When you're growing up as a sports fan, you can't wait to go to games. One of my goals in my youth was to become a Detroit Tigers season ticket holder.
I no longer watch baseball, nor do I attend sporting events of any size with any sort of regularity. The actual experience of attending a sporting event has lost it's appeal, for a number of reasons.
This is a complex issue, so let's walk down a couple of side roads to unpack the issue.
Externalizing the Risks
MLB, the NFL, and the CFL (with the next TSN contract) have largely externalized the risk of not attracting a significant audience. They've done this by finding broadcast partners who are willing to spend enough money for the rights to broadcast their games that the individual franchises, as well as the league, generate enough operating revenue to cover expenses on an annual basis before a game is even played. You'd have to be an idiot owner, live in an exceptionally weak sports market or have a substantial debt service on either your stadium or your team in order not to make a profit on the franchise. Which explains why the only two NFL franchises that are consistent money losers are the Detroit Lions and the Miami Dolphins.
The risk, then of an audience that is too small to generate the same amount of revenue transfers from the member clubs, who would have to attract enough gate revenue to turn a profit, to television networks, who have to sell enough advertising and carrier fees from cable and satellite operators to cover rights fees and production costs.
This gets us to the starting point that, because these leagues have externalized their risks, they can therefore focus, to whatever extent they do or don't choose, on the gravy which, specifically, is getting your butt in the seat. But understand that, for these leagues, getting your butt in the seat is no longer the priority, and will always take a backseat to ensuring the television product continues to generate money for them.
The Statistics
It's worth noting that attendance at MLB and NFL events has declined slowly but consistently since at least 2007. There are a multitude of reasons for this, as clubs, seeing their gravy money start to dissipate, try desperately to hold on to their audience. The NFL, in particular has tried a number of technological innovations, including the lending of televisions to people attending games and the boosting of cell service, to hold fans attention in-stadium. The Jaguars have gone so far as to broadcast NFL Red Zone during games in order to keep their fans entertained.
Personally
For a multitude of reasons, I have little interest in attending NFL games. I live in an NFL market where I have no interest in the home team. I do make enough money where purchasing tickets doesn't constitute an economic hardship. It helps that I have no children, so I'm excluded from the "family of four" argument, personally, though it is absolutely a factor.
With that out of the way, let me list some of the reasons why the NFL game experience is an active disincentive for me to attend a game.
Parking The logistics of getting 70 thousand people in and out of one place in anything resembling a timely manner are nearly impossible. If you're driving to a game, pretty much your only choice in Dallas, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Buffalo or Detroit, not only is parking a significant challenge, but getting out after a game in anything resembling a timely manner is a challenge as well. Your 3.5 hour game is really a close to seven hour ordeal by the time transportation logistics are factored in in some markets.
Now, teams have taken steps to mitigate this. Buffalo and Tennessee, to cite two examples, have off site shuttle buses (which I highly recommend). Cleveland and Houston have light rail infrastructure to their stadiums. (Though Cleveland's Blue Line is not well run on game days overall).
That said, the logistics of getting to and from a game, as opposed to watching the game on television with the zero minute commute, are a disincentive.
Technological Limitations Ever try to use a smartphone at a sporting event? I wish you luck. Whether it's Sprint or Verizon, MLB or NFL, cell service is essentially impossible during the game. This makes it difficult to track other things that are going on during your game, either business or personal, and that disconnection is simply not an option for people in this day and age.
Vending Certainly, club vendors need to generate sufficient revenue to cover the cost of their contracts with the clubs. That said, the cost of food at a game is excessive and serves as a disincentive in comparison to sitting at home and watching the game on a High Definition television.
Red Zone Or, better yet, I can just sit at home and watch the best parts of every NFL game in real time. Why in the world would I watch the Browns/ Dolphins match up when I could watch Red Zone?
Team Ticket Policies I can only speak for dealing with the Browns, so I'll use them as an example of 'the same thing happens every year.'
The Browns only sell Club Seats (well, every seat, really) in a season ticket package. As Club Seats go, they aren't unreasonably priced. However, I'm not a Browns fan, so I have no interest in a season ticket package.
But, you could interest me, perhaps, in a half season package. I'll even spring for an exhibition game.
So I e-mail the Browns prior to the start of the season to inquire if this type of package is available. They say "no" and attempt to sell me a full season package, which, because I'm not a Browns fan, I refuse.
Invariably, the Browns will suck. With three home games remaining, I will get an e-mail from the Browns ticket office offering to sell me individual Club Level seats to each of their remaining home games. Inventory that's already lost, because they didn't have buyers to begin with, that remains unsold because the on the field product is crap.
Compounding matters, in the 1990s, people were stupid enough to buy into the idea of a Personal Seat License. This is the insane idea that you will pay for the privilege of being able to pay for tickets. And people do this. Seriously. And those teams that foisted this scam on people in the 1990s continue to do so, and continue to expect them to pay, today. And further, they expect potential new season ticket holders to participate in the same scam, when there are more than enough after market outlets selling tickets at or below face value that those people who might otherwise make the investment can simple find situational buyers elsewhere.
Fans Finally, let's talk about fans. It only takes one drunk asshole to ruin an entire section, and almost every large scale sporting event has one in every section. And I guess this makes me a grumpy old man, but I just don't have the patience to deal with it any more. My spouse is a visiting team fan in nearly every stadium we travel to, and even when the team she roots for wins, which is almost always, fortunately, the amount of verbal abuse she has to endure before, during and after the game in most places (Buffalo being a notable exception) isn't worth the cost of the ticket to the event.
