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To: Defiant

Cleveland could use an NFL team. Some day...


49 posted on 01/05/2016 2:45:14 AM PST by doosee (Captain, we are approaching a new level of Hell.)
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To: doosee
I do feel for the people of Cleveland. It must be painful for the Ravens to have two Super Bowls after leaving Cleveland. The fans are good and loyal. Same in San Diego.

The NFL is making a big mistake to allow these moves willy-nilly. I can see letting the Rams move back--they only left because the owner wanted to bring football back to her home town. I still say LA Rams. To a lesser extent, I can see letting the Raiders go back, they were there for a long time and developed a sizable following, although I wouldn't allow it myself, it is understandable. But to let the Chargers leave just because the owners want to increase the value of a franchise they bought for $50 million because it was a small market franchise, and destroy the relationship they have created with millions of fans is just wrong. It betrays a failure to understand what the product they are producing is.

The "product" that the NFL creates is a 7 months long reality TV series pitting teams and cities against each other. To create the drama, you require tens of thousands of screaming fans who buy into the notion that the team in their city represents them and their community. That it is not the uniform they are rooting for, as Seinfeld famously put it. Those fans are a lifelong labor of love. Their role is combined with the seasonal input of players and coaches. Their turnover is huge year over year, but for one season, they are all together, and their results become part of the drama that is the product.

If you take the cities and fans out of it, if it's not New England vs. The Giants, or San Diego v. Oakland, with 55 years of history in that game, then the games become uniforms, the fans become a backdrop like the fake fans at fake sports like the X-games. That will diminish the product that the NFL creates, and aid to the decrease in viewership and revenues that may have already started. The NFL is already fighting headwinds from the liberal side of the country, who don't like manliness to begin with. Alienating the fan base that still likes the product is not a good idea.

So, expansion into the LA market may be a good idea from a business standpoint. It makes no sense to do that expansion at the expense of longstanding franchises.

59 posted on 01/05/2016 8:36:00 AM PST by Defiant (RINOs are leaders of a party without voters. Trump/Cruz are leaders of voters without a party.)
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