Sodboy13

First off, MLS is totally doing that, and secondly, I don't think it's just them and it's certainly not just sports. A lot of our nation's Big Business Thinkers are getting doompilled by nonsense inside their bubbles and think the end is nigh, so they're in Get Mine Now Mode even more than they have been previously, and this is not a group renowned for their ability to look past their own noses to next quarter. Claw it all in from the suckers now, because any day now that AI which can't reliably tell you what two plus five divided by four is will become Skynet somehow and they'll have to be at the ready with their bunkers in New Zealand and/or on Mars, where they can eventually get down to the important business of repopulating humanity in their own images.

Well, it takes a lot to make a stew.

When you do that much focus grouping on anything, it is far more likely that either the groups keep telling the group paying for them what they don't want to hear, or that the group paying for them has no idea what they want to hear, or can recognize good ideas when they hear them. Please refrain from tasting the knob.

"This bold reinvention of a classic logo reflects the consistent organizational direction over the last half-century, and our commitment to it in the future."

You all like the Jets' new uniforms now. Come back to me after the sixth consecutive week of them wearing the black pants and black socks. The uniform tops out at "acceptable," the devotion to accuracy on the fonts is nice but the fonts themselves are nothing to write home about, the finish on the helmet seems way out of place on a straight retro look, and the alternate is more BFBS than ever now that the black trim has been stripped out of the primaries. The Keyshawn/Kotite era is the best the Jets have ever dressed, but everything outside of the aesthetics is why we'll never see that revived.

He also intentionally renovated Key Arena so it held only 11,000 of the worst-placed seats possible for hockey, as a means of keeping out any would-be "competition." It was passable for the Thunderbirds and that was about the limit, which is why the Seattle Supersonics continue thriving in the Emerald City to this very day.

Based on some recent reminiscing in another thread, I shall note that this was basically the Arena League's plan circa 2003. If attendance was not a concern, they could have just run all the games out of Birmingham and/or Arlington.

Sgt. Bettman's Lonely Mall Rink Band

One of the big reveals is when we find out Logan Wade was at January 6th.

As a mortgage predator, I would not expect Mat Ishbia to unduly lavish his own money on something so itinerant with a lousy credit history.

Between this, the MS Word screencap, and the long runs of unpaid taxes and hotel bills, I think we're getting some valuable insight into how Alex Mereulo conducts business, and I look forward to his federal prison problems.

The Seattle expansion fee was $650MM, and the reported way this plays out is the league paying $1B to Alex Mereulo to eff off, then collecting $1.3B from Ryan Smith. So basic math says "yes," but the league line I've seen is "we're getting twice as much as the expansion fee this way," which explains a good bit about this league's business savvy. The mitigating factor I'm willing to consider is that Mereulo may be quietly in hock to the league a fair bit, and this "billion" he gets involves a good bit taken off the top to make his creditors whole.

There is a certain poetry in the Coyotes getting Chivas USA'd in the end.

Yeah, but now what do I do with my life?

I've been on this ride so long that I was around for a particularly off-kilter member telling us all that the Coyotes would skate on the frozen blood of the non-believers. I'm ready for whatever comes out of the woodwork here.

It might actually be happening?

Today I learned Brian Burke killed off "Brass Bonanza" while he was GM in Hartford. I bet he's still ticked that he could never be the league's number one killjoy because he worked in the same era as Lou Lamoriello.

Yes, but it's a very long list.

To add one specific instance to @Sykotyk's thorough runthrough of the AFL's spike and collapse: The Firebirds were actually doing well in Indiana after the move, but their owner wanted out. He found a buyer, was offered $6 million for the team, and was ready to sell at what he considered a fair price. Problem was the AFL was putting up this big flash splash and cash front, and David Baker had declared the expansion fee to get into his amazing league was $25 million. He couldn't have that undercut by franchises being sold for what they were actually worth, so the AFL forcibly folded the Firebirds rather than let the sale complete.

LEAGUE: "We are an extremely valuable and desirable pro sports entity." PLAYERS: "Okay, then you can give us pay and benefits proportional to your declared value." LEAGUE: "No, sorry, we were lying. League's closed now, bye."

There's a good column today detailing this pivot by companies from planned obsolescence to active consumer hostility. More and more companies are now waving it in our faces with "yeah, our product is worse now, what are YOU gonna do about it" and having it happen in something as familiar and comforting as baseball (and not just on the uniform front, either) strikes a nerve in a way the tech overlords' bullcrap or constantly shrinking ice cream cartons doesn't, and it also makes consumers more aware of the increasing frequency at which we are being rawdogged. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/roku-tv-ads-patent/678041/?gift=bQgJMMVzeo8RHHcE1_KM0Y7O5mArBWf5kSkOx4yHpVw&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Overall, these uniforms range from "not bad" to "pretty good." But they are also clearly a couple of rungs below what we would classify as "professional" in American football. The use of the same serif block font for team names and locations on every jersey is the stuff of, say, a better-off high school program, not FBS or the pros. I feel like I'm looking at a supplier catalog as I scroll through.

Look at the start date for this topic. We're almost thirteen years in here, and the very loud problems of the Coyotes predate the topic by a few more years than that. It has never been good or looked promising that entire time. In fact, one can argue that the NHL fumbled the Phoenix market years before the Coyotes even existed. Jerry Colangelo wanted his new arena for the Suns to have an NHL tenant. The pre-Bettman league office told him they had no interest in ever putting a team there, ever. So Jerry saved himself a few bills by making a basketball arena that could technically hold a rink if, say, the Roadrunners were interested in partnering up. The Winnipeg Jets were sold to a couple of guys who did not want to move to Phoenix. They wanted to put the team in Minnesota, and couldn't make it happen. So they settled for Phoenix as part of Bettman's Sun Belt Strategy and played in a configuration that made the Isles at Barclays look like frozen heaven while their ideal new arena would certainly be right around the corner. Before the second season was done the original owners were bailing and there were serious talks of selling to Paul Allen and moving everything to Portland. It has been that bad for that long, it has bordered on farce since before a time when we all toted the internet in our pants, and even those who haven't mired themselves in the particulars over the years like I have can see the college rink and the arena plans failing in a landslide vote and the losses upon losses upon losses and say "good riddance" to all of it without a shred of ill will toward the players, frontline employees, or remaining fans. And I still wouldn't bet against them playing at Mullett next season.

And before that were given subsidies at the expense of a city's fire department.

And I recall the story after the move being that Winnipeg ownership was intending to bring the Moose moniker up to the NHL, to the point where they had commissioned prototype uniforms, but they realized "the Jets are coming back" was too strong a tide to fight and too much free money to turn down. Oddly, the Coyotes removing the location name from their shoulder patches when they revived the Kachina would make it easier to just bring the same home and road looks to Utah.