You're going to do whaaaaat? It was an amazing story to read, not just for the audacity of the plan, but for the financial entities that were involved in putting up enough money to create this Super league. Think billions of dollars. Think J.P. Morgan Chase. Think Wall Street. Think The City of London.
I'm not all that familiar with soccer, amateur or professional, but I do know that clubs have to show a fairly good record in order to stay in certain leagues, like the Premier League. Falter, and you're asked to leave the schedule until you improve.
But once in these top-tier leagues, you get to play the top tier teams. You might lose, but your fans get to see top flight opposition, and there is the chance that there will be an upset, and your modest club will upset the big boys. In sports, we live for upsets.
Soccer fans are unlike any other breed of human. They are incendiary. They riot. They stampede. They have behavior issues. When my son-in-law attended a soccer game in London last year he was told by the ticketing people to make sure he didn't wear the opposition's colors since he'd be sitting in the home team's section. Yank unwittingly wears orange, and who knows what could happen. He might he coming home in a body cast.
Years ago when I was a diehard New York Rangers fan and there were A LOT of fights between the clubs, the Rangers and the Bruins, the Philadelphia Flyers (Broad Street Bullies) with everyone. A hockey game could stretch way beyond a normal playing time with all the penalties called and all the interruptions to clean the ice of sticks, gloves and players after everyone got tired of throwing punches and pulling on each other's uniforms.
I used to deflect the non-fan criticism of hockey (I went to hockey game and a boxing match broke out.) with the counter claim that soccer fans are worse by far. They are truly dangerous.
But the rebel spirit can effect change. And it did. Two days of street protests, near rioting, and the Super League folded. That's faster than the World Football League and Donald Trump's presidency. I'm not sure they even got a logo out there. The elite club owners became fearful for their lives and reputations when the European fan was confronted with radical change in the alignment. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain gained in popularity when he came out against the Super League. No time to be a billionaire.
I have to hand it to those fans. As apparently a few writers do as well, particularly the WSJ Sports writer Jason Gay, and a WSJ columnist Joe Queenan.
Let's consider Jason's April 21st column, "The Super League is Dead. Here's What Sports Learned."
"As stunts go, the Super League was brazen, a nine-figure yacht with twin helicopter pads barreling into the harbor past the NO WAKE sign.
"By late Tuesday afternoon, the collapse was under way. Manchester City pulled out. Chelsea did too, prompting cheers at Stamford Bridge. By evening, the six Premier League clubs that joined the Super League were sulking back to the status quo with some public apologies. Arsenal copped to a "mistake." Liverpool's owner, John Henry, known locally as the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, offered a contrite video message.
"'I want to apologize to the fans and supporters of Liverpool Football Club for the disruption I caused over the past 48 hours,' Henry said. Amazingly, the Mookie Betts trade now has a rival."
Not bad sports writing coming from a guy who came to the WSJ after writing for GQ magazine. Imagine Jerry Jones apologizing for $75 parking fees in Dallas.
Joe Queenan, who writes a WSJ column that appears in their weekend edition gives us this: "With Super League Defeated, Fans Can now Fight Other Evils."
"The league would...effectively freezing out hundreds of small, less glamorous clubs and their fans. It would be as if the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers suddenly announced that they no longer wanted to play the Detroit Lions and the Tennessee Titans. Much less the New York Jets."
Joe now goes on to exhort the American fan to use the power of protest to effect change in professional sports. He lists a number of beefs from the time it takes to play the last two minutes of an NBA game., to axing pre-season football games. He suggests that you can't charge $75 for parking, or, if you haven't been in the playoffs for the last 10 years, you can't charge $15.50 for a beer.
I love the suggestion to peg ticket prices to performance. If teams can have flexible pricing to charge more when a top contender comes into town, then the fans should enjoy flexible pricing in the downward direction when the years roll by and an entire generation hasn't seen the Super Bowl. If this were to happen, Jet tickets should cost a minimum of $5, given that they haven't even been in a Super Bowl for over 50 years and their one remaining star player from the past, Joe Namath, is perpetually pitching Medicare Advantage coverage. Give it a rest, please Joe.
This should apply to all leagues. I would have loved for my Ranger season tickets to have decreased in price as they continuously failed to win the Stanley Cup. Ranger fans of the '90s know that the Cup win in 1994 was the first Stanley Cup win since 1940, a mere 54 years. My father was 25. They are now into their 27th! year without a Cup win. Like a decaying radio isotope, they're halfway to another 54 years. Tickets should be somewhere near $2 by now.
Soccer fans should no longer be called "hooligans." They are protesters for social change and should collectively be short listed for a Nobel prize.. We should be ashamed of ourselves for being lead into the night by the Judas goat of media and money. Our national emblem should drop the fierce looking bald eagle and replace it with the Brooks Brothers logo of a sheep in a sling.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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