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Perspectives on Popularity

January 13, 2015

With the National Football League about to take center stage in this country’s sporting drama this month, some “Down Under” comparisons provide perspective to moderate how popular and venerable the NFL is.

The NFL’s longest waiting list to become a season ticket holder is found in the NFL’s smallest market, Green Bay, where the waiting list to become a Packer season ticket holder is now 30 years. It’s so crazy that my sister, who splits her time between Vermont and Florida, still controls the two season tickets her father first obtained 55 years ago; and the tickets never go unused. The Packers season ticket waiting list is more than 80,000 names long.

However, the waiting list to join the Melbourne Cricket Club in Australia is even more imposing. Currently, more than 236,000 people are waiting to join the more than 100,000 active members, 40 percent of whom have only “restricted” privileges. An average of 10,000 fans join the waiting list each year, and their projected waiting time has now reached more than 40 years.

The Melbourne Cricket Club is the oldest sporting club in Australia, founded in 1838; while the Green Bay Packers is a relative upstart, founded in 1919. Still, it is the oldest NFL franchise in continuous operation with the same name and city ... since 1921 ... 83 years after the Melbourne Cricket Club.

By the way, the Michigan High School Athletic Association has operated under that name since 1920 ... one year longer than the Packers.
Second Half by MHSAA

Our Times

November 11, 2011

It is in fashion to say that schools (and also school sports) are operating in a time of unprecedented austerity.  This is not true.  Not even close.

While it may be true that recent times in Michigan have seen a deeper and longer recession than most people have lived through before, it is not true that these are the worst times ever for school sports.

Imagine the austerity, and imagine yourself administering school sports during the Great Depression when unemployment was three times today’s rate.  Or during World War II when gasoline was rationed and MHSAA tournaments were cancelled.  Now those were tough times!

What may make us think at this moment that these current times are the worst times or are unique times is that these are our times, and we don’t yet see light shining at the end of the tunnel through which we’re traveling.

Because it affects us now and isn’t something we’re reading about in history, we tend to believe these times are somehow much worse and that today’s problems are somehow of such a different type that our programs are at greater risk than ever before.

It is possible, of course, that our reaction to these times will be unique and will make these times the worst ever.  In other words, it’s not the troubled times per se, but our reaction to them that might set these times apart from all others.

It is possible that we will chop and change school sports so much that we never get the program back on the course of truly school-sponsored, student-centered educational athletics – a brand of sports unique in the world.