Sykotyk
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Posts posted by Sykotyk
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35 minutes ago, GDAWG said:
So apparently, the NYCFC Soccer stadium only needs the mayor to sign off before official groundbreaking. That seems likely since he's in support of this stadium since the start.
Without trying to go explore it, this was one of the sites the Islanders were looking into building an arena, right? Or did they build one here nearby?
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4 hours ago, bowld said:
Animals native to Utah that could work-
* Utah Rams
* Utah Bighorns
* Utah Cougars
* Utah Bobcats
* Utah Black Bears
* Utah Jackrabbits
That said, watch it be something like the Utah Swarm and the arena will be known as the Hive
I have a feeling they're going collective noun. If so, Swarm works very well for the beehive state. I'd expect black/yellow colors then, which would suck. But maybe instead go non-traditional and go purple/gold. Would be too close to Jazz colors.
If they go with an animal:
Rams (no, even though they can, I don't want to see teams in multiple leagues/sports have the same name and doubt they want it, too)
Bighorns (it works, but I don't associate Bighorns with Utah as much as I do other states.
Cougars (has the older woman trope ruined this name now for teams?)
Bobcats (failed NBA team name, could work, but doubt they wouldn't want to try something new)
Black Bears/Bears (Bruins? Feels generic, too. Also, not as fierce. The old Utah Grizzlies names would be meaner/angrier/fiercer but we know that was already a minor league name)
Jackrabbits (Again, I know they might be there but I associate Jackrabbits with more western plains states moreso than Utah)
In no particular order, my preference (and my preferred colors/logo ideas):
Utah Mountaineers (blue and green, logo could be a bighorn)
Utah Archers (rust red, sand, and black; Wild themed anomalous logo)
Utah Rockers (rust red, sand, and black; Wild themed anomalous logo)
Utah Swarm (purple and gold, or black and gold; hornet/bee logo)
Utah Yellow Jackets (primary yellow, navy/black/gold secondary)
Utah Venom (black/red, or yellow/red/black)
Utah Stingers (black/red, or yellow/red/black)
Utah Dragons (like Archers/Rockers, rust red, sand, and black)
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UFL has had some really entertaining finishes to their games the first three weeks.
DC was down 10 with just over 2 minutes remaining. Scores, and converts the 4th and 12 to get the ball again. Sets up a 49 yard field goal to win 29-28 on the final play of the game.
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49 minutes ago, MDGP said:
Yes, the range of coyotes is across the entire US, 90% of Mexico, and like 2/3 of Canada. There's almost nowhere in North America where the Coyotes name wouldn't make sense.
That being said, I agree they should probably change the name.
Only real downside in all this will be losing the Kachina logo, though it would absolutely be in character for a Utah team to just keep it even though it's irrelevant to the area.
They can use Kokopelli instead
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12 hours ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:
The Delta Center looks atrocious for hockey, but at least it'll be temporary.
Was horrible for the few AFL games I went to there. There better be an arena plan already sealed before this move got approved.
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7 hours ago, VDizzle12 said:
I keep going back to the post office site. It just makes so much sense, but again would require the city to foot some of the bill. Regardless both sides will benefit from a new indoor stadium. Especially since it will almost guarantee major events coming to the city all year round. Not just Browns games and a handful of summer concerts.
And in all honesty, the post office needs a new, modern, HUGE facility located somewhere closer to a major transit connection outside the city. The old need to build these massive facilities as close to city centers as possible was a relic of thinking that most of the workforce and parcel delivery would be happening in the city. Build a giant facility where 8 and 80 interchange is. Or near Berea, Independent, or Warrensville Heights near 480/271/422 interchanges.
That land inside the city could be used for so much more than relaying mail between various local hubs.
As for a dome. It's the only stadium I support now. As much as I LOVE outdoor football in December, it's no longer a wise financial decision for stadiums that will be over $1 billion at the cheap end. The stadium needs a lot of use to make it worth while. Look at the NCAA Women's March Madness. More of those events are going to be able to utilize a Cleveland domed stadium. Bowl games? Neutral site college games (Ohio State v. MAC school like they tried to do once at CBS and then never again). High school events (Yeah, low budget, but they give the facility use, such as state titles in football, soccer, lacrosse, etc). Major conventions, concerts, and events like the men's or women's march madness (The Women's game is outgrowing regular arenas and won't be available soon). Yeah, the Super Bowl would probably happen if only as an incentive by the league to build it as they've done in Minnesota (twice), Detroit/Pontiac (twice) Indianapolis (once),... especially since the NFL doesn't take bids from cities any more and just picks and chooses which stadiums they want to host it at.
In the end, if the movers and shakers of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County build another outdoor stadium for the Browns, they need to all be required to pay the bill themselves. It's not worth it anymore.
