Washblog

Sports are not a public cause, unless you're using the money to build neighborhood courts or community centers, for the public to play in for free or very minimal cost. This is a far cry from footing more than half the bill for a single stadium meant only for a professional elite to use.

The real crime of organized sports is that, after milking the public government for $300 mil to build a stadium, they then turn around and charge $30-$60 per seat, $10-$20 for parking, plus concession food and souvenirs priced at three or four times their real value.

I fail to see how this helps the community. You could take that $300 mil and put it towards schools, or parks, or transit, or homeless shelters, and it would do a far lot more good to the community than a single monolithic sports cathedral ever will.

by romulusnr on Tue Mar 13, 2007 at 10:05:24 PM PST

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I can't support spending hundreds of millions on sports stadiums when we can't afford to properly fund education or house the homeless.

Just. Can't. Do. It.

And if that isn't reason enough to Just Say No, then I always remember this post by a diarist at Conceptual Guerilla's:

We've all been there. You go to the stadium, you wear the team colors, the hat and the sweater. You wave the flag. You root for the team. You're a supporter. It's you and your kind against the other. We're the Warthogs, they're the Prairie Dogs. "Mash their viscera, gouge their eyes. C'mon, 'Hogs, skin 'em alive."

So, we're a great nation of sports-lovers and other-haters. We support our team, no matter what. Why? Because it's our team. We don't need a better reason than that. Our gut tells us it's right to support the team. We have school spirit. We support the team.

Well, guess what. That's just what the military drills into inductees. We're us; they're the other. They are sub-human. "Mash their viscera, gouge their eyes." Support our team. Don't worry about it. Just kill. And most inductees are primed to believe it. They went to the stadium, wore the colors, waved the flag.

But there's a big problem with this picture. We allow ourselves to be duped because our ancestors feared and hated the other, and their fear and hatred is a part of, but only a part of, our human nature. Our gut tells us to support the team, because its our team. But our intellect knows better.

And I know better.  I'm not letting some innate desire to root for a bunch of millionaires who play basketball for a living override my common sense.  You see, if the Sonics win the championship, so what?  What does that REALLY have to do with our so-called "civic pride"?  When you get right down to it, like Seinfeld said, all we really do is root for laundry.  One year, the guy wearing our laundry we root for. Next year, he's with the "enemy" team and we root against him.  Let's face it, we root for the laundry.  It's basic primitive caveman behaviour.

We all do it.  I LOVE sports.

But shouldn't we take more "civic pride" in funding the nations best educational system for our kids?  Shouldn't we take more "civic pride" in getting the mentally ill off our city streets and into healthcare facilities?

If the Sonics leave for Oklahoma I really won't care.  I'll always have Dennis Johnson, Spencer Heywood, Downtown Freddie Brown to remember.  But you know what?  Even if I didn't, I'd still have Sonny Sixkiller, the '91 Huskies, Michael Jackson's (the Pasco native not the singer)end zone defense in the Rose Bowl.  The referees theft of the 79 state basketball championship.

There's always someone to root for in sports.  Nostalgia for a bunch of millionaire basketball players is no excuse for giving their owners corporate welfare when we can't even fund our own schools adequately.

by Pen on Tue Mar 13, 2007 at 11:57:50 PM PST

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of the range of most people,

screw them.

They've intentionally made everything so expensive that for lots and lots and lots of families, pro sports are a 1 or 2 times a year budget buster, cuz

ya know, cuz ya only go 1 or 2 times a year, so, ya gotta keep with the joneses !!

what kind of loyalty does that breed ?? sure, for us old folks we remember skipping high school and getting lousy seats and going with our friends

or our dad or mom?

you spent a few bucks, but, it wasn't 150 or 200 for a crappy seat, outrageous parking, some watery beer, a few dogs and a hat.

how much of the total revenue goes to support family wage jobs? there are billionaires doing well off of millionaires, and a zillion peeee-ons working part time with shitty / no benefits... and a couple of office people with a real job and real salary?

wanna have fun at sports events? go to the local high school games! go to the tacoma or everett baseball games where parking, entrance, watery beer, a dog and a hat will set you back 25 bucks!

pro sports have EVERY right to make any and all lousy business decisions with THEIR BUSINESS.

THE only reason I subsidize f$$$ing safeco and qwest is cuz

I AM FORCED TO.

screw the sonics.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

by rmdSeaBos on Wed Mar 14, 2007 at 05:50:33 AM PST

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I'm not big into sports. I don't even know the rules. I'm into winning teams, screaming my head off, the spectacle, feeling absorbed by the mob, and  kibitzing.

I have a couple core complaints about professional sports.

The first is that they're a closed market. Baseball is exempt from the anti-trust laws. Owners screw the players. A handful of players are paid too much, the rest starve. This is well explained in Reinventing the Bazaar, a pretty good layperson's guide to markets.

The second is that professional teams are parasitic. Just look at football. It's amazing to me that professional teams sit at the top of a pyramid of institutions which promote players. It's like feeding beef into a grinder to make hamburger. Public schools, leagues, universities all feed talent into the embrace of teams. We, the public, pay for the operation of that pyramid.

The third is that professional sports distort behavior. Public schools divert huge resources into athletics. On an individual basis, the pressure to compete and excel is so great that people take steroids and other enhancements.

The fourth is that players and would be players are exploited. One of the most depressing movies I've ever seen is "Hoop Dreams", a documentary which follows two young prospects. I have a soft spot for Shawn Kemp, an amazing player, brought into the NBA at 19, who didn't have the maturity or support system to act responsibly. The long list of humans used up and disgarded by professional sports is awful. Shameful. Former players living the street. Once had buckets of cash thrown at them, every predator on the planet exploiting them (Don King), and left to die once they had nothing left to give. I'm not sure what this says about our society, but it's gross.

My fifth complaint is that professional sports are just an conduit for looting a community. My cousin had a concession at the Seahawks Stadium. Aramark runs the show, makes the rules. They charge per cup, per bun, per everything. They choose her workforce. And they keep all of the profits. Supporting local businesses my ass. Maybe some neighboring businesses are able to hold up their thimbles and get a little juice. But pretty much everybody below the top tier gets screwed. (Maybe this is another example of my second complaint.)

My sixth compaint is that professional teams have no attachment to their communities. I grew up in Bellevue. We LIVED for football. New comers just don't understand. Huskies on Saturday. Seahawks on Sundays. The waiting list for season tickets was years long. Going to a game was like a religious experience. Well, that didn't last. It took Ken Behring a few years, but he completely beat any goodwill or enthusiasm out of the fan base. I just haven't cared since. I can say pretty much the same of the Sonics and Mariners.

What would I support?

I'd like our sports to be broken out separately, so they sink or swim on their own. Firstly, no attachment whatsoever to our schools. More or less like Europe's soccer club system.

I'd like the sport teams to actually be competitive. Baseball is ossified. Basketball has okay dynamics. Football, the most egalitarian, where "dynasties" are fairly short lived, is the best.

My understanding of the European soccer model is that they have three tiers and it's possible for team to move up and down over time. So you get fewer perennial loser situations like the LA Clippers and Philly Pirates, where the owners pocket the guilt money from the championship contending teams.

Lastly, I think stupid uniforms should be banned. Or better, punishable by death. Nothing detracts from the glory of sports, like football's simplification of territorial expansion, than silly uniforms.

by zappini on Thu Mar 15, 2007 at 01:35:37 PM PST

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