mls experimented with rules deviations in its early years in an attempt to "americanize" what some viewed as a foreign sport. some of these rules changes were borrowed from the original nasl, college soccer and high school soccer. mls implemented the use of shootouts to resolve tie games. these best-of-five contests placed a player 35 yards from goal with five seconds to put the ball past the opposing goalkeeper; if needed the shootout progressed into extra frames. a winning team received one standings point (as opposed to three for the regulation win). mls also used a countdown clock, rather than a standard progressive clock, with time paused for dead ball situations at a referee's discretion. halves ended when the clock reached 0:00, rather than at the whistle of the referee as was customary elsewhere.