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TORONTO -- Team has been the theme for Toronto FC in the buildup to the MLS Cup final.From boisterous practices to team-first media interviews, the All for One club motto has been plain to see ahead of the championship game Saturday against the visiting Seattle Sounders.You dont get to this point by mistake or by accident. You get here because a group of special guys who have all bought into a philosophy, an identity, said Toronto midfielder Will Johnson, an MLS Cup winner with Real Salt Lake and Portland.I say the same about Seattle. Theyre bought into what theyre good at. Were bought in, very motivated and want to sacrifice and put aside egos to get to a point as a team to compete for the big trophy.Star striker Jozy Altidore was asked if he had taken time to reflect on his personal journey to the championship game.No, he said definitively. This isnt personal, this is a team game. Were here to try to help Toronto to be a winning team. This has nothing to do with individuals. So it has nothing to do with what Ive been through. This is what the citys been through, what the fans have been through, what this club has been through. Thats far more important.Fullback Justin Morrow, a seven-year MLS veteran, has never played this deep into the season before.Each week we build on top of each other and we get closer as the year goes on. It really feels like its a culmination this week, he said.Coach Greg Vanney has made a point of praising the entire squad, including reserves who function as the scout team in practice. While he has done soccers equivalent of shortening his bench for the playoffs, the squad has stayed on point. If anyone has beefs, they have been kept to themselves.Thats no small feat considering the salaries on the squad range from $7.12 million for star striker Sebastian Giovinco to $51,500 for youngsters Mo Babouli and Tsubasa Endoh.For Morrow, being part of a tight-knit group allows you to forget that it is your job.When teams arent doing well, players tend to focus on that -- their job and not about the other people on the team, Morrow said. And I think when teams are doing well, it becomes about the relationships between the players.Evan Engram Jersey . According to a report from the Vancouver Province, the Lions are expected to replace former DC Rich Stubler with defensive backs coach Mark Washington. Dexter Lawrence Womens Jersey . The CFLs leading rusher kept adding to his gaudy numbers this season and scored the winning touchdown with just over two minutes to play. The New Westminster, B.C., native plowed three yards into the end zone for the last score of a heated, see-saw battle between the two teams with the best records in the CFL. http://www.nygiantsfanaticshop.com/Black-Phil-Simms-Giants-Jersey.html?cat=861 . After a first half in which he thought "the lid was on the basket," the Toronto Raptors coach watched his squad mount a second half surge to defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers 98-91. Phil McConkey Giants Jersey . P.A. Parenteau scored early in the third period to help the Avs edge Toronto 2-1 on Tuesday night. Cory Sarich also scored for Colorado (3-0-0), which is off to its best ever start. Dalvin Tomlinson Jersey .C. -- Calgarys Kevin Koe did it the hard way again.Kyle Whittingham still answers the phone in his office.Call it a mid-major work ethic. He has coached at Utah for 22 years, the past 12 seasons as the head coach. Since 2011, he has been the leader of a Pac-12 program.At Utah, one of a dozen schools nationally that have landed new homes or shifted seats inside the Power 5 ranks of college football during the most recent round of conference realignment, old habits pay off in producing stability.?Seven of the 12 programs that started anew in the Power 5 from 2011 to 2014 have changed coaches since their latest league debuts.Its not an overnight process, but we felt the impact right away, said Whittingham, whose program won six league games last season for the first time in its short Pac-12 history. And now, the ripple effect has permeated the whole university and the community. Theres just a whole different feel around Salt Lake City.As the Big 12 presidents and chancellors meet Monday to ponder the next step after the leagues evaluation of candidates for membership, heres what we know from looking back: Not all the stories end well.The Big 12 appears reticent, at best, to restart this train. Even if it stands pat, of course, Power 5 realignment is not dead. When it happens next, the schools involved will face struggles in adjusting. As the latest episode of seismic change illustrated, the grass is not always greener on the other side of a league border -- even when the other side has more money, prestige and a higher ceiling.I knew what I was getting into, West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said of the Mountaineers 2012 jump from the Big East to the Big 12. But I dont think anyone else did around here.Conference expansion works best when it isnt a cash grab or a marriage of convenience. For those who navigate a Power 5 move with precision, a plan and, perhaps most importantly, an undistorted self-image, the rewards have proven great.Utah, TCU and Louisville unquestionably sit in better spots nationally than they did before their conference shifts. Pitt also appears on an upswing.Colorado, which resurfaced in the top 25 this month after limping to a 5-40 mark in its first five seasons since leaving the Big 12. Texas A&M, Nebraska and West Virginia, despite strong starts in 2016, have