Yaaaaawwwwwwwwwn.

Oh, whoops.  Didn’t see you there.  I was just dozing at the big news.

All that fuss over the Super Bowl?  All that Cold War era security downtown?  It was supposed to make “us” money – right?

Not so much, according to the NYTimes:

Sports economists don’t view the situation quite the same way. They said the economic impact study for the Minneapolis Super Bowl began by saying all the right things about how past estimates had “been criticized as extremely overinflated, inaccurate, even purposely misrepresented.” In the end, though, it did the same thing.

“They always talk really good about that stuff, and then they go off the rails,” said Victor A. Matheson, a sports economist at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

Matheson has written extensively about the effect of Super Bowls. He has found that they usually generate anywhere from $30 million to $130 million in economic activity for the host city.

“Not nothing, and not what you would sneeze at,” he said, “but somewhere between a quarter and a tenth of what is being claimed.”

Take hotel rooms, for example. To host the Super Bowl, Minneapolis had to show that there were at least 24,000 of them within 60 minutes of the stadium, capable of accommodating visitors during the entire 10-day Super Bowl celebration. Accordingly, the economic impact report estimates the Super Bowl will generate 230,000 nights of hotel stays.

But if the Super Bowl were not in town, many of those hotel rooms would have been filled anyway, by business travelers, conventiongoers and — yes, even in Minnesota in the dead of winter — tourists. It is the net occupancy gain, not gross occupancy, that matters, said Frank Stephenson, an economist at Berry College in Mount Berry, Ga.

And on, and on.

Helga Braid Nation’s precious stadium – money extorted from taxpayers via the most base emotional manipulation this side of emotional domestic abuse, is a net wash, maybe, as of today – the peak of the stadiium’s public profile as of the first and last Super Bowl it will host.

…is that a few hundred thousand mouth-breathing morons ruin the good name of dozens of Philly sports fans.

We are excited to serve everyone biscuits tomorrow morning at our Philadelphia location but in order to do that it needs to be not burned down please

— Hardee’s (@Hardees) February 5, 2018

I mean, I’m glad the Iggles won, if only out of homer pride (I went to high school with Carson Wentz’s father, and high school and college with his uncle. Have I mentioned that North Dakota is a small place?) and because Pats fans aren’t a whole lot better.

But I’m always amazed people don’t remember it’s a game.

Welcome to Minnesota.

It gets cold here.  We’re kind of famous for it.

Oh, the weather this week?  This isn’t cold.  This is pretty middle of the road for the middle of winter.   Not especially notable.

“Boston Strong” my ass.  Suck it up, buttercups.  Only a week to go.  Do a polar plunge.

With the mathematical elimination of the Chicago Bears for the NFL playoff scene back in early September, and Carson Wentz’s injury leaving him out of the Philadelphia Eagles lineup at the Super Bowl, I officially have exactly the same reason to care about the Super Bowl that I always do; none whatsoever.

And try as I may, I cannot work up the faintest glimmer of interest in major college basketball, although that brand of the sport stands head, shoulders and ankles above NBA hoops.

Hockey? I know why people like it. It just leaves me cold.   No pun intended.

And as this post move, there are roughly 3 weeks until pitchers and catchers report to spring training – one of the glorious to glorious ceremonies in American life, indeed, But still a long, chilly slog before the boys of summer take to the diamonds.

But this is America. We don’t stay trapped in worlds we never made – we build our own.

No, I’m not just talking about this post; it would be accurate, but not complete. No, I’m talking the special little fantasy world that sports fans build around their pastime – spending their hard-earned money to watch millionaires chase balls around stadiums built by billionaires (with generous, coerced tax pair support) and the crimes against manners, decency, decorum, morality, property and other people that carry out in their zeal to live out that fantasy.

And so it’s time to inaugurate what may be perhaps (eventually) the grandest of all American sporting traditions; The Shot in the Dark First Annual Disgusting Fan tournament.

The rules are simple; in the comment section of this post, nominate the fan base of a team, along with one or more citations about their crude, violent, depraved, entitled or otherwise filthy behavior.

When the nominations are all in, I’m going to set up a bracket with the series of seeded polls (not the kind the city of Philadelphia greased to try to curb the lunacy of Eagles fans – the other kind) which will lead us to a champion – The most disgusting fan base in all of sports.

