I remember thinking about Middleware when I was working on Sprint's custom routing system a couple of years ago and came to one conclusion. In order for route middleware to really work effectively, you have to force the user to register all of their routes. Otherwise it works on some routes, but the more "traditional" method where the controller is discovered through URI segment matching, doesn't work with the middleware. So then you need a second solution for the controllers. At that point, it made more sense, in my mind, to just craft the solution for the controller.
I never did, though, for Sprint, but that's the only way I could really see it be effectively done for this framework. And that's not a bad thing, as it keeps it a little more explicit, though barely.
