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The (very fortunate) Death of American Football?
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Like I said, I'd like to see some data. Your assertion was fairly authoritative, but my experience tells me otherwise.
I get what you're saying, but that's an argument that supports having people dig ditches and fill them up again as much as building sports stadiums. So maybe it's something to consider if we need a Keynesian stimulus but if we're going to go that route it'd probably be better to just fix some roads.
And, unless I'm mistaken, most of the tax money for stadiums comes from the state level. I'm all for economic stimulus, but the states have shit credit so it is expensive to go that route, and most of them are so broke it would be criminal to take money away from the projects they actually need to do to finance a stadium.
my point is is saying that there's zero scientific evidence that revenue generates tax is a little silly.
Most of the guys I work with played various sports in high school. Not even talking about football here. They retell horror stories (with pride and glee) about torturous and highly illegal stuff their coaches put them through. Sports players are treated like medieval farm animals. Pretty much anyone I know who went on to play college sports of any kind have chronic injuries. Again, not even talking about football. And these same guys, spending weeks in surgery and pain, are pushing their elementary school sons hard to be the best little leaguers, with multiple practices and games every week, exhausting them until late at night. There are some good lessons to be learned from team sports, and my sons play a lot of sports, too, and I frequently coach. But I do my best to squash the psycho culture that permeates so much of it. It's this weird jingoistic warrior-spirit and pride thing that makes people insane about excelling at sports far beyond the point of fun and exercise.
Gross revenue is generated, but it usually isn't enough to cover the interest on the bonds used to build the stadium, so it's a net negative. Many stadium deals also include provisions that let the team keep some of the sales tax revenue, along with breaks on the property tax on the stadium land.
Some of the more recent stadium deals aren't quite as terrible, so it seems that legislatures are catching on a little bit.
Yeah I guess I'd like some, too. It's something I've seen in the media a few times (Nightline, the Atlantic, etc), but they don't usually give a source for it either.
-http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/sports/08stadium.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
it's just really really hard for me to believe that it's net negative.
One thing I've decided from my own experience in playing football for 16+ years is that any kids of mine won't play sports until junior high at the earliest, and never more than one sport at a time.
Youth sports is a nightmare of obsessive parents living vicariously through their toddlers and freak kids with pituitary problems crippling normal-sized children.
dis shit is makin me mad
Unfortunately, as a massive fan of rugby, this just isn't true. Whilst it doesn't have the extremes of American Football, Rugby is starting to show a body of evidence towards long term brain damage for pro players from multiple concussive and non-concussive blows. players.
However, rugby has a chance of getting better as , by the laws of the game, the types of concussive blows should not happen except by freak accident. It is the pernicious ignoring of the laws at the breakdown at the pro-level which results in players charging headfirst into each other or performing shoulder-charge clearouts of head first players. The IRB is a couple of lawsuits away from being forced to make their top refs ref the game as actually stated in the law book rather than trying to create a TV spectacle.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/business/surprised-taxpayers-are-paying-for-bonds-they-did-not-vote-on.html?pagewanted=all
So basically, counties have been guaranteeing bonds of enterprise, or otherwise independent authorities, and they're able to do so and not disclose the specifics of the enterprise loan in their own financial statements. Any kind of pre-approval for these bonds don't seem to happen because of the nature of these guarantees.
If anyone wants to look through this, here's a GASB statement on this issue:
http://gasb.org/cs/BlobServer?blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobkey=id&blobwhere=1175824109417&blobheader=application/pdf
what the fuck. That's right from the horses mouth that as of right now they don't have to show these potential liabilities until the shit already hits the fan.
Yup! If you want to see true stupidity, look at minor league stadiums. A county near here decided (through magic I guess) that they would be able to pay for a new stadium by increasing their hotel and car rental taxes and for some reason the increased tourism from a minor league baseball team would be enough to cover it.
The county is now having to use property tax revenue to cover the shortfall.
There was an economist at one of the local universities that led a "WTF is wrong with you people" campaign, but it failed.
and they don't even have to accrue for the liability until the debt they are guaranteeing falls through. that way, they bypass any voter approval and get around any kind of debt limits imposed on them by the state.
i'm angry
angry about stadiums
Yeah, having been in Round Rock recently, I had to park next to The Dell Diamond, the stadium for their AAA(!) team . . . . that has seating for 12,000 people.
Most MLB games don't sell that many tickets.
Well I think they sell that many tickets, but getting them all to show up is another matter entirely (a quick glance at Stubhub shows 1,300-3,500 tickets for sale for all the remaining Braves home games, for example).