And you can toss all of the mock bravado responses out that you want, but the fact remains that in any other business in which one is asked to fork over money, enduring harassment during the experience would warrant a refund. Yet, for some reason, we find this type of behavior culturally acceptable, even expected, at sporting events.
And I think, more than almost anything I've mentioned above, it might be dealing with other fans, a small but not insignificant percentage of which are liquored up assholes, is the tipping point that is driving away people from attending sporting events in person. This, specifically, is an NFL problem, a problem about which the league does, or really can do, little. You can't give everyone walking into the stadium a breathalyzer and an asshole personality test. You can create "family sections", but you can't make alcohol sales so stringent that they choke out the stadium vendor's ability to make a profit.
And it's one to which little attention is paid. Stadium security presence is essentially treated as a "text us if you see anyone out of line" type of problem which means that, in most cases, it isn't addressed at all. Tailgating is encouraged. And there's nothing wrong with that except it fosters a very specific subculture of binge drinking reflected best by guys like the Washington Redskins Dead Tree Crew.
In the meantime, attendance will continue to decline, as technology improves the home experience and sports fan interests continue to diversify. What does the future hold? More of the same as fans drip, drip, drip away.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Monday, July 15, 2013
On the Nature of Work, Part 2
Let's imagine for a second, you've started a business. It is your life's pursuit. You want to provide a service, or build a product that provides a service.
Now let's imagine you succeed.
Before we continue, it's important to identify what success means. Because defining and understanding that idea of success is what leads us here today.
I mentioned last time that, to some people, the journey is the destination. You love widgets. Your whole life is dedicated to building a better widget. You're a pretty good widget maker. You consistently make a modest, growing profit in the widget building business.
When you started Widgets, Inc, you were a single person in your mid/late 20s. You wake up one morning 10 or 15 years later. There's a bit of gray in the hair. You have a spouse and a kid or two. You have an upper middle/lower upper class lifestyle. You manage the relationships with your customers, resellers and suppliers well. You understand the market, and your place in it. Sounds great, right?
Well, here's the problem. The widget industry never sits still. Your competition isn't focused just on building a cheaper widget, they're focused on building bigger widgets that do more things. Other competitors that once built widgets have been acquired, either by MegaWidget Inc or by a company that wants to make cogs and widgets and sell them in a package.
What do you do?
That's the vexing question for hundreds or thousands of what are called "lifestyle businesses" every day. Some people don't want to be huge, they just want to carve out their niche, earn a nice living and either cash out or kick the can down the road to their kids, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
There are problems with that. No industry ever stands still. Competitors spring up that build better mousetraps, sales models change, entire industries are rendered obsolete by technological advancements. It's part of the bullshit phrase "creative destruction" (which isn't very creative when you're town is the one being destroyed).
Certainly, you can challenge yourself to build a model that allows you to "stay medium". It's not an easy path, but a lot of companies manage it for awhile. If they make it, they tend to sell out.
Now, let's assume you want to be a player. Let's say you want to risk everything you have in an effort to go for the brass ring. Let's say you too want to make both widgets and cogs. How do you do it? And, more importantly, why do so many companies fail trying to be something they aren't?
There are a lot of reasons for this, but most of them boil down to the fact that people who own what are ostensibly "lifestyle businesses" lack the capacity to fully understand and execute what it takes to transform themselves into something they aren't. Owners look at the management team that got them to where they are and assume that these are the people that can take them to where they want to be.
Alternately, they may seek to augment the existing management team with talent from external companies. This fails more often than it succeeds. Cultures clash, language barriers aren't overcome, new guard vs. old guard fissures develop, everyone becomes territorial, new personnel exposes the shortcomings of existing personnel, no one manages egos effectively and, to some degree, the entire apparatus crashes and burns. Expansion projects collapse, often taking the entire company with them.
One of the takeaways I've learned is this. Before you take a position from an organization that claims it wants to transform itself, ask the interviewer how many senior managers have been let go as a part of the transition. If the answer is "none, we're looking to augment that talent with an infusion from the outside", my suggestion to you is to pass on the position, because 8.5 times out of 10, that transition will fail.
Small companies get medium by adding the right talent. But medium companies get large by turning over the right positions, installing people with proper experience in their place, and doing so without hesitation. And if you, Mr. or Ms. Lifestyle Business Owner, don't have the stomach to do that, do your best to stay medium and carve out your niche. There's no shame in it.
Friday, July 5, 2013
On the Nature of Work, Pt. 1
If there had been much to say in the intervening four months since the last post, I suppose I would have said it, but here we are.
I like to think that I'm good at what I do for a living. It's a niche living in a small but essential industry surrounding software of the B2B variety. But for the past few years, the work has been enjoyable, but the lack of progress has not, and it's that lack of progress that has been brought into focus lately and forced me to confront some things about the nature of work, and myself.
People look upon life in many ways. From my particular perspective, life is more or less a struggle people engage in to reach points in their life where they find happiness and consider themselves a success. Invariably, they focus on particular avenues in which success seems to them to be the most likely. For most people, this means parenthood. People want to have kids, to some extent, because they think they can be good parents, or better than their parents, at least, and produce a positive result of which they can be proud, the crowning achievement of their life's work. Either parenthood or the startup of your own business come with the largest internal locus of control opportunities, and those are the ones people seize most often.
