If anything, pro/rel actively HURTS the level of play, because it locks a decent portion of the table into a survival battle, where pragmatic results trump everything (because there's a huge $ incentive tied directly to it) and it becomes MORE difficult to do things like invest in youth with a long-term goal, because senior team results are much more important. Also results in the coaching carousels we see, where players and managers are shuttled around the bottom as everyone scrapes to survive and players can get lost in bad contract / bad situation limbo for years.

As for playing time opportunities for non-1st teamers in MLS, that's been a long-standing problem. There's been a reserve league, there's been lower level loans, roster sizes are tweaked (we'll probably see a cut from 30 to 25 in 2015). Like I've said senior teams are launching USL Pro affiliates, so again as the senior league grows, they continue trying to develop the feeder system along with it. Of course it's extremely imperfect, but the US Soccer lifers stay trying to grow it. Klinsmann isn't saying anything Don Garber hasn't been aware of (and working to fix) for a decade+.