The Gwinnett Braves stadium is similar to what you're describing for Round Rock. It's a nice stadium, but I don't think AAA teams need a 2-deck stadium...
Also, the reason that Ball State and WKU weren't picked for bowl games last year is pretty simple. They ran out of bowls. This happens occasionally. Is it kind of shitty that not all bowl eligible teams get to play in a bowl every year, but it used to be that there were only like 4 or 5 bowls and everyone else could fuck off.
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I'm just kind of shitting on your point but on average all MLB teams sell at least 19k tickets
http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
Even in those biggest markets, you're only at 60-80% capacity, though. Some are at 50% or lower.
Now, extrapolate that to a AAA club 20 miles outside of Austin, TX.
There is no fucking way the Pirates have averaged 19k tickets over the past decade
No fucking way in hell
Not that going to some random-ass bowl game on Dec 18 is a great privilege anyway - the only people that make money on the non-major bowls are the bowl committees and ESPN.
Also, it should be pointed out that most of the non-BCS FBS and FCS programs keep their entire athletic budget afloat by taking payoff games against the major powers. For those not familiar, a program like Florida will pay someone like Coastal Carolina a large sum of money ($750K-$1.5M seems to be where the high-end ones fall now) to come into their home stadium and get their ass beat. In turn, CC will sometimes pay some D2 team a much smaller sum to come get beat up, which I find hilarious for some reason.
Hey! They have a fair shot at winning. Just ask Michigan.
Also, bowl games just don't mean much anymore since the only real hurdle is going one game over .500. There are all kinds of bowls that are just shit, like the Independence Bowl and Armed Forces Bowl and the Texas Bowl.
But back to your other point, Div-1 football basically funds the entire school's athletics program (outside of possibly basketball). For a lot of those schools, killing football would mean killing a bunch of other sports, too. Now, granted, I'm not the world's biggest supporter of school sports for the sake of it, especially women's sports. I don't think schools should be made obliged to offer sports programs to anyone.
It's pretty easy to manipulate the "tickets sold" number. Before they moved, the Marlins would announce attendances of 15K at games when there were clearly about 3,000 people in the stadium.
Flipping through random years, they're better than you think. Only abysmal sub 10k city I could see was Montreal. This is getting off topic though
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
Notice App State hasn't played many of those games since then :P. There are certainly some FCS teams that are capable of being competitive in these games (Richmond beating Duke 2 years in a row doesn't count :P), but the vast majority aren't.
Its fun, relatively cheap, and a nice way to spend an afternoon with friends/family. You do it the same reason you go to any sporting event.
Except for the "relatively cheap" part.
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http://www.rogerdeanstadium.com/florida/season/
Season tickets for lower level play are very cheap. Way cheaper than going to a movie each one of those nights.
The cheapest seats for an NFL game these days are about $50 per. Twice that if you want to see what's actually happening.
I once went to see a St Paul Saints game for like $3 and there were $1 hot dogs and beer. The new balls were brought out to the pitcher by a trained pig, there was a guy who came around and entertained the crowds by having us pretend we were in a roller coaster, they raked the sand in the 5th inning by having a father son race towing the big rakes behind them, and the outfield seats were Jacuzzis. That sir is entertainment!
going to minor league games is fun and all, but the cost (of the stadium) is ridiculous and I can drink cheap beer at home
Anyway, I don't really have a moral issue with pro football because the dudes are adults and well compensated and their safety/practice/etc procedures are collectively bargained. But at lower levels, yeesh.
I think at the college level could relatively easily get to a point at which economically, it at least seems equitable (better insurance for players against injury, revenue held in trust for lifetime medical expenses, larger stipends possibly also held in trust, etc.)
I don't really think the game is going to 'die,' just because it's far from clear that the safety issues are considered a big deal in the parts of the country that are truly its heartbed. I wouldn't be surprised if some schools quit playing football (or possibly transitioned to flag or 7 on 7 or something), but I don't think it'll go away as long as there's as much money as there is in the college/pro game.
I mean hell boxing hasn't 'died,' and that's a sport in which the literal competitive goal is to give the other guy a concussion.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
App State was the FCS national champ the year before they beat michigan, right? They're a perennial power at that level, not chopped liver. Plus, michigan was terrible that year.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It also has to do with the fact that the top 'champions' basically have free reign to pick who they fight against; a bunch of b-stringers that promise easy wins in the sport.
The fights that you'd actually want to see never happen, because those fighters are too worried about losing their coveted 'undefeated' status.