Some of us either have no opportunity or desire to be parents. Or, we try and be parents, recognize we aren't very good at it and just put that on auto pilot, or disappear altogether, and focus on something else. Sometimes, it's a hobby. Sometimes, it's a spouse, but, most often, it's work.
There are social scientists and labor analysts that will tell you that this desire to be good at what we do, rather than seeing work as a means to an end, will fade as workforces become more contingent and Millenials become a larger portion of the labor market. I'm not so sure. I think businesses want that to happen so they can artificially depress wages.
But I digress.
One of the realizations that I've had recently is that I've tied a great deal of identity into my work. In my mid 20s I fell backward into the industry I am in now, working in an environment that was go-go (all late 90s tech environments were go-go). As that particular business, headed by a CEO that couldn't match his belt with his shoes, always a bad sign, was collapsing, I had the good fortune to land on my feet with the predominant player in this particular industry.
After a few years, I became very good at what I did. After a few more years, I was still really good at what I did. After even more years, I was still really good at what I did. I was told it, my results showed it, consistently. My peers respected me. My contemporaries requested me.
But one day, you wake up and realize that all the good work you're doing isn't getting you anywhere within the confines of your employer. That, ultimately, all your hard work and dedication is going to get you is a paycheck. A nice paycheck, but a paycheck. Where is there to go, one must ask, once you top out the career path established for you?
To someone who has invested their identity in their hobbies, their relationships or other external pursuits, this doesn't really matter. The truth is, you just suck it up and focus on other things that fulfill your identity and bring you joy in life. Work becomes a means to an end.
There comes a point, then, where you have to acknowledge that the opportunities you are looking for to grow professionally are simply not going to come from where you are, and make a change. So, I did.
The problem with making a change, however, is not simply a matter of "is the grass greener on the other side." There is no "other side". There are many sides. Some sides are built on shakier ground than others. For a time, the next yard had grass that was very green. There was the fulfillment of being listened to and the latitude to create an organization in the way I had always asked for. Unfortunately, it was built on top of the sinkhole of poor managerial foundation. Did I get recognized for the skill set I brought to this employer? Absolutely. Did I accomplish great things? You bet. Did what I built last? Nope.
The next two stops have proven no better. They have all been filled with nice people. Well intended. Most of whom, with some notable exceptions, were making the best of the skill sets they had and the situations they were in. And they looked at my skill set, and my resume, and said "My God, you're brilliant. We have to have you. We have no idea what to do with you, or who we are, or how we're organized, but we must have you." And by and large, I've had opportunities to expand my skill set and be a backseat leader at both. But the limitations of backseat leadership are evident. You don't grow into a front seat leader when you walk in the door a backseat leader and, over time, other members of the organization grow to resent your attempts at backseat leadership whether they're valid or not. (Part of backseat leadership involves telling front seat leaders that they suck, and they don't appreciate it.)
One of the misnomers that we are taught when we are young is that our society functions, particularly professionally, as a meritocracy. We learn in the classroom, if we're paying attention, that this isn't even close to true. Every classroom has a teacher's pet that gets preferential treatment. Yet we still think that, to some extent, we advance in life based on our merits. That hard, competent work results in a reward beyond a more than adequate paycheck and whatever self satisfaction we're supposed to receive as a job well done.
And even if we know the meritocratic idea isn't really true at the core, we nonetheless think in our own minds that we can beat the system and be the beneficiary of what little meritocratic decency remains in the corporate world.
But the truth, when it hits you, and it will hit you, is quite harsh. Hard work, dedication and competency do matter. Drive matters. Desire matters. But what seems to matter most of all is being in the right place at the right time, and getting the attention of not just the right person, but the right person who, in turn, has the right skill set and the right set of people around him or her to make the business around you thrive.
I happened across the LinkedIn profile of someone with a similar number of years of experience in the field to me. For four years, he had the same job as I did. For the next three years, he managed people one level above me. For two years, he was Vice President, and for two years, he has been the President of the Company. His educational background was the same, essentially, as mine. It is a smaller vendor in the same space within which I operate. Is he smarter and more talented than I am? Probably not. Does he have different strengths and weaknesses than I do? Most likely. Some of those are inherit, some are addressed through opportunity. These are things I see when I examine my contemporaries and peers in the managerial structure at my current position as well.
This is not a woe-is-me tale. I'm not writing to you to tell you I've been screwed over by anyone, because I haven't. There are very few people I've worked with professionally that I dislike. On the whole, I don't have many regrets. I'm still very good at what I do and generally well respected. The core of my work is still kind of fun. I get along with a great set of equal level co-workers. My direct report boss is great. My workplace is stable.
I'd love to hit you with a well cemented conclusion. But I don't really have one. Other than to suggest that many of us are confronted with the idea of what getting somewhere in business really means. For every person that rises to by President of the Company, there are two, or three, or four who are equally talented, either internally or externally, that don't get the job. And where do they go? What do they do? How do they adjust to the realization that, in the eyes of someone else, they aren't good enough to go beyond where they are right now? No matter how good they are at what it is they're doing.
Are we best suited simply doing what we are best at, getting even better at it and serving out our days being the best we can be at something? For some of us, should we just be happy that the journey is the destination, rather than constantly striving for more? Is it just time to face that morning, look around, say to ourselves "this is all there is," and make the best of it?
On July 12th, the movie 20 Feet From Stardom will hit theaters. It is a documentary about life as a backup singer. Perhaps some answers are there.