not consistently matched the success they achieved before their conference shifts.Missouri found its footing with SEC East titles in 2013 and 2014 but faces uncertainty with a first-year coach. Although its early in Dino Babers tenure at Syracuse, the Orange finally showed some life in the ACC with an upset of Virginia Tech. For Rutgers and Maryland, also under new coaches, its too soon to predict long-term results in situations that are more challenging than their former league positions.The leap to Power 5 status -- none of the 11 Big 12 final candidates currently competes in a major conference -- is often long and treacherous.Look at Louisville, which journeyed from Conference USA in 1996 to the Big East in 2005 to the AAC in 2013, after the Big 12 rejected it. Athletic director Tom Jurich, in place since 1997, learned from the earlier moves that Louisville had to be ready for realignment before the hint of an opening. He strived to keep four areas, above all else, in order at Louisville: academic support and performance, facilities, gender equity and coaching.If you have those things in line for, its going to work out well for you, Jurich said.In November 2012, less than two weeks after Jurich learned of the ACCs interest in the Cardinals, Louisville accepted an offer from commissioner John Swofford to join the league.Greatest day in the schools history, he said.But he didnt rest there. Jurich divided responsibility among senior administrators at the school to create three large manuals that evaluated every aspect of the schools in the ACC, plus Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame, which joined for all but football. They examined budgets, academics, salaries, the dollar amount spent per student-athlete, facilities and recent upgrades.dddddddddddd.What did they have that we didnt have? Jurich said. I didnt want to waste one second. Weve got 310 coaches and administrators, and they knew that this was the top priority for me to come in and hit the ground running because I didnt want to fail at anything.In football alone, Louisville has rewarded the ACC with a playoff-contending program this fall and a Heisman Trophy front-runner in quarterback Lamar Jackson.Like Louisville, TCU traveled a windy road to reach the Power 5. It joined the WAC when the Southwest Conference disintegrated in 1996, then moved to Conference USA in 2001, then the Mountain West in 2005, then agreed to join the Big East before the Big 12 offered a spot in October 2011.We were well-prepared from that odyssey to get back to where we always wanted to be, TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte said, and that was the premier conference in our region, the Big 12. Every single move allowed us a chance to grow and improve athletically and fiscally. We came in with a plan to compete for championships.Through all of it, the best thing to happen at TCU, Del Conte said, was rejection from the Big 12 two decades ago. That forced administrators and coaches to look inward and construct a plan to upgrade the infrastructure of their athletic program.It doesnt matter how you do it, as long as youve got a good plan, said TCU coach Gary Patterson, who is 17-4 in Big 12 play since 2014. And [the plan] is for down the road. Its not for right now.Think big, Patterson said. The strategy has also aided Colorado in its escape from a brutal stretch of football that dates to its final five years in the Big 12. The Buffaloes havent finished with a winning record since the 2005 season.Contrary to some versions of revisionist history, unlike others, the school did not flee the Big 12 out of spite for Texas in 2011,?said associate AD David Plati, who has been employed by Colorado since 1978. The Pac-10, in fact, had long courted Colorado.We had no issues with Texas, Plati said. We had no issues with anybody. We played a significant role in forming the Big 12, a fact that seems to be lost on some people. Thats why we didnt leave [earlier]. The No. 1 reason we left is because our alumni base is West Coast-centered and in Colorado.Within three years of joining the Pac-12, the school increased fundraising in California by more than tenfold, Plati said. This year, for the first time, all of Colorados fall sports have been nationally ranked. Academically, Colorado immediately fit better in the Pac-12 than it did in the Big 12. That included joining ventures such as the collaboration with Arizona State and Cal to design a Mars orbiter.Similar big thinking drove Nebraskas 2011 move from the Big 12 to the Big Ten. The Cornhuskers saw their travel budget jump by approximately $1 million in their first year in the new league and by more in subsequent years, Nebraska executive associate AD Marc Boehm said.Officials from the Big Ten visited Nebraska many times in the 2010 and 2011 seasons to ease the adjustment.It was a huge deal for us to understand their culture, Boehm said. It laid out a roadmap of what was on its way.The assimilation efforts were born from trial and error after the Big Ten offered less assistance to Penn State ahead of its 1993 debut.Conversely, in the wake of the 2011 and 2012 departures from the Big 12, the league offered only minimal guidance for TCU before its entry, said Del Conte, the eighth-year athletic director. That was OK because the Horned Frogs came with a plan.We knew what our neighbors had, Del Conte said.How well did West Virginia, Syracuse, Rutgers and Maryland know? How well do the next set of Big 12 expansion candidates know?The events of Monday might tell us if those questions are to remain relevant. ' ' '