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17 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:
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.
Yes. That became a huge issue with other teams as well. It's why they just all folded. They had already contacted Oklahoma, Milwaukee, Florida and Houston right before the NBC push to limit available teams to channel the new owners to overpriced expansion teams. Which only happened because they had given out teams to NFL owners for only $5m. Indiana did do very well and had built up a nice mutual rivalry with Chicago and Grand Rapids who saw a lot of road fan support which helped ticket sales, atmosphere, legitimacy, etc. But not enough to derail their attempts to get the major city teams on TV as often as possible.
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5 minutes ago, VDizzle12 said:
The city has been playing hardball this whole time and I hope it bites them in the butt. They already control all of the development around the stadium, parking, etc. So the Browns only revenue on gameday comes from tickets, food and merch sales inside the stadium. The team is missing out on a ton of money and the city wants to keep it that way. They want to keep throwing a few million to polish that turd on the Lakefront and have no interest in the Browns building a stadium anywhere else in the city or county. There are rumors that they were eyeing land near Progressive Field and Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, and the city shot that down.
The current stadium is a pain to get to, parking sucks and there's not much to do around it. I've sat through so many miserable games there and not only because of the team on the field. The Browns need a stadium with a roof and the city needs to work with them to make it happen. If not, I say the Browns are free to build wherever they want.
The post office site is about the best they'll find inside the city. The team, in the 90s, had the option of being part of the gateway complex that built Progressive and RMFH. But passed on it and the land that became the stadium was only secured for two stadiums.
As for why the city is playing hardball? They just spent $200m two years ago to renovate the stadium and now want an entirely new stadium.
I personally want the browns to get a dome so the stadium can be used more than 12 times a year. But it's probably not going to be inside the city limits. Berea is not a bad location as road infrastructure and airport are right there already suitable for the 70k venue.
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11 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:
It would also be against the Art Modell law that they passed, which was stated earlier (I thought) but has been glossed over because someone wanted to call him a goober or something.
Odd that people are seemingly mad that a city would enforce a law designed to prevent a sports team from moving because they aren't moving far (but still out of the limits set by the law).
Pretty sure the state law only restricted them to the state and not a particular jurisdiction.
So potentially a move to Toledo would be allowed. An out of state move like the Crew tried under Precourt would result in a local buyer who wants to keep them in the state the option to buy them first. Though the law was never truly tested as MLS really didn't want to be the bad guy in it when the Haslams popped up with the big money to build a gleaming new stadium for the team Precourt just claimed couldn't survive in Columbus.
And in the end the law helped everyone. Columbus got their wealthy owner and shiny new stadium. Two championships. One of the best rivalries in American soccer. Precourt moved to Austin and got what he wanted with an irrelevant expansion team. Win win win. As Michael Scott would say.
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9 hours ago, ltjets21 said:
Arena Football is the only minor football league that ever grasped my attention. The high scoring aspect is entertaining and it feels like a different product than the NFL, unlike the NFL wannabe UFL, AAF, and XFL . In the late 2000s there was also a very strong brand. Saturday games were broadcast on ESPN. Not sure what really was responsible for their downfall.
The league had a deal with the NFL where NFL owners got new teams at a very discounted price and the NFL was given an option to buy 51% of the league. The NFL changed their bylaws to allow owners such as Jerry Jones to buy teams. But the NFL did not exercise their option.
Those extremely discounted teams sold to NFL owners hurt the league as they were still relying heavily on expansion fees.
At the start of the NBC era, the league consented to two teams being sold and relocated because they were stalwart franchises. Albany to Indianapolis and Iowa to New York (Long Island).
The league positioned themselves so they'd become profitable when the NFL took over or if the NFL owned teams would be viable that would carry over into TV contracts, ticket sales, etc for other teams.
Neither happened. And NBC got back into the NFL and was unhappy with the afl ratings in the spring. The growth in neutral viewership never happened. And the TV execs focused on major market teams like Colorado, Dallas, Philadelphia, Georgia, New York and Los Angeles instead of focusing on the better actual match ups each week.
In addition, the AFL changed some very fundamental rules of the game that made the games unwatchable up longtime fans. 40-50 pt games were common. But with the defensive restrictions, elimination of Ironman players, increased penalty yards on flags, etc made 70+80 pts common and 99 the record by New York.
Partly the Ironman AFL game was just different than outdoor football but NBC wanted to promote NFL castoffs rather than the Ironman stars of the game that neutrals wouldn't know about. QBs like Garcia, Bonner, Dolezel, and Pawlawski they thrived in the afl were often ignored in favor of guys like Damen Wheeler who was not as suited for the afl but played for LA so we featured a lot.