******
There's a flip side to this discussion, and it's on organizational inertia. It's worth examining, and we'll do so. In fewer than four months from now. I promise.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
The State of Sport
When you sit back and assess who in professional sports you choose to root for, it's worth it to take note of how league dynamics do or don't influence the degree in which you choose to participate as a fan.
When I take stock of my own primary rooting interests, I find that I gravitate toward sports that are not amongst the three major US sports. I enjoy the NFL comprehensively as a product, but not as a fan. When you grow up in the Detroit area, geography and a sustained period of winning turn you into a Red Wings fan, but I avoid MLB and the NBA, unless the Pistons are good.
But as I look back over the previous 40 or so years, it's interesting to me to see how the nature of relationship between fan and sport has evolved (or devolved).
The cynic in me will use Major League Baseball as a prime example of this. Once upon a time, Major League Baseball teams depended upon gate revenues and local television and radio contracts for the bulk of their revenues. Under this system, these teams had to make a concerted effort to connect with their local communities in order to drum up business. Certainly, an imbalance of power existed, but that largely waned as the Yankees made a series of bad personnel decisions in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. MLB always had an imbalance of revenue toward larger markets (though I personally love the what if exercise of Vernon Stouffer selling the Indians to George Steinbrenner) but superior scouting and a solid organization could sustainably impact that imbalance.
As television contract values skyrocketed, gate revenue essentially began to take a backseat to television revenue, so much so that Gate Revenue is essentially ancillary to teams like the Marlins, Yankees, Dodgers and Pirates. This allows these teams to treat their fans with utter disregard. Correspondingly, the absence of a quality product (or a reasonable price of entry to a live event) allows the fanbase to treat the teams with utter disregard.
If the fans are thousandaires, the owners are multi-multi millionaires, and the television networks are multi-billionaires, what we have is a system where multi-multi millionaires are making their money at the teat of multi-billionaires who in turn made their money by coming up with a better mousetrap for sucking money out of the wallets of the thousandaires. It's cleaner and easier that way.
But the thousandaires, you and me, still hold sway. And there is a lot of graveyard whistling that takes place across MLB and the NBA. The MLB has it's fair share of house thousandaires, particularly in the major media markets. But there are some harsh realities that they hide from you. The first is that the NFL Pro Bowl, widely regard as a joke, outdrew Game 1 of the 2012 World Series. Second, the MLB is aging in place. Fox may crow about how well the World Series does 12+, but the 18-49 numbers regularly lose to standard network programming.
I gave myself a team in each league growing up, and one of those teams was the Montreal Expos. Say what you will about the fans in Montreal, but they did what every sports fan in every city should do, and that was stop supporting a shitty product. Did it cost them their team? Sure. But the lesson there, as it is in Pittsburgh, is clear. Put a competitive product on the field, and people will fork over the money. Don't, and they won't. The thousandaires of Montreal won a Pyrrhic victory.
The NBA is a model of the unsustainability of this financial model. Lost in the undercurrent of the Jordan 90s was the fact that Michael Jordan only played for one team. The NBA and the 1990s are a great example of how the face of sports fandom in this country transformed itself. The grip that the big four had on the sports fan was pried loose with a wide variety of other pursuits most notably the X Games. Thousandaires stopped buying the hype of what the NBA was selling no matter how high they turned that hype machine up.
The NBA continues to hype it's stars, while teams can't give tickets away.
David Stern is the consummate graveyard whistler, but even he had a difficult time putting a positive face on having to repossess the New Orleans Hornets (which should have been moved to Oklahoma City post Katrina), as his protege, Gary Bettman tries continually to put a positive spin on the league's farcical presence in Phoenix.
The NHL has tried, rather clumsily in the wake of last offseason's ridiculous free agency, to put a system in place that provides some sort of economic parity back into the economics of the game. But the damage in most of the southern markets and Columbus may not prove to be sustainable.
Only the NFL seems to be willing and able to effectively balance the relationship between a product that is perceived to be competitive enough to warrant the direct investment of the thousandaires while still being attractive enough to the multi-billionaires that pay the bulk of the bills. Even still, as in stadium NFL attendance has fallen since peaking in 2007, this has proven to be problematic.
Having endured all of that, you'd probably like me to get to a point. And it's this. As I was watching tonight's Tim Horton's Brier Curling Championship, it occurs to me that the bulk of my sports time is spent actively pursuing those sports that are built on a smaller economic model. Curling. Cricket. Canadian Football. Minor League Baseball. And I think that that is very much the future of our relationship with sports. That we, as sports fans, are actively rejecting the hollowed out model of sports fandom the multi billionaires try to cram down our throats to make a buck. It explains, on some level NASCAR's popularity as well (though it too has paid the price of trying to cram manufactured stars down the fans throats).We connect most personally with those sports that seem the most human to us, or offer us the most consistently competitive product. And these sports succeed where the NBA and MLB fail. And they will pay the price for it, eventually.
When I take stock of my own primary rooting interests, I find that I gravitate toward sports that are not amongst the three major US sports. I enjoy the NFL comprehensively as a product, but not as a fan. When you grow up in the Detroit area, geography and a sustained period of winning turn you into a Red Wings fan, but I avoid MLB and the NBA, unless the Pistons are good.
But as I look back over the previous 40 or so years, it's interesting to me to see how the nature of relationship between fan and sport has evolved (or devolved).
