WEEKLY WHINE

Occupy your team’s stadium

The Los Angeles Dodgers, a professional baseball club located in said California city, will soon be sold to a new investor or group of investors. The Dodgers have been under the ownership of a man called Frank McCourt for the last few years, and his stewardship has been less than optimal.

So the natural question is this: What other professional sport clubs in North America are being run into the ground by incompetent ownership? Or, at least, what other professional sport clubs should have better ownership than they currently do? We asked the GoobNet SPEED, and they found four clubs that need someone to save them. Are you that person? Please put your US$300,000,000 together and stand by to put in an offer to one of these individuals.

BALTIMORE ORIOLES

Peter Angelos has “led” the Orioles for nearly twenty years. The most notable event in all that time was Cal Ripken’s 2,131st consecutive game in 1995. The club has not reached the playoffs since 1997, finishing below .500 each year since then and finishing last in the AL East for the last four years. How bad are things in Baltimore? This offseason, fans are excited not about a new signing or a big trade, but about the cartoon oriole returning to the team’s cap. If Angelos really wants to serve his hometown, he should step aside and sell the team to someone with ideas bigger than the cap logo.

NEW YORK KNICKS

Cablevision owned the Knicks starting in 1999, eventually spinning off its sporting properties – the Knicks and Rangers, Madison Square Garden, and the MSG network – into a new company. The team has had little success in that time, having reached the playoffs only twice in the last ten years. James Dolan, the executive chairman of MSG Inc, is best known in New York City as the man who wantonly hired Isiah Thomas to serve as his team’s president. Luckily, if he leaves MSG Inc, he still has a music career to fall back on.

LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS

Donald Sterling has owned the Clippers since 1981, and the team has reached the playoffs only four times in that time. In addition to underfunding the team, his character has also been called into question, with lawsuits for employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and housing discrimination. He has even failed to follow through on a pledge to build a homeless centre near downtown Los Angeles, although he has built a new practise facility for the team for US$50,000,000. It is far past time for the NBA to ask itself what type of image it and its teams should be presenting. If Mark Cuban can be fined for simply speaking his mind, what must Sterling do to draw a fine?

CHIVAS USA

The Chivas are currently owned by Jorge Vergara, who also owns the original Chivas in Guadalajara. They are located in Los Angeles, CA, USA, but they have not had the impact that the other MLS club in the city, the Galaxy, have. Also, they suck.

So what should the Chivas do? Their owner is just one of their problems: he seems to have little to no interest in MLS. Their name and colours are also problematic: their original objective was to capture the large market of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, but many of them hate the original Chivas and would never support any other club that looks like them. Finally, their home stadium was paid for and built by the Galaxy’s owner, which means that they will never be anything more than second class citizens. The Chivas must move to Orange County, Riverside, San Diego, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Reno, San Francisco, Oakland, St Louis, Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Nashville, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Juneau, Honolulu, Yellowstone National Park, a stadium on the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, or indeed any location other than their present site.