- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 290
This will likely be seen as focusing on the Rams situation, but I am going to rant about the state of professional football and the "amenities culture" that has taken over the gameday experience and the league in general.
I grew up outside of Chicago in the 1970's and 1980's. My father regularly took me to Bears games in the original Soldier Field - often in horrific weather conditions (especially a December game against the New England Patriots where the wind chill off of Lake Michigan was -20 to -25 throughout the game, and we had seats on the west side of the stadium - essentially taking the brunt of the wind directly in the face for 3 hours). The stands were packed and the patrons were sandwiched together in less than enough space for their bodies let alone leg room or "stretching out" space. But the loss of this kind of stadium - through the constant remodelling and replacing of iconic venues and relocations of iconic franchises killed that version of the NFL gameday experience...and it is killing the league as surely as sitting in a room full of Carbon Monoxide would kill a person before they even knew they were dying.
The old time stadiums that I grew up with and attending - Soldier Field, Comiskey Park (the original), Notre Dame Stadium (the 59,000 seat version) - they all had one thing in common and that was the focus of the "experience" was 2-fold. First and foremost it was the game being played in that venue on that day. The obvious exception was Comiskey Park's exploding scoreboard and fireworks...but that was an add on from Charlie Finley and not the design of the stadium. There were very little distractions or "revenue opportunities per patron square foot" considerations. Stadiums were where you went to actually experience a game and a camaraderie with other fans. At its best, that is still the ultimate draw to an NFL stadium.
Second, the idea of being packed into a confined space in bad weather and sitting on top on the guy next to you for 3 hours brought a real passion to the games and the home crowd created a palatable energy that was fed back to the home team. This has not (yet) been extinguished from the NFL, but as the LA drama continues and the proposals for relocation begin to quantify the desires of owners, it is clear that despite any feelings for which team should or will play where, the focus of any new stadiums - whether in Minnesota or Atlanta or L.A. or wherever the next one goes - is no longer on enhancing what made the NFL great, but rather on trying to make the stadium experience more like the at-home viewing experience. THAT is what will kill the NFL in 20 years time (or at least force it into a contraction period that takes the league down from 32 to 24 or even 16 teams).
I fully expect people to think this is a crazy idea....that the NFL, the "we are shooting for $25BILLION in annual revenue" NFL would find itself in financial trouble so dire...but Mark Cuban was right, the league itself is mismanaged and misaligned with its own history now. That is a recipe for disaster in ANY business, but in one that caters to the entertainment whims of an increasingly over-entertained and over-whelmed consumer base, it is doom.
Put bluntly, I went to a Rams game this season (against the Browns), had great seats even in a cavern like the Ed, but the gameday experience could not hold a candle to the games I attended as a kid. My kids loved the event and the spectacle of the stadium and the tailgating, but the overall impact was gone in the car on the way home. They are not "fans" the way I was or my dad was. They did not feel a connection to the game and the players the way we did. When I was a kid, I spent hours reading books about old time NFL games and the descriptions of Packers-Cowboys or Bears-Giants NFL title games and the impact of the weather on the outcomes. My kids look up YouTube highlights of touchdown dances.
The play on the field that day this year was actually not bad...the Rams D shined and the team won and Gurley broke a few big runs...which was very comparable to my experiences in the late 70's when Payton was the entire Bear offense and the D was the attraction (we're talking in the days of Fencik and Doug Plank as head-hunting wildmen....Plank being the same player whose #46 inspired Buddy Ryan to name his defensive scheme the 46-defense). The Bears back then were mired in the same kind of organizational malaise on the W-L records as the current day Rams, but the experience of being AT THE GAME instead of watching in the living room at home was 180-degrees different and it was SUPPOSED TO BE!
Fans do not go to NFL games for the retail or revenue generating reasons that owners love to look at. Luxury boxes are corporate gifts and show-off events and nothing more, never were and never will be anything but... The larger point though is that players today and fans today do not interact in the same passionate way that grew the NFL from a national joke on its inception (a "professional" football league? back then NO ONE cared) to the international titan it became. A tree that has lost its roots, no matter how tall or mighty on the outside is rotting and dying on the inside. The modern NFL - obsessed with building sterile marketing palaces like the Jones Dome and the LA proposals - is focusing on the wrong things and is signing its own death certificate in the process. The key to drawing in new fans, fans that care passionately about teams and the game beyond their team alone, is NOT making the stadium experience more like home with more electronics and bigger seats (to house our bigger asses) and more ad space.
Many will ridicule this (and maybe even rightfully so) as someone who is being overly naive about the business end of sports. Fair enough...but the thing is professional sports in general, but specifically professional football were not built on being something they are not. Football at its highest level is the ultimate team game and when the stadium experience focused more on the game and making the people in the stadium more a part of that (rather than allowing them to be part of the internet or fantasy football world while occupying space in the building or stands) the sport was healthier. The revenue streams and P&L sheets for the ownership may have been less extravagant of course, but the passion and the captivation of the human spirit and imagination were greater.
I'll close with just this...the most revered stadium in the NFL is NOT AT&T Stadium or the 3/4 empty Santa Clara stadium for the Rams and Niners last Sunday. It is Lambeau Field and the oldest stadium in the league (which admittedly did add amenities in the last decade, but retained the soul of the stadium in the process).