The cynic in me will use Major League Baseball as a prime example of this. Once upon a time, Major League Baseball teams depended upon gate revenues and local television and radio contracts for the bulk of their revenues. Under this system, these teams had to make a concerted effort to connect with their local communities in order to drum up business. Certainly, an imbalance of power existed, but that largely waned as the Yankees made a series of bad personnel decisions in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. MLB always had an imbalance of revenue toward larger markets (though I personally love the what if exercise of Vernon Stouffer selling the Indians to George Steinbrenner) but superior scouting and a solid organization could sustainably impact that imbalance.
As television contract values skyrocketed, gate revenue essentially began to take a backseat to television revenue, so much so that Gate Revenue is essentially ancillary to teams like the Marlins, Yankees, Dodgers and Pirates. This allows these teams to treat their fans with utter disregard. Correspondingly, the absence of a quality product (or a reasonable price of entry to a live event) allows the fanbase to treat the teams with utter disregard.
If the fans are thousandaires, the owners are multi-multi millionaires, and the television networks are multi-billionaires, what we have is a system where multi-multi millionaires are making their money at the teat of multi-billionaires who in turn made their money by coming up with a better mousetrap for sucking money out of the wallets of the thousandaires. It's cleaner and easier that way.
But the thousandaires, you and me, still hold sway. And there is a lot of graveyard whistling that takes place across MLB and the NBA. The MLB has it's fair share of house thousandaires, particularly in the major media markets. But there are some harsh realities that they hide from you. The first is that the NFL Pro Bowl, widely regard as a joke, outdrew Game 1 of the 2012 World Series. Second, the MLB is aging in place. Fox may crow about how well the World Series does 12+, but the 18-49 numbers regularly lose to standard network programming.
I gave myself a team in each league growing up, and one of those teams was the Montreal Expos. Say what you will about the fans in Montreal, but they did what every sports fan in every city should do, and that was stop supporting a shitty product. Did it cost them their team? Sure. But the lesson there, as it is in Pittsburgh, is clear. Put a competitive product on the field, and people will fork over the money. Don't, and they won't. The thousandaires of Montreal won a Pyrrhic victory.
The NBA is a model of the unsustainability of this financial model. Lost in the undercurrent of the Jordan 90s was the fact that Michael Jordan only played for one team. The NBA and the 1990s are a great example of how the face of sports fandom in this country transformed itself. The grip that the big four had on the sports fan was pried loose with a wide variety of other pursuits most notably the X Games. Thousandaires stopped buying the hype of what the NBA was selling no matter how high they turned that hype machine up.
The NBA continues to hype it's stars, while teams can't give tickets away.
David Stern is the consummate graveyard whistler, but even he had a difficult time putting a positive face on having to repossess the New Orleans Hornets (which should have been moved to Oklahoma City post Katrina), as his protege, Gary Bettman tries continually to put a positive spin on the league's farcical presence in Phoenix.
The NHL has tried, rather clumsily in the wake of last offseason's ridiculous free agency, to put a system in place that provides some sort of economic parity back into the economics of the game. But the damage in most of the southern markets and Columbus may not prove to be sustainable.
Only the NFL seems to be willing and able to effectively balance the relationship between a product that is perceived to be competitive enough to warrant the direct investment of the thousandaires while still being attractive enough to the multi-billionaires that pay the bulk of the bills. Even still, as in stadium NFL attendance has fallen since peaking in 2007, this has proven to be problematic.
Having endured all of that, you'd probably like me to get to a point. And it's this. As I was watching tonight's Tim Horton's Brier Curling Championship, it occurs to me that the bulk of my sports time is spent actively pursuing those sports that are built on a smaller economic model. Curling. Cricket. Canadian Football. Minor League Baseball. And I think that that is very much the future of our relationship with sports. That we, as sports fans, are actively rejecting the hollowed out model of sports fandom the multi billionaires try to cram down our throats to make a buck. It explains, on some level NASCAR's popularity as well (though it too has paid the price of trying to cram manufactured stars down the fans throats).We connect most personally with those sports that seem the most human to us, or offer us the most consistently competitive product. And these sports succeed where the NBA and MLB fail. And they will pay the price for it, eventually.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
The Long Offseason of Our Idealess Content
Starbucks Update
It has been an abnormally good run of Starbucks visits as of late. Although, full credit to the Starbucks at the Target in Steelyard Plaza in Cleveland, OH; They managed to run out of lids for both Medium and Large sized lids on a Friday. That's some quality supply management they have going on there.
The Argos and Skydome
When it first opened, the Skydome was one of North America's premier stadium venues. One of the last multi-purpose arenas built (and I would encourage you to read this on why that wasn't and isn't a bad thing), it's secondary goal was to serve as the destination that would help Torontonians bridge the gap between the downtown core and the waterfront.
That process took another 15 years, but condominium developments, and parkland gradually replaced the gravel tailgating lots and driving ranges that used to permeate the area. At this point, the neighborhood around Skydome actually looks like a pretty neat place to live.
But while it's cool to watch the roof open and close, which it used to do during Argos games, the Dome itself never turned out to be the destination it was intended to be. Certainly the CN Tower is still a tourism magnet, but the McDonalds on the lower concourse staggered and died, and the Hard Rock Cafe that had served as a restaurant anchor closed in 2011.
Apparently, the solution to the problems of the Skydome, the bad sightlines, the lack of attendance, the lack of neighborhood foot traffic and the lack of leasable commercial space,is grass.
