The Small Market: Life and Death of the Sporting World (Part IV)

Preserve your product, small-market owners. You are not the product. If fans turn against the players, they turn against the sport (once again: if you’re an NBA fan, you know this). Shoot, MLB fans know it too: MLB owners - NFL owners too, to an extent - were just smart enough to frame their grievances in a manner that didn’t hurt the game. They blamed large-market owners…which isn’t much better, but is much more palatable…because it doesn’t hurt the product.

Shoot, an argument could be made that it helps. Fans rally around their teams as the David vs. Goliath narrative takes over. Everyone gets involved and picks up their slingshots. Easy stories to write, interesting plotlines to develop…win-win.

The Small Market: Life and Death of the Sporting World (Part III)

Seriously, what costs more: one good scouting person or five good players?

No one, but no one, gets this better than the Tampa Bay Rays (please let someone be smart enough to get that team a stadium in Westshore or Channelside). Draft, groom, bring them up, sign the best ones, and trade the rest for more players who they can…groom, bring them up, sign if they’re good enough, and so on. That’s how you compete with a low payroll….which could be higher if owners weren’t greedy.

The Small Market: Life and Death of the Sporting World (Part II)

It’s these fans - and fans like them in other cities - that keep the sports world going. Fans in places like Milwaukee, Orlando, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Kansas City have as much to do with the success of sports franchises as fans in the cities mentioned above. They go out and they support their teams…

“…no. they don’t. No one goes to the games in the small markets and that’s why their revenues are lower…”

Anyone with half a background in business or economics knows that the statement in quotes is patently false. Many factors contribute to sports team revenues, and in the cases of some teams they make a profit before they sell one ticket thanks to their leagues’ revenue-sharing policies. People stay away from games for one of two reasons: either the team isn’t good or the prices are too high - and it’s more the latter than the former. This is a rather basic concept in economics: teams charge the highest amount that the largest number of fans will pay for tickets. If the ticket prices are low enough, people will come. If the team is good enough, people will come.

There are exceptions, but there are also reasons for those exceptions. I would list some, but this is going to be long enough as is. I’ll instead jump into the main reason why small-market attendance is down in many cases, and also introduce that group as the entity that works as hard to ruin sports as small-market fans do to keep sports going…and they won’t have to look far to find this group.

I’m talking about small-market owners.

Small-market owners want to have their cake, eat it, and have the cake be provided for free. The obvious poster child for this is Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who’s made a complete [donkey] of himself in the past year and a half. By the way, honorable mention goes to the Spurs owner (whose name I forget) for singing the woes of the small market while being blinded by the four titles his team has won since 1999.

I could talk about individual small-market owners all day, but I’m at about 900 words so…small-market owners complain that they can’t make money, can’t win, and/or can’t keep their best players. The NBA has a unique problem that I’ll avoid for the sake of brevity (a concept which quickly - and often - goes out the window when I write, but whatever), but generally speaking these owners go about the process all wrong.

If you know you’re basically being subsidized by your league, give the fans a break. I don’t know the core financials of any sports teams, but I will say that no team whose subsidy exceeds its expenses should charge fans more than $50 for any ticket. You’re already making a profit: give the fans the maximum opportunity to enjoy your team. You still get that bit of ticket money, not to mention the added income that comes from other gameday functions. To do anything else is to simply be greedy.

As far as winning goes…put some money in your scouting departments. This is obvious in baseball, but it works in football and basketball as well. Getting good scouts is by far the easiest and most cost-effective way to save money on talent. Even large-market teams get this: look at the Dallas Cowboys. After dealing with Roy Williams’s incompetence, they gave a chance to a small-school guy. Small-school guy ripped shop and became one of the league’s better WRs. His name is Miles Austin. This season, Austin gets hurt. The Cowboys (with help from Norv Turner) have this other small-school guy…who rips shop and may well become one of the league’s better WRs. His name is Laurent Robinson. Meet the new Miles Austin, same as the old Miles Austin. Not only is Robinson good, but he’s cheap. Obviously, not every team can then sign a guy to a long-term deal like the Cowboys did with Austin. That’s cool: s’why there are things called trades. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Seriously, what costs more: one good scouting person or five good players?

The Small Market: Life and Death of the Sporting World (Part I)

*This was originally finished a month and a half ago (as people will notice with the mention of the Packers as Super Bowl champions), but never released. Sigh.
 

I’ve been trying to think of something to write. I’m about tired of talking about dating/relationship topics and I haven’t felt like delving back into the one big topic I was writing on at some point (perhaps this would be a good time to pass on what I’ve already written on that to my prospective collaborator, but I digress). So I racked my brain and thought - what better to write about than…

…sports.

I try to stay away from sports on here (especially football, since I do something on that every week), but I think there’s an interesting topic on which I can come up with a few words…and maybe it’ll have some non-sporting application.

(Ed. note: there are four parts due to the length of the piece.)