Imagine the NFL tried implying Fields was better than Mahomes because Chicago is on TV more often than Kansas City.
Now some were kinda smart. Jones brought in Dolezel and one reason Andrew Wang bought the Barnstormers to move to NY was because Garcia was what made the team good enough to be worth it over just buying an expansion team. Garcia was the highest paid player in the league and might still hold that record. $500k for 3 years. $166k a year over 20 years ago was a great gig.
In the end, the AFL couldn't grow further. NFL owners realized growth had stopped before their teams became profitable so they bailed. The infamous missed season was a result of the players being lied to that the league was successful so wanted their fair share not realizing that it was bluster to try to garner new owners.
In the end, the NFL owners given sweetheart deals is what doomed the league. They bought teams for a third what other owners had paid for expansion teams. That growth fund the league relied on disappeared.
Old teams that had built fan bases with cheap tickets couldn't compete with the big market teams who had $300 front row seats. Even if 90% of the arena went unsold or was comped out.
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13 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:
Ruiter is also constantly crapping on the Browns and Guardians, I don't know why he bothers covering Cleveland sports if it brings him so much pain. Moving off the lake to Brook Park isn't like packing the team up for Oklahoma City. Why that councilman is upset, outside of having to travel that little bit farther on game days, is beyond me.
Because the team wouldn't be in the city he's a councilman of.... They'd hate that any business is moving to another jurisdiction
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I know that Utah now apparently has a law that Utah has to be the name and not Salt Lake. But it would be pretty cool to see the Salt Lake Bees have the Salt Lake A's across town.
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3 hours ago, infrared41 said:
He's pitching a
because the Browns want to build a domed stadium by Hopkins Airport in Brook Park. It's all of 15 minutes (if that) from downtown. People like beard dork and local sports radio hacks who need the topic are the only ones who give a single about this "move."
He's a councilman for the city of Cleveland. Of course he's going to have issue with the team moving out to the area around the airport. Nobody else in Cuyahoga County or the state of Ohio would care if the browns were in the suburbs.
Hell, I think a stadium in Richfield would probably be more beneficial for all the fans driving to the games. The lakefront location only really benefits the Mentor and northeast Ohio shore fans. Everyone else would be better served by a stadium south of town along 480 or 271.
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1 hour ago, BottomlessPitt said:
Players can transfer at will to other teams with in the tournament as it progresses.
Players can switch sides mid game as long as there's a timeout.
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I know the reasons, but this game really feels like the Lions in special jerseys. Endzones in the blue match too much with the BattleHawks even though they're road. All white, silver, and blue just fits too well with Ford Field field than the Panthers colors.
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Browns fan here, so permit me to be a bit bias about the Steelers...
They greatly improved their QB squad. However, it's going to be a sheet-show no matter what. Wilson went there thinking he was a shoe-in for the starting position. Steelers went with him because Denver ate the rest of the contract. They boot Pickett to make it obvious who is starting. And now they get Fields?
Wilson is not going to be happy. Fields won't be happy either. Sure, both think they're going to or should be the starter. But how well will they work together in the lockerroom instead of creating factions to support them starting over the other guy. Browns had many times two above average but flawed QBs at the same time where the team as a whole couldn't function because half wanted QBA and other half wanted QBB to start.
You wind up with basically nothing. Players dog it when their guy isn't starting, in-fighting, etc. You need a clear starter. I know you say you are going to have a competition and no one's job is guaranteed, but you have to at least know that's just to avoid complacency by the starter. If you don't know today when trading for Fields whether he's QB1 or QB2 or if the future starter is still in the draft... then you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.
In the end, this feels like a Tommy Maddox situation. Remember him? Good, serviceable. Wins some games as long as he's not the weapon needed to win the game. But he can lose some games if you put them in his hands. But he played long enough to get them to Roethlisberger and the rest is history.
Fields isn't their answer. But he might make them get over the hump enough, long enough, that they can work for QB1 in the 2025 or 2026 draft while assembling the rest of the roster around Fields/Wilson and and just plug in the future franchise QB later the way Roethlisberger was installed with the likes of that D, Bettis, Ward, Randle El, etc.
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1 hour ago, McCall said:
It was a typo, but you don't have to be a d*** about it.
The fact it was a typo makes so much more sense. Because I was really questioning where you were coming up with that statement.
No sweat though, I've forgotten to put in the 'not' part of a sentence before and had some really odd conversations afterwords.
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*This was a response to a typo.*
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7 hours ago, BrySmalls said:
The UEFA Champions League stands out as the sole major soccer (football) league that comes to mind for me.
That's not a league, though. Regardless it's names intentions. It's just an expansion of the old Champions Cup, a tournament of league champions from around Europe. Which slowly started allowing more and more teams to participate and having a group stage that's a few games long. Teams playing in the Champions League still play their regular league schedule and compete for its championship at the same time.