No, seriously. Kick the Argos out, put a grass field in, and all of the other problems with the stadium itself will be solved.
Baseball fans are delusional on their best day. Their sport is a distant second to professional football in popularity in the US, second in Canada to hockey and barely out draws professional football on television, and yet Blue Jays fans will assert, with a straight face, that what keeps fans away from Skydome (we don't do corporate name changes here), is the lack of a grass field. And, as one commenter suggests, seats that should be colored green and not blue. As if the Argos are holding the Blue Jays back, for some reason.
Let's set aside the idea that the Skydome has other uses, including convention/trade (it serves as the overflow floor space for the Toronto Auto Show) and concerts. The suggestion is that the Argos would be too tough on a natural grass surface, but those other items wouldn't, is laughable. And oh, by the way, the NFL can still come up and play games on this grass surface whenever they would like. It's just the CFL team that has to go.
The arrogance of this type of thinking is akin to the arrogance of the NFL fanboys, now mostly aging baby boomers, that can't understand why the NFL doesn't come running. As any woman will tell you, you aren't likely to snag a husband when you put out on the first date. Plus, the Skydome is not an NFL caliber facility. Blue Jay fans, convinced that fans would come running if only there was a natural grass surface, and the Argos stand in the way of that, are no different than these fanboys, convinced that the NFL would come running if only those pesky Argos would go away.
It's nonsense, of course. there are a myriad of reasons why the NFL is in no hurry to go into Toronto. And Toronto demonstrably proves it doesn't give two shits about the Argos (or any other sports franchise other than the Leafs) unless they're winners. That never changes, and its never going to, regardless of the playing surface of the field.
******
Having said all of that, if there was a suitable alternate facility, at least as good as Molson Stadium in Montreal (which is a beautiful place to see a football game as well as get a contact buzz from the crowd) in the GTA, I'm all for the Argos moving. The Argos can now consistently draw a crowd size about on par with Montreal, yet the Skydome looks mostly empty, whereas Molson looks and feels like an event.
The issues, as always, are logistical with either the Varsity site (which would need to be expanded) or the York site, which needs to be built and would need to incorporate club and suite seats for revenue generation.
Either way, the Argos, though they are durable, and have improved their presence in the Toronto marketplace considerably since they were rendered afterthought status in the post Doug Flutie years, will have to find a home, take their shots from the arrogance of Blue Jays fans who will have plenty of room to spread out in the mostly empty stands and talk hockey as they admire the grass.
It has been an abnormally good run of Starbucks visits as of late. Although, full credit to the Starbucks at the Target in Steelyard Plaza in Cleveland, OH; They managed to run out of lids for both Medium and Large sized lids on a Friday. That's some quality supply management they have going on there.
The Argos and Skydome
When it first opened, the Skydome was one of North America's premier stadium venues. One of the last multi-purpose arenas built (and I would encourage you to read this on why that wasn't and isn't a bad thing), it's secondary goal was to serve as the destination that would help Torontonians bridge the gap between the downtown core and the waterfront.
That process took another 15 years, but condominium developments, and parkland gradually replaced the gravel tailgating lots and driving ranges that used to permeate the area. At this point, the neighborhood around Skydome actually looks like a pretty neat place to live.
But while it's cool to watch the roof open and close, which it used to do during Argos games, the Dome itself never turned out to be the destination it was intended to be. Certainly the CN Tower is still a tourism magnet, but the McDonalds on the lower concourse staggered and died, and the Hard Rock Cafe that had served as a restaurant anchor closed in 2011.
Apparently, the solution to the problems of the Skydome, the bad sightlines, the lack of attendance, the lack of neighborhood foot traffic and the lack of leasable commercial space,is grass.
No, seriously. Kick the Argos out, put a grass field in, and all of the other problems with the stadium itself will be solved.
Baseball fans are delusional on their best day. Their sport is a distant second to professional football in popularity in the US, second in Canada to hockey and barely out draws professional football on television, and yet Blue Jays fans will assert, with a straight face, that what keeps fans away from Skydome (we don't do corporate name changes here), is the lack of a grass field. And, as one commenter suggests, seats that should be colored green and not blue. As if the Argos are holding the Blue Jays back, for some reason.
Let's set aside the idea that the Skydome has other uses, including convention/trade (it serves as the overflow floor space for the Toronto Auto Show) and concerts. The suggestion is that the Argos would be too tough on a natural grass surface, but those other items wouldn't, is laughable. And oh, by the way, the NFL can still come up and play games on this grass surface whenever they would like. It's just the CFL team that has to go.
The arrogance of this type of thinking is akin to the arrogance of the NFL fanboys, now mostly aging baby boomers, that can't understand why the NFL doesn't come running. As any woman will tell you, you aren't likely to snag a husband when you put out on the first date. Plus, the Skydome is not an NFL caliber facility. Blue Jay fans, convinced that fans would come running if only there was a natural grass surface, and the Argos stand in the way of that, are no different than these fanboys, convinced that the NFL would come running if only those pesky Argos would go away.
It's nonsense, of course. there are a myriad of reasons why the NFL is in no hurry to go into Toronto. And Toronto demonstrably proves it doesn't give two shits about the Argos (or any other sports franchise other than the Leafs) unless they're winners. That never changes, and its never going to, regardless of the playing surface of the field.
******
Having said all of that, if there was a suitable alternate facility, at least as good as Molson Stadium in Montreal (which is a beautiful place to see a football game as well as get a contact buzz from the crowd) in the GTA, I'm all for the Argos moving. The Argos can now consistently draw a crowd size about on par with Montreal, yet the Skydome looks mostly empty, whereas Molson looks and feels like an event.
