People have made huge investments in high-definition television and sound systems for their home these days — and you can’t blame them for staying home and watching games, rather than paying to get into games. For a lot of reasons — including rude fan behavior, traffic, too-crowded stadiums, to name just a few — watching at home can be a better experience than actually attending the games.
It’s the new challenge in professional sports — even for a league as wildly successful as the NFL, where at the height of the sport’s popularity attendance has dropped for two straight seasons. How do you get people to come to your stadium and buy tickets when it’s so easy to sit at home and watch the game for free?
Well, in the NFL, the blackout rule helps. If the game isn’t sold out, home-team fans CAN’T watch the games at home. No other sport has this rule — but they probably should. Even though teams are making more money off television than they are gate receipts in every major sport, they are still reliant on those gate receipts for a significant portion of revenue.
That’s why, at this point, serious thought is being put into added value for spectators at games. And I’m not just talking about bobblehead dolls and refrigerator magnets, either. The huge scoreboards are a help, as are insightful interviews on those boards before and after games. All-you-can-eat buffets in certain sections is a big deal these days. But you’re going to see more innovations inside arenas and stadiums as teams attempt to fight the battle against stay-at-homes.
Just wait until you see sports on 3D TV. I watched a baseball game in 3D earlier this summer and it was spellbinding. Sports have been playing a dangerous game for years now, competing against their live gates with home TV.
Hey, I admit it. I love these great calls and here’s a great compilation that includes “Do you believe in Miracles,” “I don’t believe what I just saw,” “Havlicek stole the ball,” and “Do you believe in miracles?” There’s also a real cool Billy Mills call that I haven’t heard in decades. Enjoy it.
Bobby Thomson passed away yesterday… the man who hit “The shot heard ’round the world.” It was the home run that decided a three-game 1951 National League playoff between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers, at the time the most fierce rivalry in sports.
But what has made the home run so special over the years — long after the legendary Polo Grounds were torn down — was the call by the Giants’ great broadcaster Russ Hodges. I believe this call signaled a change in the way play-by-play men did their job. Prior to this, they were very conservative and staid… they stayed out of the emotion of the game.
But Hodges’ joy — his unrestrained emotion over the turn of events — seemed to open the door for others. And as the call was played over and over throughout the 1950s and ’60s, I think young announcers saw its reception as permission to become more involved in the game — and the home team.
Watch and listen to perhaps the greatest call in the history of baseball (at least until Jack Buck’s call of Kirk Gibson’s home run).
Kelly has been giving interviews everywhere over the last couple of weeks. Our mission today on the Morning Sports Page is to ask him some questions you haven’t ever heard him answer.
And hopefully, we’ll learn something new about the Oregon football coach. That’s at 8:20 a.m. today — at 95.5 FM and also 955thegame.com. And oh, by the way, comedian Gilbert Gottfried is expected to join the program at some point this morning, too. Last time we had him on he was hilarious — as you might expect.
The young kids playing there have no idea how lucky they are. The fact that he’s not still in the big leagues as a bench coach or even manager is ridiculous but in many ways “Treb” is as happy in the Northwest League as he was in the majors. The guy loves working with young kids.
The story itself is pretty solid, but the NYT has slipped a lot over the last few years. Man, there has to be enough editing so that silly errors in regard to “coach” and “manager” in baseball stories don’t happen.
More and more, I actually find media people who don’t understand that in professional baseball, the man running the team is not the coach, he’s the manager. And people helping him are his coaches, not his “assistant coaches.” Sorry, we all have our pet peeves and this is one of mine.
And the New York Times never used to make mistakes like that.
It’s certainly the last time Oregon and Oregon State will meet in baseball in the Portland area for quite a while. As you know, PGE Park becomes a soccer/football-only venue after this summer and it’s not likely either school would give up a home game to come to Portland to play in a venue that doesn’t seat way more people than their own ballparks.
And I don’t see any ballpark plans on the horizon anytime soon for this city. Baseball was the last Civil War sport being played outside Eugene or Corvallis and is a major attraction here. It should be even bigger this time with the Ducks seemingly already having nailed down an NCAA tournament berth and the Beavers still having a shot at one.
My big regret for tonight is that the weather is probably going to be a pain. It will certainly hold the attendance down a little, along with the game being telecast locally on Comcast Sportsnet. If you can’t make it to the ballpark, catch Joe Giansante and me on the broadcast at 6:30.
We’re working on this thing, but it’s slow going. Rebuilding some things that were lost due to a bit of a security crack that affected many WordPress blogs. Sorry that we couldn’t take comments yesterday but that function seems to be operating on some basis now. I hope.
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The story has been out there for a while but today it was official: Morning Sports Page Co-host Gavin Dawson is leaving us at 95.5 The Game after today for a new opportunity. It’s a big station in a big market and he’s going to be doing afternoon drive — which means, best of all, the guy actually gets to live a normal life. Or at least as normal as Gavin can live it.
We wish him the best of luck and we’ll be carrying on in the mornings from 6-9 with Chad “The Body” Doing. We’re very excited about the show moving forward.
And one last thing, Gavin — thanks for the nickname. I’m going to stick with that “Godfather” thing for a while. It seems to have caught on.
You may remember me from my 25 years at The Oregonian and Oregon Journal. Or my stint at the Portland Tribune or appearances on local talk radio. Well, times change and so have I. Right now, I'm still watching the world float by, but only when I have the time.
They call me "The Godfather" now, especially in the mornings, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on the "Morning Sports Page" with Chad Doing and Antonio Harvey, on Portland's No. 1 sports station, 95.5 The Game.
And I answer to that, too, in my other job, as combination host/panelist on Comcast Sportsnet's "Talkin Ball" show. You'll find us talkin' ball after every Trail Blazer game shown on CSN this season, as well as assorted other days during the off-season.
A lot of people ask me where I get those great ties I wear on television. Well, they come from Estes, a uniquely Portland store that provides personal service I've never found anywhere else. It's located at 16th and Northwest Glisan and I'd advise you to check it out.
Media, NFL, Sports Business, Stadiums, arenas | Dwight Jaynes | September 1, 2010 | 
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