The Whitney Houston Post

I originally planned on writing about Jeremy Lin and the craze involving him...and I will, assuming that circumstances still warrant in about a week. However, that all changed when news broke tonight that Whitney Houston died.

In the last two and a half years we've lost the two biggest black musical voices of the 80s (I'm only using race as a divider because Madonna would likely be the biggest female voice). I'm not going to write about the parallels between Michael Jackson and Whitney, even though there are quite a few. This is going to be all Whitney - well, it'll be all Whitney as far as my memories.

Dirty Macks of Hip Hop

So, thanks to CJStarchild (that's his Twitter handle); I've been introduced to the term "dirty mack". He got it from sportswriter Bomani Jones. Basically, a dirty mack (in this context) is a singer who moves in on another man's girl in a song.

Now R&B is too wide a genre of music to do this with, so I've decided to make a "fun, but not definitive or exhaustive" ranking of dirty macks in hip hop. This'll probably just be a top ten - okay, I made it five...and I already know who #1 has to be without thinking about it much. A man's ranking will depend mainly on the dirtiness of the macking in the song and how big the song got. I'll list some other notable efforts before getting to the top 5 - and I think the top 5 is pretty unquestionable.

Thoughts on the Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation Survey

I came across an interesting survey the other day thanks to a friend of mine posting about it. It’s the Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation effort that asked questions of black and white respondents of each sex.

The questions all had 4 or 5 possible responses on Likert type scales. All of the percentages, unless otherwise noted, will be for the strongest response (strongly agree, very important, and so on). Going to pick out a few of these questions and vibe a bit.

What Joe Paterno Taught Me

So I have an entry that I was going to put on here tonight. It's a rather lengthy piece, enough so that I will have to split it up. That'll have to wait.

As everyone probably knows by now, Joe Paterno passed away this morning. Even if you don't follow sports, you know the Paterno story because of a louse named Jerry Sandusky. As us sports fans know, there was a lot more to Paterno - and much of that will dominate sports news in the coming days.

We'll hear about Paterno's wins. His 409th win - which would turn out to be his last - put him past Eddie Robinson and lifted him into first place all-time in that category. We'll hear about the two national titles, the second of which will forever unnerve me as a Miami fan. We may even hear about the philanthropy: Paterno and his family gave millions to Penn State. One thing that we'll definitely hear about is his forming young minds to become productive members of society and his teaching hundreds of former players. It's the teaching part that I want to focus on.

A New Dress Code

I’ve been thinking lately that I need to upgrade my wardrobe. “So what”…well, honestly; there’s a little bit more to it than that. The upgrade thoughts - and I’ll admit, a certain vodka commercial…even though I don’t drink - led to the idea that I should establish a new dress code for myself (for lack of a better term). The basic outline is below.

Incomprehensible

In the last few weeks - not because of the dating thing, but it does relate - I’ve figured out something about myself that…well, to be honest; I already knew it. I figured out why I’m such a difficult person to really get to know or get close to.

I’m impossible to (completely) understand.

A 2011 Review

 What happened this past year? Let's see...

Music

I’m not even going to lie: music stunk in 2011. Usually I can come up with long lists of songs I’ve liked, but I’m going to struggle to come up with a decently long list of songs that actually came out (or really hit the scene) in 2011. Since I enjoy, challenges, though…

Physics At Work

This is going to be especially funny considering where I’m writing this, but then again I guess it makes all the sense in the world (you should be able to figure out where this is being written).

I’ve always been someone to put so much into my personal life (to no apparent avail) but not really put 100% into my academic/professional life (a statement with which pretty much everyone I’ve worked alongside would likely disagree). I think I’ve written enough about the personal stuff, so this time around I’ll focus on the vocational side of things.

Will I Know How?

(Emptying out the 'dating/relationship' queue...)

As you all may have noticed, I haven’t had the greatest success with dating/relationship (not that anything has even reached said status, but for purposes of nomenclature it makes sense to use the term) in 2011. The other day I started thinking: if by some minor miracle, I meet someone who interests me sufficiently, will I know how to handle it? I’m not sure, and there are a few mistakes I could see myself making.

Texting and Dating

(Ed. Note: this was originally written a month and a half ago. The personal aspect was no longer applicable as of mid-November).

I must be getting old.

I remember a time when the process went like this: guy meets girl and strikes up conversation. Guy asks for Girl’s number, which she gives to him. Guy calls Girl, and after an appropriate (but varying) amount of phone conversations, they go out together. After an appropriate (but varying) amount of dates, they figure out what they want to do - if anything.

Rules of Engagement

I don’t know if I’ve written about this before, but I’m going to assume that I haven’t and talk about something that needs to be talked about: rules.

We all have them. No, I’m not talking about dating preferences. I’m talking about simple rules we have that mainly concern our interaction with others.