The issues, as always, are logistical with either the Varsity site (which would need to be expanded) or the York site, which needs to be built and would need to incorporate club and suite seats for revenue generation.
Either way, the Argos, though they are durable, and have improved their presence in the Toronto marketplace considerably since they were rendered afterthought status in the post Doug Flutie years, will have to find a home, take their shots from the arrogance of Blue Jays fans who will have plenty of room to spread out in the mostly empty stands and talk hockey as they admire the grass.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Some Odds and Ends for the Week That Was
It's been an unusually perfect run of Starbucks competence recently. I'd have to do the math, but I think the good to incompetent visit ratio is about 15:2.
Some other odds and ends from the week, leading to a Super Bowl prediction.
Organics/Vegan Shopping
Giant Eagle charges different prices for different NuGo protein bars. The dark chocolate and mint chocolate chip bars are 4/$5, the rest are 5/$5. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to this that anyone could identify, unless those two types of protein bars are vegan friendly and the remainder are not.
Other Random Items
The Columbia Journalism Review has gone live with an online app. This, along with The Walrus and The Atlantic, are the three magazines to which I subscribe, and it officially brings to a close the era of the printed magazine in my life. Of course, it means I'll now have to haul my iPad into the washroom with me, so not all progress is progress.
But it begs the question, when was the last time you bought a CD? And if you're still buying them, when will you stop?
Along the same lines, I had to buy a new DVD/surround sound player for the first time in six years. Not only is it an actual DVD player, but it comes with integrated Vudu and Netflix access. With that in mind, and coupled with movie access on portable devices, cable/satellite On Demand and Redbox, it's not hard to understand why Blockbuster and it's ilk are now virtually extinct. (Though I think that Family Video fills a nice niche and will hold on awhile longer).
Consider that, just a decade ago, you subscribed to a paper newspaper (already then on borrowed time), bought paper books, bought hard CDs and rented movies on a physical medium from a bricks and mortar store. All four of those activites have been replaced by one or more devices with network access.
*****
I personally find this weekend's Super Bowl strangely uninspiring, and I attribute that to my general lack of enthusiasm about the Baltimore Ravens. The offense is a deep pass, all or nothing game and Joe Flacco has all the charisma of Eli Manning painting a room beige. Ray Lewis' act is tiresome, the defense is old overall and it's Baltimore. Stop downtown, have some crabs and head down to Washington DC, someplace considerably more interesting where you're marginally less likely to get killed (says the man who works in Detroit for a living).
The 49ers, on the other hand, are a considerably more interesting team. They're well constructed, they run an innovative (for the NFL, at least) offense and are generally well built. Roster management has been phenominal. San Francisco proper is a lovely town (the suburbs are utterly uninspiring aside from Half Moon Bay, which is gorgeous), and well, here's the deal: Baltimore's defense is a bad matchup for San Francisco's offense. They run well, and Vernon Davis should be able to exploit Baltimore's old linebacking corps. San Francisco 31, Baltimore 21.
*****
It's a bare notebook overall for a bare time of year. Some thoughts next week on the Argos situation in Toronto as I get the chance to do some thinking on the first love of my life, the CFL.
Some other odds and ends from the week, leading to a Super Bowl prediction.
Organics/Vegan Shopping
Giant Eagle charges different prices for different NuGo protein bars. The dark chocolate and mint chocolate chip bars are 4/$5, the rest are 5/$5. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to this that anyone could identify, unless those two types of protein bars are vegan friendly and the remainder are not.
Other Random Items
The Columbia Journalism Review has gone live with an online app. This, along with The Walrus and The Atlantic, are the three magazines to which I subscribe, and it officially brings to a close the era of the printed magazine in my life. Of course, it means I'll now have to haul my iPad into the washroom with me, so not all progress is progress.
But it begs the question, when was the last time you bought a CD? And if you're still buying them, when will you stop?
Along the same lines, I had to buy a new DVD/surround sound player for the first time in six years. Not only is it an actual DVD player, but it comes with integrated Vudu and Netflix access. With that in mind, and coupled with movie access on portable devices, cable/satellite On Demand and Redbox, it's not hard to understand why Blockbuster and it's ilk are now virtually extinct. (Though I think that Family Video fills a nice niche and will hold on awhile longer).
Consider that, just a decade ago, you subscribed to a paper newspaper (already then on borrowed time), bought paper books, bought hard CDs and rented movies on a physical medium from a bricks and mortar store. All four of those activites have been replaced by one or more devices with network access.
*****
I personally find this weekend's Super Bowl strangely uninspiring, and I attribute that to my general lack of enthusiasm about the Baltimore Ravens. The offense is a deep pass, all or nothing game and Joe Flacco has all the charisma of Eli Manning painting a room beige. Ray Lewis' act is tiresome, the defense is old overall and it's Baltimore. Stop downtown, have some crabs and head down to Washington DC, someplace considerably more interesting where you're marginally less likely to get killed (says the man who works in Detroit for a living).
The 49ers, on the other hand, are a considerably more interesting team. They're well constructed, they run an innovative (for the NFL, at least) offense and are generally well built. Roster management has been phenominal. San Francisco proper is a lovely town (the suburbs are utterly uninspiring aside from Half Moon Bay, which is gorgeous), and well, here's the deal: Baltimore's defense is a bad matchup for San Francisco's offense. They run well, and Vernon Davis should be able to exploit Baltimore's old linebacking corps. San Francisco 31, Baltimore 21.
