Good article from ARK paper: COMMENTARY : Fans do have power, despite appearances...

[NavyCrimson]

here's the link:

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/story_Sports.php?storyid=51917

COMMENTARY : Fans do have power, despite appearances
BY SCOTT OSTLER SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Posted on Friday, January 2, 2004

It wasn’t so much a resolution as a revolution. The fan woke up and smelled the $4 cup of ballpark coffee and said the hell wit’ it.

Something snapped. He added it all up, the things that don’t show up in the boxscore, and he said, "No mas."

What was the fan rebelling against? "Whattaya got?" he said.

The fan said he was sick of athletes being honored as "warriors" when they were 10,000 miles from the nearest war and the only fighting they did was when the coach fined them for being late.

The fan was fed up with fight judging and figure-skating judging, both so crooked they make Lombard Street look like I-5 west of Bakersfield.

He’d had enough of players whining about grueling road trips that involved customized team planes and presidential suites.

And bobblehead dolls, enough already. The fan had a recurring nightmare of traveling to South Dakota and discovering that Mount Rushmore had been converted to bobbleheads.

He stopped paying $160 for $20 basketball shoes, the price jacked up because the shoe will make you play like Joe Superstar... who could dunk if he had cinder blocks lashed to his feet.

No more, said the fan, would he buy his kid a new football jersey just because the lad’s favorite team had changed its color scheme for the third time this season.

The fan was tired of the food shakedown at ballparks, where your PBJ is confiscated at the turnstile in order to protect the world from terrorism.

He was sick of missing two innings while waiting in line to buy a $7 beer and a $6 mad-cow dog.

He was all done with team mascots whose main comedy shtick was the pelvic thrust. "Vaudeville isn’t dead," the fan said. "The mascots are keeping it on life support."

The fan had had quite enough, thank you, of Dennis Rodman, Pete Rose and Michael Buffer.

The fan shut off the TV sound any time a trained professional announcer said "football" or "I mean" more than six times in one sentence.

The fan wrote his congressman to demand an end to tax breaks for fat cats who buy luxury suites. "Either they’re talking business, in which case they can do that in a booth at Denny’s," wrote the fan, "or they’re not talking business, in which case they’re ripping off the IRS."

He was sick of newer and newer stadiums with smaller and smaller seats. "They pump us up with donuts and nachos and beer, then they cram your expanding fanny into kiddie seats," he said.

The fan was tired of seats that get smaller as you get closer to the rafters. "Poor people have ample rear-ends, too," he said.

He was beaten down by the Olympics. The fan said the five rings seem to stand for drugs, bribes, politics, commercialism and cheating.

The fan was tired of seven assistant coaches on the basketball bench. At every timeout, a corporate board meeting takes place while the players busy themselves checking out the chicks.

He was all done with field goals, with investing an entire Sunday on his favorite team, only to see it all decided by a pasty-faced CPA with Pop Warner League shoulder pads and a two-week contract. "How about a new salary cap?" the fan said. "Put a cap on how much of a fan’s salary you can gouge for tickets and souvenir T-shirts."

He was sick of hockey fights. Grown men slugging it out at the slightest provocation. And that was just in the beer line.

He was deaf from the music and the PA screaming at NBA games. "Did you know," the fan told his son, "that you used to be able to hear the squeak of sneakers and the grunts of the players?" "What?" screamed his son, ducking to avoid a mascot’s pelvic thrust.

He was tired of being insulted by players who said they were "insulted" by their team’s miserly $15 million contract offer.

He refused to buy any more products endorsed by an athlete who endorses more than 10 products.

The fan was fed up with fans brainlessly waving and pounding anything that was handed to them at the turnstile.

He was sick of everything being sponsored, like the Acme Transmission clutch play of the game. "And that fumble," said the fan, "was your Outback Steakhouse Heimlich-maneuver cough-up of the game."

He was tired of a guy making a play and then thumping himself on the chest to salute his own courage.

The fan was sick of phony prepared statements, autographs for sale, the disappearance of traveling calls in hoops, golf-equipment technology, $25 ballgame parking, T-shirt guns, the BCS computer and the horse it rode in on.

Seeing no other escape, the fan chucked it all and moved to a desert island. He took with him a baseball and two gloves, just in case someone else showed up.

[Water Pony]

Maybe fans will have the Power, but only when they exercise it appropriately. The article suggests that not buying into the commerialism will make a difference. I don't see any evidence that is likely to occur. We are the problem because of what we buy and who we support. Will we stop buying $7 beers, gear, etc. Probably not.

My issue is the demands by fans like us for the Administration to get serious or the Coach to get a clue. Our demands for quick success (e.g. shortcuts) contribute to the problem and drive costs thru the roof. More than 23 College Football coaches make more than $1 million. Add to that the routine uniform changes, new playing surfaces, large coaching staffs, etc. and you get an arms race that non-BCS schools will lose.

The demands of alumni at all schools are as much the problem as the commerialization the article complains about. We either help reform the sport by requiring progress toward graduation and leveling the playing even slightly or college sports will continue to accelerate out of control.

The winners are the "have's", who will perpetuate their situation at the expense of the "have not's."

:wacko:

[PlanoStang]

Tired of the BCS. To hell wit it! Don't watch it NO MAS!

[OldPony]

Actually, most on this board complain if SMU charges $20 for a ticket but that's another story' The war just escalted when Nebraska offers a 10 year, $25 million contract to Houston Nutt. The arogance of NU amzes me that they think enough money can pull any coach to NU. Nutt is an UofA grad, his brother coaches at ASU about 120 miles away and his family lives in Ark. He does thank NU gor the raise though. Now that those NU clowns have been turned down twice and they look foolish. When you fire a 9-3 coach, you look stupid but when you can't hire a new one, you look even worse. Maybe NU will go after Parcell's next.
Do you think the alums have been tapped to pay for all this cr^p? Wjat will be the price of a hotdog in Nebraska next year? Coaching isn't nuclear science and the salaries have goten ridiculous.

[DomerPony]

Ole' Bo Bellini must be grinning like a cheshire cat right about now...