Now, if you'd like to say that the CONCACAF Champions Cup is the premier 'league' of North America, I think you'll get some push back.
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46 minutes ago, leopard88 said:
It reminds me of comparing the pre-Lombardi (Commanders) to the Lombardi (Commanders) . . . except that was intentional (or at least Lombardi didn't care that the new color didn't match the old one).
EDIT -- The board automatically replaced the team name that I typed with (Commanders). Interesting.
That's been a thing on this board for a while.
For historical context, I would prefer it not to be that way (the perfectionist in me wants to say the 1936 Boston ******** rather than Commanders, simply because Commanders is a recent name change). If anything, I'd rather it just be censored or as I just did, asterisked, and not try to retcon historical records with a name that didn't exist at the time.
As for colors in old photographs, there's a lot of factors. Film fades. Photographs fade. Different light/speed settings, ambient lighting with clouds or stadium lights, angle of the sun, sweat, fabric... And also the NFL and most leagues didn't become particularly annoying about color consistency until much more recently. I'm old enough to remember as a kid having Cleveland Browns shirts/hats/jackets in various shades of orange or brown and yet nobody questioned it. Nobody cared about the exact specific shade of orange or brown. As long as all the uniforms matched on game day it didn't matter if the shading was slightly lighter or darker.
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On 3/7/2024 at 12:11 PM, BrySmalls said:
Currently, there's no fifth major league. MLS has the potential to become the fifth major league should they capitalize on the 2026 World Cup craze by evolving into the league where top talent come to play while in their prime instead of players coming here to bookend their professional careers after playing in Europe.
Having or not having the 'best' players in your league isn't the only metric for a country's major leagues.
If you want to get specific, then, there isn't really a 'major league' in soccer internationally. Not the EPL, not Serie A, not Bundesliga, none... Because they are a few 'great' teams that draw all the stars and a bunch of essentially AAA teams who cosplay as top tier teams.
In EPL, you can name the 4 or 5 likely winners of the league five years from now and probably be accurate. For every Leicester City, there's dozens of champions claimed by the repetitive, expected contenders.
MLS will never 'be that' because the league structure is far more American and they're not going to let Orlando or Kansas City or Nashville flounder as cannon fodder just so a few LA/NYC teams dominate the league year-to-year buying whoever they want. In US sporting culture, an European-styled league will not survive if it's the same few monied power-teams winning titles year after year after year.
Most of the country is probably annoyed that Kansas City just won a title two years in a row. Can you imagine if the NFL had a Bayern Munich-like team who have won the Bundesliga TEN STRAIGHT YEARS? There'd be 500 people at non-Bayern games.
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2 hours ago, OnWis97 said:
Based on my minimal experience in SLC, the city punches way above its weight in terms of transit. If they located a ballpark properly, SLC residents would have an easier time getting to games than residents of almost any city in the US.
But it's a small city. Are they going to rely on people coming in from places like Provo, Ogden, etc. that are far enough away that it's going to be a problem for a weeknight game, rendering their ability to sell tickets to the majority of games insufficient?
I don't know the answer to that but that's something that occured to me. Maybe the Jazz offer a partial answer.SLC has the benefit of being a mostly laid out grid, with freeways that are all adequately sized running in north/south or east/west directions mostly. Even the 215 loop runs more in a square than a circle. Putting a venue anywhere on the west side of SLC along the 215 near 80 or 201 would work fine. Even off 201 near Bangerter, or anywhere along I-15. There isn't 'one side' of SLC that is economically better or worse for location. It's not like DFW where the northern suburbs far outweigh the south, for instance. The only real limit is the mountains to the east. Anywhere else will work.
The only real negative for SLC is that many of the locations around the freeways are heavily industrial or warehouses. Or heavy residential. There's not a lot of in-between.
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4 hours ago, Green27 said:
Danville Otterbots will have a team under them, who will play in the collegiate summer level Old North State League
This has got to be a joke, right?
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13 hours ago, DCarp1231 said:
FedEx is ending its stadium naming rights for Washington two year early
This comes less than 24 hrs after announcing “extensive” upgrades to the stadium
The perfect time for DHL to swoop in.
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because the Browns want to build a domed stadium by Hopkins Airport in Brook Park. It's all of 15 minutes (if that) from downtown. People like beard dork and local sports radio hacks who need the topic are the only ones who give a single 
The rise of US Women's Volleyball?
in Sports In General
Posted
It only works with "Grand Rapids" in front of it. By itself, it just feels weird. Even "The Rise" doesn't help. At least "The Vibe", "The Fury", "The Thrill", "The Mojo", seems to work on its own.