*****
It's a bare notebook overall for a bare time of year. Some thoughts next week on the Argos situation in Toronto as I get the chance to do some thinking on the first love of my life, the CFL.
Monday, January 28, 2013
About Children
I don't like children.
I don't mind admitting this. It's nothing personal, I'm sure your children are lovely and that you're doing a wonderful job of raising them to be model citizens who will excel and buck the odds and build a better life than you have.
But I have to be honest. I don't know how people do it. I am not equipped for parenthood. (I'm well equipped to create a child, just not equipped to raise one). There has never been a day in my life where I've woken up and wanted a 50% mini me running around raising all kinds of hell.
And I am absolutely certain that parenthood is one of life's greatest joys, and I disparage no one for choosing to embark upon it, or having it thrust upon them and adjusting to it. I wish you all the best. You are doing what I am not capable of doing, and good for you.
I mention this because I spent part of one of my weekend days in line at a local metropark amusement ride. To celebrate being thin enough to fit on this ride, I embarked on a ride that as 50% something I didn't like (the feeling of falling) with 50% of something I did like (going ridiculously fast).
Needless to say, waiting in line for this ride entailed waiting in line with children of various ages. Though I do have siblings they are much older than me and, eventually, they moved out. So by and large, I grew up alone. I'm alright with that. Always have been.
I was also usually the smartest, or one of the smartest, kids in my class and, on top of that, learned the basic classroom survival skill of helping teach the kids who were the bullies whatever topic we were being taught during that portion of the day. Even as a kid, I was a teacher. Which my teachers actually appreciated. As such, I didn't face really any bullying.
As I think back on my childhood, I do recall occasionally playing war, but it was never close contact war, it was always fake guns/hunting each other across our sprawling public housing complex type war games. Even at that, it was pretty rare. And while, when standing in line, we would occasionally tease each other, it never progressed to the punching stage. (In fact, I had a couple of 5th grade friends who were terrific pickpockets;to this day I keep my wallet in the front pocket of my pants instead of the rear as a result.)
So I was startled, while standing in line for 45 minutes, at the amount of playful violence that took place amongst the groups of preteen boys that surrounded us in line, in a metropark, in one of my metro area's most affluent suburbs. It was something I noticed as well amongst boys at bus stops on my trips to India, but once you notice the sight of younger kids, not even brothers, necessarily but just friends of varying ages, punching, kicking and generally antagonizing each other to physical limits constantly, it's hard to tune it out.
All of this could be attributed to my oversensitivity to these things and my general dislike of children. But I get the perception that children are a magnitude more violent toward each other than they were a generation ago, and that does not bode well for us as a society. It makes me glad I stick to cats. And keep those cats indoors.
That said, the experience reminded me of this:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MF_4EWSuzQY
I don't mind admitting this. It's nothing personal, I'm sure your children are lovely and that you're doing a wonderful job of raising them to be model citizens who will excel and buck the odds and build a better life than you have.
But I have to be honest. I don't know how people do it. I am not equipped for parenthood. (I'm well equipped to create a child, just not equipped to raise one). There has never been a day in my life where I've woken up and wanted a 50% mini me running around raising all kinds of hell.
And I am absolutely certain that parenthood is one of life's greatest joys, and I disparage no one for choosing to embark upon it, or having it thrust upon them and adjusting to it. I wish you all the best. You are doing what I am not capable of doing, and good for you.
I mention this because I spent part of one of my weekend days in line at a local metropark amusement ride. To celebrate being thin enough to fit on this ride, I embarked on a ride that as 50% something I didn't like (the feeling of falling) with 50% of something I did like (going ridiculously fast).
Needless to say, waiting in line for this ride entailed waiting in line with children of various ages. Though I do have siblings they are much older than me and, eventually, they moved out. So by and large, I grew up alone. I'm alright with that. Always have been.
I was also usually the smartest, or one of the smartest, kids in my class and, on top of that, learned the basic classroom survival skill of helping teach the kids who were the bullies whatever topic we were being taught during that portion of the day. Even as a kid, I was a teacher. Which my teachers actually appreciated. As such, I didn't face really any bullying.
As I think back on my childhood, I do recall occasionally playing war, but it was never close contact war, it was always fake guns/hunting each other across our sprawling public housing complex type war games. Even at that, it was pretty rare. And while, when standing in line, we would occasionally tease each other, it never progressed to the punching stage. (In fact, I had a couple of 5th grade friends who were terrific pickpockets;to this day I keep my wallet in the front pocket of my pants instead of the rear as a result.)
So I was startled, while standing in line for 45 minutes, at the amount of playful violence that took place amongst the groups of preteen boys that surrounded us in line, in a metropark, in one of my metro area's most affluent suburbs. It was something I noticed as well amongst boys at bus stops on my trips to India, but once you notice the sight of younger kids, not even brothers, necessarily but just friends of varying ages, punching, kicking and generally antagonizing each other to physical limits constantly, it's hard to tune it out.
All of this could be attributed to my oversensitivity to these things and my general dislike of children. But I get the perception that children are a magnitude more violent toward each other than they were a generation ago, and that does not bode well for us as a society. It makes me glad I stick to cats. And keep those cats indoors.
That said, the experience reminded me of this:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MF_4EWSuzQY
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)