Spin

Brian Robiskie

I'm not dwelling in the past. I'm explaining why attendance hasn't shot up at the new football stadium like it has all the other venues I listed.

If the basketball team went 3-33, you might see attendance drop like a rock in the second half of their season too.

Cherry pick??? I used the new facilities in NE Ohio as examples. I left the two football stadiums out as the teams have sucked over the last 5+ years and teams that suck in a bad economy generally don't draw many customers. A concept most people understand. Those numbers came from the best years at those venues. In fact I used the artificially inflated Cleveland Stadium attendance figure from its last year there where the team played on the fans nostalgia and told them they wanted to come back and say goodbye to the dump. It worked, attendance doubled over what it was the previous 5-10 years. The Aeros attendance is particularly telling, as the team moved from a high school quality stadium with bleachers and poor facilities to the more modern, more comfortable, more suitable facilities. The Cavs attendance should have gone down with the move from downtown to the woods of Richfield. You couldn't even get to it from Cleveland without doing a U-turn on a freeway exit ramp. The first year there, with still a losing team, attendance doubled. If you don't like my numbers, get off your ass and do your own study. You got what you asked for. I've wasted enough time trying to convince you that people are more apt to lay down money to sit in comfortable seats and have food and beverages and restrooms readily accessible than to sit on bleachers in a middle school gym.

Canton-Akron Indians attendance: 204,000 Akron Aeros attendance: 309,000 Cleveland Stadium: 2,177,908 (farewell season) Jacobs Field: 3,468,436 Cleveland Arena: 214,119 Richfield Coliseum: 753,686 Do I need to compare Rubber Blow attendance to InfoCision?

Might be a silly question, but could baseball play at Firestone? I know for softball they put up a temporary outfield wall. That would be a nice lighted venue that would be a huge improvement over the retention basin, and it wouldn't look so empty as when they play at Canal? And more important, do they sell the Three Dog Night during Zips games at Canal???

Is it true the university looked at the cost of renovating the Rubber Blow (in much worse shape than the JAR), funds from the state, benefactors, and what they could get for naming rights and sponsorship, and paid for the Info with that?

Acme/Zip was a tradition I wish was still around. We could sure use someone to step up like that again and get people down to the new stadium.

There are still area fire departments that use "Akron" threads on their hose couplings. Which was developed of course by Akron Brass. Everyone else uses National Standard Thread, the departments with Akron threads have to carry adapters for mutual aid calls. Ironically Akron Brass has been headquartered in Wooster since 1921.

Is it big enough for hockey?

+1

Whether or not spring college football will work or not is irrelevant as we're talking about the Akron Fire and the USFL. I was using the USFL as an example of why it's extremely difficult to break even with a minor league that travels cross country. If you notice, all other minor leagues are regionalized. The CFL is one exception, although it has network TV and plays teams games in their region more times than not. This is one part of the new USFL plan that IMO is a bad idea. If they were coming into being with a fat network TV contract that would be different, but as of yet, they aren't. They'll live and die at the gate. And travel expenses. The new USFL is using the successful MLS player/salary concept. Each player will work for the league and get paid by the league. That will prevent the rampant spending the original USFL had which put several franchises out ofbusiness. I remember San Antonio sneaking onto high school practice fields to practice, and showing up for a game and their jerseys had been repossessed. There still may be players out there owed paychecks. We had the Breakers moving every off-season. And nothing says "legitimate" like Arizona and Michigan trading teams. This concept didn't jive with the Akron Fire owners, at least that's the story. And they're looking for a new league. There are several more out there.

Yeah, NBA players aren't expected to play back-to-back games on the road.

...almost as boring as reading some old hen whining in a thread they're not interested in.

I don't think some understand the depth of sustainable minor league sports in the US. We know about the Eastern League because we have a team. And it is well attended. We don't hear about the other minor leagues if we don't have local teams. According to OurSportsCentral which has been around for years, there are 176 minor league games tonight. Here's a list of the leagues they recognize. Some are fly-by-night and come and go (along with their teams). Some are well managed and have been around for decades. Ohio has 9 baseball, 1 softball, 1 basketball, 3 football, 5 hockey, 4 soccer, and 1 lacrosse minor league teams. 24 teams recognized by OSC. Minor league sports are very sustainable.

The USFL with it's future hall-of-famers making high salaries was NOT commercially viable. The salaries took it out of it's scope. A minor football league could be commercially viable IF they remained in their scope. Question. Are the Lake Erie Crushers commercially viable? Unlike the other three minor league teams in NEOhio, the players aren't paid by a major league team. Yet they break even. They sell tickets, sell ads, and their longest road trip is an 8 hour bus ride. They don't pay MLB salaries or are forced to fly everyone to Portland Oregon for road games like the USFL did. That's where I see the new USFL failing. You're not paying them very much, but you're still flying 50-60 people across the country for a game you don't make any money on. MINOR LEAGUE SPORTS WORK IF REGIONALIZED. The Akron Aeros don't play the San Jose Giants. The Canton Charge don't play the Idaho Stampede. The Wooster Oilers don't play the Seattle Thunderbirds. Boise State doesn't travel to UConn, errrrr nevermind. The old and new USFL had teams criss-crossing the country for games. The WLAF had teams travelling across the Atlantic for regular season games. That's not sustainable. The skill level of the players doesn't matter (as long as you're not charging NFL admission). High school football fans who attend games on Friday night don't care that the skill level is sub-NFL. A minor football could be commercially viable if they live within their means, stay regionalized, and don't blow millions of dollars on 75 year old stadiums.

Well shit that's a vast improvement over the restrooms there when the Zips had it.

Sorry, sore subject for me. But that's all in the past, thanks to my Univ of Akron education.

I thought it was relevant to the topic, but whatever.

Done!!!

Welcome to 2013. People act like there aren't hundreds of other employers screwing their employees over every chance they get. They're no worse than several of the employers I have worked for. Hell the last private ambulance I worked for was taking child support out of my check, but not paying the county. I got hauled into court twice. They were handing out fraudulent medical insurance cards, after taking the money out of people's checks. Failing to pay vacation pay after it was approved and the employee took the time off. Late pay checks. AND they were government contractors... Getting paid vacation time after you leave a company? That's funny. I don't remember the last time that ever happened. If you want a real witch hunt, I'll provide you with names.

He can kiss goodbye to any type of licensure, he really has very few options in the US. His best bet is to finish out his college career anywhere he can, play in the minors, and hope to get into coaching somewhere. That IMO is his best bet to getting a paycheck.

Well said

Racing is a different sport. You work for an individual, not an administration, athletics dept., coaching staff, alumni, etc. And if all else fails you can make your own way as an owner-driver. Interesting analogy between moonshine and marijuana.

What I know is that Dambrot believes in second chances, as he said after the arrest, being he is a product of a second chance. Being in the business I'm in, I don't buy for a minute the BS about the "safety" of marijuana. But at the same time I agree to a point with GP about the severity of the offense. In my business I take a very different look at someone who commits DUI than someone in possession of a certain amount of weed in his house. One is putting everyone else's lives in jeopardy, the other is a felon? Marked for life? There have been much worse felonies by college athletes who returned to the game, not very far from here.