We will observe the following rules:

• You may nominate as many teams as you want – but the nominations must include one or more citations about the teams fans behavior.
• The teams can be from any sport, in any country, at the professional or major college level. High school sports, given the parent fans involved, are a league all of their own.
• Episodes of fan behavior must be from the last 20 years; lynchings carried out in the 1890s, unsurprising as they may be given the subject matter, fall outside the statute of limitations.

So there you go! Get your nominations in, and the voting will start next week!

I’ve watched it many, many times; the Keenum to Diggs pass that made decades of Minnesota sports fandom suck just a little less.

Or so I’m told.  I’m just counting down ’til pitchers and catchers report, honestly.  But while I think I’ve watched less than a half-dozen NFL games from the opening gun to the checkered flag since the greatest game of all time (the 1985/86 Super Bowl, pbui), I did manage to catch the last six playing / forty actual minutes of Sunday mights division final.

And the the pass, with :10 on the clock, was one of those things like Jack Morris’ seventh game and Kirby Puickett’s homer in game six (I don’t have to go into more detail, do I?  Exactly) that even casual fans will be talking about for decades:

So – great play.  Amazing.

But even with all of that – there are some people out there to whom I just want to say “Dude, yoiu take this stuff way too seriously“.

I’m not even being snarky, pinky swear:

It’s up there with “PEARL HARBOR ATTACKED” and “DEWEY WINS”, in m y book.

It’s called “Berg’s Fourth Law”, and not “Berg’s Fourth Joke” or “Berg’s Fourth Wry Quip”, for a reason.

It’s about time.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Players continue to kneel for the national anthem so the NFL decided not to broadcast that part of the game.  Out of sight, out of mind, right?

No.  Fans aren’t stupid.  We can tell you’re trying to hide the ball and we know you’re doing it because you’re siding with the protesters against the fans, which annoys us even more.  Ratings are down another 5% from last week.

I suspect we’re going to get a new self-destructive behavior metaphor: kill the golden goose, cut off your nose to spite your face, hoist on your own petard, New Coke, shoot yourself in the foot, and soon: “pulling an NFL” meaning “driving away your own customers to prove how virtuous you are.”

Joe Doakes

They’re smarter than us, you know.

Game 7 of the 1991 series.

..and I’m glad Howard Sinker brought it up.

By the way – hard to believe today is the 25th anniversary of Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.

Another baseball post-season is upon us.  And if you’re a Cubs fan – and they are my National League team – it’s another season to anticipate how epic this season’s choke is going to be.  Notwithstanding the fact that this season’s Cubs team is perhaps the best to ever take to Wrigley field, with the best record in baseball,  wondering what legendary exit the Cubs have planned.

It’s time to stop the “lovable losers” twaddle, says George Will:

So, all you purveyors of Cubs Gush, listen up. Referring to Wrigley Field as a “baseball cathedral” should be a flogging offense. It is just a nice little place on the North Side where men (calling major leaguers “boys of summer” should be punishable by keelhauling) work hard at a demanding and dangerous craft. And Cub fans, loyal through thin and thin, you must remember this: Your team at least won the Cold War. For years, it held spring training on Catalina Island near Los Angeles. So when a Des Moines radio sportscaster named “Dutch” Reagan went to report on them, he stopped in Hollywood for a screen test, and the Soviet Union was doomed. So there.

Fingers crossed.

Continue reading →

Tor from “Torwegian” notes with disapproval the ChiSox’ new stadium:

With some corporate marketing people, you just can fix stupid or financially desperate.  Count among them White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, quoted by WGN-TV:

“We are pleased to find, in Guaranteed Rate, a new naming rights partner founded in Chicago by Chicagoans, which shares our commitment to the city and to our fans. We view this partnership as an opportunity to connect a successful Chicago business with a historic baseball franchise, and we look forward to growing this important relationship over the coming years as millions of fans enjoy White Sox baseball at Guaranteed Rate Field.”

Dumb name?  Probably – but not as dumb as the taxpayer support that went into it.

I’d happily go to “Pepto-Bismol Park”, if they and the teams’ billionaire owners did the building.

Put another way – if “Guaranteed Rate” could guarantee us a rate of 0% taxpayer subsidy, I’d swallow my pride and root for the ChiSox.