A couple of interesting links for a Sunday morning, both football related but with political overtones.
First up, we have this item about future stadium concepts. The basic idea is to create a stadium with a massive bar, and by massive I mean massive- standing room for 20,000.
Given the current state of the economy, it’s not unreasonable for the NFL to think about ways to give fans their monies worth. Even this year, localized TV blackouts have been something of an issue for several teams, including the Cincinatti Bengals and the San Diego Chargers. The teams avoided the blackouts by purchasing the remaining tickets. Considering that the purpose of blackouts is to essentially “punish” fans for not purchasing tickets so they can’t watch from the comfort of their home, I’d say that’s a pretty extraordinary circumstance.
I’m not a fan of the current trend whereby NFL owners build new stadiums with giant public loans. Essentially, the NFL takes people’s current money in ticket prices, then their future earnings through taxes. They then have the gall to over charge for food and drink once a fan is in the stadium, plus they ban anyone from bringing in their own food. In all likelihood, they’re probably trying to figure out a way to monetize tailgating- probably by limiting the practice to a certain fee based area.
In summary, football is expensive for fans. These proposed changes to stadiums are an attempt to give fans value for their money. It’ll be interesting to see if it works.
Next up, we have political meddling. I don’t have much more to offer here other than a general observation that it’s getting hard to go anywhere and avoid politics, or more specifically government interest. It’s possible my view is skewed by my reading habits, but it still seems right. Just about any topic comes back to politics it seems: education, cars, jobs, parenting, heating, relationships, health, and now sports. If I missed it, I’m willing to bet politics is still involved.