I’m famous for some of mine…as a matter of fact, I’ll frame this post off those and then speak generally as I talk about each one.

Something To Hide? Something Is Wrong.

I’ve been slow on the non-football writing (actually, this isn’t true: I lost my thumb drive yet again and it had some complete-but-yet-to-be-published stuff on it) so I figured it was time (once I came up with something). This is totally random, but I think it’ll make sense.

I was thinking about my complication level in comparison to those of most men I know. Now I’ve never thought of myself as complicated, but I’m aware that some women have thought of me as just that. They’re entitled to their prerogatives: I just happen to disagree. I don’t think I’m complicated so much as…layered, multifaceted, eclectic, whatever.

The Difference Between Worth and Value

As those who follow me on Twitter know, I went through a situation (or two) leaving me thinking a lot about these two terms. Looking the two up on The Free Dictionary, I saw that each term has a definition that I would have applied to the other. Value is more internal, while worth is more external (I thought it was the other way around). So when people say “know your worth”, they’re speaking somewhat inaccurately according to the source named above.

I’ve been left to wonder about my worth - please believe value is never in question - thanks to situations like the ones alluded to above and those similar in nature that have preceded it. Just to give an overview of what happened a couple weeks ago: this girl and I were somewhat in the talking phase and Thursday (11/3) she told me she was talking to and starting to fall for another guy. Friday I went out with another girl. Saturday I went out with the other girl again. Sunday I texted the other girl. Have yet to hear back from the other girl. The first girl talked to me (as in ‘initiated conversation’) Monday, and we ended up agreeing to have lunch in Orlando next weekend. Tuesday I thought more about it and decided to not go to lunch (she's still into the other guy). Wednesday she passed it off and basically said "whatever". Anyway, back to this value/worth thing.

See, value is determined by me - and I believe I’m pretty valuable. No, I’m not going to talk about resume-type things. It’s not about that. I just happen to think that the total being of me is valuable. I think I have a lot of good qualities, so on and so forth.

Worth? Now that’s a completely different story. Worth, in this dating/relationship sense, is determined by the women I’ve encountered (for the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to limit the time frame to 2011). Given that framing, let’s look at the evidence. One girl planned a date and never showed (thankfully, I was smart enough not to show either). One girl changed her number and didn’t tell me. One girl said she didn’t have a phone, gave me her e-mail address, and then never responded. You’ve read about the last two above.

Allow me to feel pretty close to worthless…but still with a lot of value.

I think people get the two confused - if not by thinking that each is the other like I did, then by thinking that they’re the same. For instance, if I tell one of my female friends I’m worthless (or something to that extent) I usually have to clarify and say that I’m not talking about my opinion of me. My opinion of me is fine: I just don’t get why it’s so different than everyone else’s.

Had a conversation the other day in which I said that women often/usually pass over the good men (of which I swear there are more of than most women care to admit) for the flashy types. I then cycled through my male friends and realized that nearly all of my more flashy friends are in relationships. The one guy who’s probably less flashy than me? Single as I am. The flashiest of friends have never been without women chasing them, and the only question was whether they allowed themselves to be caught. I’m not sure what that says. Maybe flashing value correlates to - or is - worth.

If so, then I guess I’ll have to remain worthless. As value is defined internally, I’ll say that most - if not all - of my value comes from being me. Whatever I am, being that is essentially my value. No, I’m not Mister Look-At-Me. I’m not going to walk around with a T-shirt that says “You should date me because…” on the front and a list of reasons on the back. Love it or leave it, take it or hate it: doesn’t matter to me. It may make me worthless, but I guarantee I’ll still be valuable.

Occupy The Voting Booth

I’m sure everyone’s heard of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ by now. One year from now, there will be another movement of occupation, and it will take place all over the country. Of course, I’m talking about ‘Occupy the Voting Booth’. The presidential election - along with many others that will have a more direct bearing on Americans’ lives - is exactly one year from today.

Why Men Should Be Minimalists

I’ve seen the general subject of what an effort split in a dating/relationship situation should be discussed before. You can imagine how the discussion usually goes. Women say men should do more, men say it should be more equal. In case anyone’s wondering, I think the man should do slightly more (maybe 60/40).

That said, I think men would be wise to try a different strategy: if not in general, then definitely in certain situations. Women are always taught not to cast their pearls before swine. Well, neither should we. We should be minimalists when it comes to dating (minimalist behavior being defined as “not doing everything we can, but doing everything that is necessary”) for a few reasons. Before the women get all upset, minimalism will help women out too.

Why The Dislike Button Works

 Just got finished…well, not really: I read the article and typed this (two)Thursday morning(s ago)…reading an article about President Obama’s fundraising efforts. He raised $70 million in the third quarter: more than anyone else (obviously), but not on par with previous efforts. At the same time, someone from his camp said that the funding - and the fact that it came from a million donors - is proof that the president’s supporters have his back.

As Lee Corso would say, not so fast.