Drew Carey’s a funny guy, probably the funniest guy to ever own a piece of a sports franchise.OK, so he’s just a minority owner in a soccer team that has yet to play a game. But an owner has to start somewhere, and it’s not like he landed his gig on “The Price is Right” straight out of comedy school.
It didn’t, however, take Carey long to make his mark as part owner of the Seattle Sounders, an MLS team that will start play next year. He did it by doing something his fellow owners, control freaks by their very nature, probably don’t find very funny.
He’s giving fans a voice in the game.
Not a real big voice, of course, because owners don’t become owners to be told what to do. But Carey is promising season ticket holders that they can fire the team’s general manager once every four years if they don’t like how the team is doing.
“Where else can the fans fire the general manager?” Carey said the other day. “I hope this becomes a model for every professional sports organization in America.”
There’s probably a better chance of Carey owning the Cleveland Indians than that happening. One of the joys of owning a team is being able to fire at will whenever things turn sour and fans start looking for your scalp.
But there is hope for beleaguered fans everywhere whose last names don’t happen to be Steinbrenner.
In Israel there’s a club soccer team that allows fans to vote on the starting lineup, while across Europe there are organizations of fans banding together to try to buy teams. And fans who bought season tickets for the Arizona Rattlers of the Arena Football League were guaranteed refunds if the team didn’t make the playoffs this year.
With 12 of 17 teams guaranteed spots in the playoffs, it wasn’t that big of a gamble, but imagine the New York Mets doing the same thing. The lines outside Shea Stadium for refunds would be longer than the faces of most Met fans recently.
Let’s go even further and imagine things like this:
No Tiger, no pay. Is there really any reason to slather on the sunblock, pay $8.50 for a beer and wait in long lines at the Porta Potties behind others doing just the same thing if Tiger Woods isn’t playing? The PGA Tour should grant free admission to any tournament without Woods, and make up the difference by selling a few more hospitality tents to corporate salesmen.
No cheaters allowed. Instead of Roger Goodell determining Bill Belichick’s punishment for videotaping signals, why not let the fans of teams the Patriots beat by stealing their signals pass judgment? Options could range from forcing Belichick to wear the other team’s jersey and make a tearful apology at midfield during halftime to giving the other team every play in advance that New England will be running that day.
Guaranteed celebrities. Let’s face it, no one goes to a Lakers’ game just to see Kobe score 50. They go to see and be seen, so if the fan to celebrity ratio drops beneath 2-1 it’s autographed pictures of Jack Nicholson to the first 10,000 fans.
Guaranteed wrecks. Just like they go to see celebrities in LA, they go to NASCAR to watch cars run into each other and occasionally catch in fire. If there’s not at least two multi-car wrecks, one of which has to involve flames, everyone in attendance gets a free Dale Earnhardt Jr. T-shirt.
Guaranteed performance. Baseball players don’t have a lot of incentive to produce after signing huge contracts, and often it shows. How about making Andruw Jones earn some of his $36.2 million by standing at the exit and signing autographs for any fan who might still want them after once again going 0-for-4 and striking out three times with runners in scoring position.
A real fight. Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. already conned the public once by making more than 2 million households pay $55.95 for their pay-per-view fight. They’re planning to do it again in September, but real boxing fans can force them to give us better fights by simply refusing to touch the pay button on their remote.
Of course there are times when the voice of fans would simply get in the way. But there are still ways to get around that stubborn general manager who hasn’t delivered a thing other than big contracts and even bigger ticket prices.
Say your team has the No. 1 pick in the NBA lottery and needs a big decision made. Why not just put a few names on a roulette wheel and let Charles Barkley spin it?
The way Barkley’s gambling luck has been lately, it might be risky. But firing the general manager doesn’t always work either.
Source: ap.org | Tim Dahlberg
Popularity: unranked [?]
Leave a Reply:
You must be logged in to post a comment.