mentioned MLS assist. I know you've got some other projects going on. There's benched. There's 361. What can you tell us about what else you're working on? so yeah there is a lot of things and i realized this last week but somehow i still have enough time to do

everything i'm kind of shocked i I'm glad. I'm grateful for that so far. That probably won't always be the case. But running through projects, MLS assist, that is the podcast that Jordan Angily and myself are putting out about what's happening on the field in major league soccer. That's what we're going to be talking about today, not about MLSS assist, but about major league soccer. That's project one. Number two is

361. This is going to be an informative, really interesting video project that myself, Jack

Hazard and Diana Crump are putting together to highlight a lot of the most interesting on-field

and off-field

storylines in the American soccer world. So we're really excited about it. It's going to be

something different that has, to my knowledge, at least never been done specifically for American

soccer. So it's going to be illustrated, animated videos with myself doing voiceovers and writing

the script. So we're super pumped for that. And then benched

is a way for me to get my writing muscles flexed a little bit. It's a newsletter I'll be putting out weekly about something tactical that I've noticed throughout the week, again, as a way for me to be writing a little bit more and having some fun. So there's a list. Sorry, that was me rambling for quite some time. Not at all. Not at all. I asked the question. I wanted to know the answer. I also want to know what the inspiration was for 361. Was there a specific story or narrative that you wanted to sort of focus in on or was it just a general idea to broaden your coverage? So the inspiration, are you talking about behind the name or behind the idea? I mean, 361, I can guess the name. More so the Okay. The idea was just to do something that hasn't been done. It's something different. I enjoy the creative side of things. Jack and Diana are way better at that than I am, but they've been shepherding me along a little bit. And I wanted to use this time that I haven't been writing during quarantine during this pandemic season. I wanted to be doing something productive. And so that sort of led to the idea. And now we've launched it and we announced it. We'll be launching the first video, the first week of October. And we're hoping to get some support from the community because it is a time-consuming endeavor. But we're going to launch it, see how it goes. And then we'll make more businessy decisions from there. There we go. All right. Well, I look forward to the launch, but between now and then, we've got some MLS to talk. It has been a strange season. That's probably a massive understatement. It's definitely a massive understatement. When you look at the standings, let's start with the East, what have been the biggest surprises for you so far and what has

maybe what has not surprised you at all is maybe a better way to put it? What has been a surprise

good or bad and then what has been kind of about what you expected? Good surprise. As in something

I wasn't expecting, I'm thinking Orlando City have still got to be near the top of that list,

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