The_Admiral

On 7/18/2017 at 1:25 PM, the admiral said:

Houston, a city full of people who used to live somewhere else with a large black/Hispanic native population and exurban sprawl out the ass, has the profile of an absolutely terrible NHL market. I'm sure the league couldn't be more excited about being there.

maybe not now

On 8/26/2017 at 9:42 AM, Gothamite said:

 

Wait, what?  Did I miss something?

Yeah, apparently putting your games on a Denver/Utah RSN makes it hard to get picked up in Las Vegas. Cox won't pay what AT&T wants for an RSN that will have two of its three teams blacked out.

How did I miss that the Pens finally fired that useless turd Paul Steigerwald? Steve Mears from the NHL network is there now but they should have axed the TV booth altogether to simulcast Mike Lange and the ol' two-niner.

1 hour ago, marlinfan said:

Adding Palm Beach's population to Broward's is unrealistic because no one in their right mind will consistently drive 20 miles down to downtown Fort Lauderdale.

I-95 between Jupiter and West Palm is the longest ten-mile drive in the world. I don't get it. It's not that the traffic is always unbearable (but southbound at rush hour sure is), there's just some space-time distortion that makes going to Jupiter feel like going to the planet Jupiter.

I mean, Little Havana isn't a perfect location (the AAA has that), but it's the old Orange Bowl site, so it's not as if it's unthinkable for people to go there for sports. It's about a mile northwest of downtown Miami. It's fine. And Broward is so developed at this point that who knows where you could even plop down a stadium.

btw the money is even more serious up around Boca Raton and Palm Beach but I wouldn't put a stadium there either

7 hours ago, AstroBull21 said:

The population (and money) in the Miami area is a little bit north in Broward County so if Marlins Park was built a little further north and optimized it's location that may have helped overall.

Wayne Huizenga checking in. Maybe they should have built it near Sawgrass Mills, that's worked out!

Hypothetical: if baseball's antitrust exemption had been amended in 1971, following the relocation of the Washington Senators and the NFL-AFL antitrust amendment, to include a clause prohibiting relocation of major-league teams, would that have exempted Toronto and Montreal, making their value increase tremendously by being the only portable teams?

3 hours ago, crashcarson15 said:

Baseball has very few small-market teams, and most of those that do remain are longstanding clubs -- only Cincinnati, Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh have fewer than 2.5 million people -- and is already in literally every market larger than that in the English-speaking part of the continent.

And those cities you mentioned, especially Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, ranked much higher among American cities half a century ago. Got lapped by goddamn Phoenix and Raleigh-Durham.

I would love to see Raleigh lose the NHL and gain the American League. 

35 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

Even when they post something negative about the Patriots it's about how they didn't always have it so good

Might just be a Boston thing. THE IRISH WERE SLAVES TOO, CHIEF!

Looks like the design is optimized for browsing in phone. Tank really did win in the end.

1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

"Prestige" sportswriting is done this way ---> Grandiose and/or Overly Ambitious Premise, bonus points if the premise is false or based on a vocal minority, "a lot of people are saying" topic (the Dave Lozo Special).

"People on Twitter" are saying it! This means embedding two or three tweets from likely sock-puppet accounts, which also makes your article seem that much longer. Then when you post your article and actual people on Twitter tell you it's crap, you respond to them in exclusively all-lowercase ironic posts, usually "rip my mentions," "this website is free," and "lol, big if true." You may wonder what someone who gets paid to write but who isn't e.e. cummings is doing eschewing capitalization, but that's just it, they get paid to write, and after all, This Website Is Free, so these good writerly writers need to show that they are not expending effort in addressing their lessers. Gotta save the good stuff for whoever has VC money to burn this month.

Haven't subscribed, won't subscribe, don't know anyone who does.

There's getting to be a little too much Prestige Sportswriting for it all to be prestigious. Much like how television dramas learned that they could go through the motions of The Sopranos and create content mistaken for art, we've hit upon the formula for sportswriting that theoretically tickles an educated and high-spending demographic, and now people know how to get paid for it until the money runs out, which it will, because everyone knows there's not really money in this. I didn't really weep for writers when Fox Sports did their "pivot to video" because I never expected anything above anodyne mindlessness from Fox Sports and neither should any of you. So there's one fewer place to write thinkpieces about how the Washington Redskins are racist. Infinity minus one. Big deal.

