Sports Teams You Would Get Rid of or Move

Since we are talking professional sports here, I think it is important to note that baseball is still wildly profitable. Hell, when I was a kid, TV had killed minor league baseball, or so we were told. Now it's a cash cow. Major league teams decided they would rather lose attendance than lower ticket prices to cope with weak economic conditions. Whether or not that was a good business decision, I don't know, but a business has to be in pretty good shape to blow off the most primal reaction it can have to declining demand.
Also, TigerVols, the phrase "according to several Web sites" does not meet my citation analysis standards.

 

From 2009:

While attendance figures have dipped slightly this season against a backdrop of a national recession, television ratings for Major League Baseball are holding steady, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The average rating for all teams through May 24 was a 3.2, no different from the same period last season.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090611&content_id=5277364&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

 

Solid observations. The American tradition of the local high school team being the town unifier is indeed fading fast. People can get their sense of community from too many other sources (message boards, facebook groups, etc.) and have too many other diversions to get caught up in how the local pimply faced kids in shorts are doing. AAU season is now more important to many kids than the HS season. That trend ain't changing.

As for NASCAR, not surprised at all to see it fading, I always thought it faddish even when it was booming. Left turns get old after a awhile. I think that bubble would've eventually burst even without the tech/net explosion.

 

This might be the worst idea I've ever read on this board, and that's saying something.

 

Cleveland Cavaliers to Columbus, Columbus Blue Jackets to Cleveland. Hell, switch em every five years or so.

 

I don't see high school sports going anywhere because the whole point of it isn't to be a revenue generator, but part of the educational process. That is especially true in high school, though not so much college.

I can see tax payers being asked to carry more burden though. If you won't buy a game ticket, you'll still support your team...

 

How do you justify keeping sports and cutting art and music? And teachers? I know I can't. When the town rallied around the team, I could. Not in 2011, though. JV programs will go first. Then varsity. What will be left will be club sports that have to pay for themselves. It'll be sad, the way it is sad when all things once cherished pass. But it'll also be time.

 

One thing baseball COULD do to help the postseason is consolidate into four divisions and have only two rounds. This will never happen, because that way the Yankees or Red Sox would not make the post-season each year, and the broadcasters would have a sad, but it would make the postseason more dramatic and viewable, which you'd think would help ratings.
PS: Dick, let me refer you to one of the oldest dances in Massachusetts politics. Voters in every city and town must approve property tax increases over a set limit by referendum called an override. Whenever a town REALLY needs an override for whatever reason, the school department announces that if it doesn't pass, high school sports will be eliminated. The override then passes. And let me assure you, parents here ALREADY pay through the nose to have their kids participate in school sports. As long as colleges hand out athletic scholarships, parents are going to keep school sports going.

 

Eventually, there won't be enough townspeople to get to the majority needed on overrides like that. And there will be less parents voting, because participation numbers in high school sports are already dwindling (we've discussed, for example, football on these boards).

I get where you're coming from, though. Parents see athletics as the ticket to a college scholarship. At the very least, they live vicariously through their children in a way that they can't in the chemistry club or art class. And so high school sports will remain, at least where the laws are written as they are in your state, until high school sports fans and parents don't hold political power any more. But with every text message and G-chat IM sent out and iTunes song downloaded, that day is closer on the horizon.

 

Lexington has had 14 override votes in the 20 years I've lived there. Thirteen passed. People live here for the schools. When their kids grow up and leave, they leave too. There are a lot of U.S. towns like that.

 

Not as many as you think. Not enough to save the institution. High school sports will be like newspapers will be - luxuries for the rich and elite and highly educated. It's one thing in a town with money to burn. It's tougher to justify a sports budget in places like Camden or Gary or Detroit.

 

I'm guessing those who are arguing high school sports are growing irrelevant live in pretty good-sized cities. Here in the non-metropolis parts of the country they're still something people care a lot about.