Bigger, flashier and newer are not always what is best for the overall league. The owners would do well to remember that as the league moves ever onward...
I grew up outside of Chicago in the 1970's and 1980's. My father regularly took me to Bears games in the original Soldier Field - often in horrific weather conditions (especially a December game against the New England Patriots where the wind chill off of Lake Michigan was -20 to -25 throughout the game, and we had seats on the west side of the stadium - essentially taking the brunt of the wind directly in the face for 3 hours). The stands were packed and the patrons were sandwiched together in less than enough space for their bodies let alone leg room or "stretching out" space. But the loss of this kind of stadium - through the constant remodelling and replacing of iconic venues and relocations of iconic franchises killed that version of the NFL gameday experience...and it is killing the league as surely as sitting in a room full of Carbon Monoxide would kill a person before they even knew they were dying.
The old time stadiums that I grew up with and attending - Soldier Field, Comiskey Park (the original), Notre Dame Stadium (the 59,000 seat version) - they all had one thing in common and that was the focus of the "experience" was 2-fold. First and foremost it was the game being played in that venue on that day. The obvious exception was Comiskey Park's exploding scoreboard and fireworks...but that was an add on from Charlie Finley and not the design of the stadium. There were very little distractions or "revenue opportunities per patron square foot" considerations. Stadiums were where you went to actually experience a game and a camaraderie with other fans. At its best, that is still the ultimate draw to an NFL stadium.
Second, the idea of being packed into a confined space in bad weather and sitting on top on the guy next to you for 3 hours brought a real passion to the games and the home crowd created a palatable energy that was fed back to the home team. This has not (yet) been extinguished from the NFL, but as the LA drama continues and the proposals for relocation begin to quantify the desires of owners, it is clear that despite any feelings for which team should or will play where, the focus of any new stadiums - whether in Minnesota or Atlanta or L.A. or wherever the next one goes - is no longer on enhancing what made the NFL great, but rather on trying to make the stadium experience more like the at-home viewing experience. THAT is what will kill the NFL in 20 years time (or at least force it into a contraction period that takes the league down from 32 to 24 or even 16 teams).
I fully expect people to think this is a crazy idea....that the NFL, the "we are shooting for $25BILLION in annual revenue" NFL would find itself in financial trouble so dire...but Mark Cuban was right, the league itself is mismanaged and misaligned with its own history now. That is a recipe for disaster in ANY business, but in one that caters to the entertainment whims of an increasingly over-entertained and over-whelmed consumer base, it is doom.
Put bluntly, I went to a Rams game this season (against the Browns), had great seats even in a cavern like the Ed, but the gameday experience could not hold a candle to the games I attended as a kid. My kids loved the event and the spectacle of the stadium and the tailgating, but the overall impact was gone in the car on the way home. They are not "fans" the way I was or my dad was. They did not feel a connection to the game and the players the way we did. When I was a kid, I spent hours reading books about old time NFL games and the descriptions of Packers-Cowboys or Bears-Giants NFL title games and the impact of the weather on the outcomes. My kids look up YouTube highlights of touchdown dances.
The play on the field that day this year was actually not bad...the Rams D shined and the team won and Gurley broke a few big runs...which was very comparable to my experiences in the late 70's when Payton was the entire Bear offense and the D was the attraction (we're talking in the days of Fencik and Doug Plank as head-hunting wildmen....Plank being the same player whose #46 inspired Buddy Ryan to name his defensive scheme the 46-defense). The Bears back then were mired in the same kind of organizational malaise on the W-L records as the current day Rams, but the experience of being AT THE GAME instead of watching in the living room at home was 180-degrees different and it was SUPPOSED TO BE!
Fans do not go to NFL games for the retail or revenue generating reasons that owners love to look at. Luxury boxes are corporate gifts and show-off events and nothing more, never were and never will be anything but... The larger point though is that players today and fans today do not interact in the same passionate way that grew the NFL from a national joke on its inception (a "professional" football league? back then NO ONE cared) to the international titan it became. A tree that has lost its roots, no matter how tall or mighty on the outside is rotting and dying on the inside. The modern NFL - obsessed with building sterile marketing palaces like the Jones Dome and the LA proposals - is focusing on the wrong things and is signing its own death certificate in the process. The key to drawing in new fans, fans that care passionately about teams and the game beyond their team alone, is NOT making the stadium experience more like home with more electronics and bigger seats (to house our bigger asses) and more ad space.
Many will ridicule this (and maybe even rightfully so) as someone who is being overly naive about the business end of sports. Fair enough...but the thing is professional sports in general, but specifically professional football were not built on being something they are not. Football at its highest level is the ultimate team game and when the stadium experience focused more on the game and making the people in the stadium more a part of that (rather than allowing them to be part of the internet or fantasy football world while occupying space in the building or stands) the sport was healthier. The revenue streams and P&L sheets for the ownership may have been less extravagant of course, but the passion and the captivation of the human spirit and imagination were greater.
I'll close with just this...the most revered stadium in the NFL is NOT AT&T Stadium or the 3/4 empty Santa Clara stadium for the Rams and Niners last Sunday. It is Lambeau Field and the oldest stadium in the league (which admittedly did add amenities in the last decade, but retained the soul of the stadium in the process).
Bigger, flashier and newer are not always what is best for the overall league. The owners would do well to remember that as the league moves ever onward...