5 hours ago, Quillz said:

Some other posts have stated the stadium is fine, and this is mainly just a ploy by the D'Backs to get some upgrades they want.

Ah yes, the Bradley Center plan.

Open-air in Phoenix, how's that gonna work out? 8 p.m. first pitch every game?

Update to Rays news, the ownership says

“We have sites in mind, and it’s a question of what will get done around the site and how are they going to get paid for,” he said. “And once municipalities are able to line those things up, not completely buttoned up but at least to a good extent, then we’ll be able to make a decision.”

Sternberg said they were hoping to have a decision by the end of the season, but the end of the year may be more likely.

 

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/rays/sternberg-rays-ready-to-make-quick--decision-once-they-get-stadium-options/2332121

I liked the concept for the sailboat stadium.

Swing music is heavily arranged and not open to collective improvisation outside the rhythm section (I think you're thinking of the hot jazz or Dixieland jazz of the early 20th century), and if you're saying the team was named the Jazz with no regard to New Orleans being the birthplace of jazz, you're deluding yourself.

4 hours ago, DNAsports said:

Addressing the previous comments, I still wish Charlotte, New Orleans, and Utah all rotated nicknames when it was announced that Charlotte would take back the Hornets nickname.

 

Charlotte Hornets

Utah Bobcats

New Orleans Jazz

HE DID IT, THE ABSOLUTE MADMAN

Isn't Las Vegas baseball on the ropes? Maybe it's a stopgap until another AAA Tucson team.

4 hours ago, Gothamite said:

I'm not sure either of those cities have been a serious contender for a franchise.   The Triangle could have made a play for the Twins back when, but didn't. 

That was Winston-Salem/Greensboro that was gunning for the Twins, I believe. That probably would have been a small disaster.

Reminds me of DeKalb Corn:

On 7/15/2017 at 8:37 AM, DiePerske said:

The way minor league sports naming has been going, it would be preferable to have clones. 

 

And I've said many times that I hate clones too. 

The Braves should absolutely be clones all the way down.

11 hours ago, Proc said:

As for Tampa, if the stadium was in Tampa and not in the Forbidden Zone of St. Pete, I bet attendance would be a ton higher.

Burkina Faso? Disputed Zone?!? Who called all these weird places?

Speaking of AAA stability, Omaha has been Kansas City's farm club since the Royals were established. 

Apparently TD Ameritrade Park can be expanded to 35,000. More than the Thunder, it would be a Winnipeg Jets deal where it's not only a small park but one you have to sell out every day. You know, there might be something to Omaha and trying to pull off one boutique market in MLB.

And maintaining that ice in Southeast Texas humidity must really do a number on the electric bill, right?

5 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

 

If it's 8 games a year (plus 2 extortion games), yes, indeed. But DC is currently building a soccer stadium that, like Atlanta, could be duel-use. That at least gets you up to about 30 events a year, plus soccer exhibitions, plus concerts, plus X Game stuff, plus boat shows.

 

I'm not sure what happens at FedEx, but if you made the stadium more multipurpose it could have a greater use.

 

And with that, I just looked up the FedEx Field schedule and saw that they're hosting an International Champions Cup exhibition Wednesday and some NCAA football game in addition to the NFL season. Plus a Coldplay concert.

 

All that stuff is better served in a city. DC is a special case due to its severe building restrictions, but FedEx Field (perhaps in contrast to, say, Ralph Wilson or MetLife), is especially far and especially terrible.  

The other thing about DC being special is that I don't think of the Skins as a particularly "city" team. I don't have a Cobb County Braves heat map to prove it but it seems like the real power base of Redskins fandom is suburban/exurban Maryland and Virginia more so than, like, Georgetown or whatever. So if they're out in the sprawl, whatever.

Charlotte already has football and basketball and isn't terribly passionate about either. (And not that you asked but Raleigh could have a shot if the Zombie Whalers were liberated from that overgrown office park and baseball could be their one pro sport.) Plus it's a major transplant town. Baseball and hockey are the sports least amenable to high-transplant areas.

Indianapolis is within reasonable driving distance of Cincinnati, Chicago x2, St. Louis, and Detroit, and is valuable RSN territory for at least the Chicago teams and maybe more. I say no.