Comrades:

Is this the beginning of the end of our love affair with professional sports? Are professional sports (baseball, basketball and football) too greedy for the average American? Are both the players and the owners too greedy?

The Indianapolis Colts is trying to renegotiate their 1998 contract with Indianapolis. The Colts has been complaining of lackluster attendance, and the City of Indianapolis had to pay them $10 million every year, because the gate receipts failed to make the median gate receipts of all NFL teams, so the City had to make up the shortfall. The football stadium was retro-fitted with 110 suites (at the loss of 5,000 seats) in 1998, with the City paying for the retro-fit. Unfortunately, it did not help attendance. The Colts' quarterback Manning is popular, and it helped improve attendance in the past few years - yet the Colts attendance has failed to meet the median attendance averages of all NFL teams.

The Colts wants to move to Los Angeles if the City will not build a brand new football arena with more suites and to provide additional guarantees (beyond the usual $10 million) every year.

The State of Indiana has refused to provide state funds for the new arena, and the polls show an overwhelming opposition to new taxes to support the new arena.

What happened to the concept of hometown loyalty? Of course, the Colts are the same Baltimore Colts that moved to Indy in 1984! Are the costs of professional sports getting higher and higher all the time?

Won't it be long before the fans get fed up and refuse to support professional sports?

Mikestead

Every time we think "this is it--the end of sports as we know it" something else comes along. If it's not the uproar over Alex Rodriguez and his contract, it's the potential move of a franchise. But we (and by "we" I mean "society as a whole") continue to go to games.

I don't think there will ever be a point where a majority of society will give up on sports. There may be certain teams in certain sports in certain cities with attendance problems, but not all teams in all sports.

Its the same here in San Diego. To keep the Chargers from Bolting, we ( the city) buys all the unsold seats - even the pre-season games!
Now the owner wants a new stadium. My guess is they will get it.
People here enjoy the tail gating parties and the hosting the super bowl. So they turn a blind eye to the question of greed

I think the only difference between now and 30 years is the media and the Internet. Now, everything a player does is under a microscope and debated endlessly on, er, um, sports websites.

Before, Mickey Mantle could drink up an entire distillery and the general public wouldn't be any wiser for it. Or Steve Garvey could be a manho--not with me, sadly--and still present an image of All-American Goodness to the public.

So, I think athletes in general have been knocked down a peg or three in the last 30 years, and I think that's a good thing.

What's not a good thing is how corporate sports have become. It's interesting to see games from 20 years ago on ESPN classic: no constant hype for Boston Public, no ads scrolling across the screen, no billboards that are visible on TV but not to the fans in the stands etc. The corporate shilling is really a turn off and I'm sick of practically every inch of a stadium being plastered with advertising.

Corporate ownership has also changed sports, for the worse. We have a prime example here in Los Angeles: The Dodgers. When they were privately owned by the O'Malley's, they were one of the best run organizations in all of sports. But the O'Malley's got tired of the escalating costs involved and bowed out to the hideous News Corp., owners of Fox. Fox bought the team solely to have "product" for their cable TV system and to help fend off ESPN/Disney's attempts to build a regional sports network. Now the Dodgers are a mess and all the buzz around the team is long gone. They brought in non-baseball people who made smart moves-NOT-like getting rid of Piazza etc. etc. While it warms my schadenfreude-ridden Angels fan heart to see the Boys In Blue struggle, in the big picture, it's not so great. It's the same with the Angels: when they got rid of corporate ladder-climber Tony Tavares and got a real baseball man to run things (Bill Stoneman) their fortunes turned around. It's not a coincidence.

I love the actual sports themselves more than ever--baseball and the REAL football (soccer) are just incredible, two of my favorite things in this world--but increasingly, the players and all the crap surrounding those glorious games have turned me off.

But I'll definitely watch the Boro v. Liverpool English footy replay on Fox Sports World tonight. And the Whiny Ass Loser Bitches, erm, I mean Sacramento Kings are playing Golden State tonight on TV, so that'll be one to watch. I just wish they were showing the England v. Aussies cricket somewhere.

*Sigh* I'm Jim and I'm a sports-aholic.

[ November 13, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]