Post by Banana Cat on Feb 20, 2012 7:27:58 GMT -5
Caution? With the AIF it should be fear.
www.macon.com/2012/02/13/1902848/use-caution-in-showing-optimism.html
www.macon.com/2012/02/13/1902848/use-caution-in-showing-optimism.html
Use caution in showing optimism for this project
The past decade has not been kind to Macon’s minor league teams.
There was a time, not too long ago, that this city was well represented by minor league teams. Baseball? Hockey? Arena football? All three of those sports had a team -- participating in nationally recognized leagues, no less -- playing in Macon a decade ago.
These days? Not a whisper. No minor league sports at all.
Blame the economy. Blame the politicians. Blame the fans. Blame the short commute to Atlanta. Wherever the blame lies, it’s a sad situation.
There’s an effort out there to bring a minor league indoor football team to Macon. It’s a start. But there’s a lot of work to do to overcome the damage that has been done to the city’s sports résumé during the past decade.
Ten years ago, the Macon Braves played their final season at withering Luther Williams Field before departing for a brand-new stadium in Rome. Affiliated minor league baseball hasn’t come back since, and two full-fledged independent leagues spent just one season here before departing.
Minor league hockey, an experience that began with one of best team names around in the Macon Whoopee, closed down in 2005 when the Macon Trax dropped out of the Southern Professional Hockey League.
Arena football was the final significant minor league sport to leave town, with af2’s Macon Knights folding in 2006.
Three teams down to none. A full plate diminished to nothing.
The loss of hockey can’t really be blamed on Macon. There was a trend of minor league hockey franchises pulling out of the South even before the recession started. The hockey boom in the South took place when the Canadian dollar was weak, and the attraction of playing in the U.S. diminished once Canada’s loonie coin reached par with George Washington’s dollar bill.
The recession also hit indoor football hard. The Knights were one of the first casualties in a massive wave of changes that almost shut down the Arena Football League entirely by the end of the decade. The league eventually relaunched, but it no longer has a minor league circuit.
Baseball is the only loss that can truly be pegged to inaction by Middle Georgia’s leaders. I wasn’t in Georgia when the Braves moved to Rome, but the franchise shift should have been a wake-up call to area politicians to get moving on a new stadium. Unfortunately, the only thing we have heard is a desire to remodel Luther Williams, a facility that is outdated at best and rundown at worst, located in an isolated part of the city.
The effort to bring in an indoor football team -- the Macon Steel of the fledgling American Indoor Football organization -- to play at the Macon Coliseum is welcome news, but news that should be taken with a grain of salt. Indoor football outside of the Arena League framework is littered with false starts and quick stumbles. Several leagues have come and gone -- there are a couple of leagues that are trying to restart this year following financial issues -- so there isn’t a proven blueprint to follow.
How many times has Macon -- or any city of Macon’s size, for that matter -- seen promises of minor league sports teams, only to see those promises never materialize? I’m not saying that this effort is going to flop, and in fact I would like to see this effort succeed in order to generate interest in other projects, but any time you talk about a new minor league organization, a healthy dose of caution is needed.
There’s no doubt that people in Middle Georgia like football. And Macon could use a home team to root for. But there are a lot of questions that need to be answered about this effort.
The past decade has not been kind to Macon’s minor league teams.
There was a time, not too long ago, that this city was well represented by minor league teams. Baseball? Hockey? Arena football? All three of those sports had a team -- participating in nationally recognized leagues, no less -- playing in Macon a decade ago.
These days? Not a whisper. No minor league sports at all.
Blame the economy. Blame the politicians. Blame the fans. Blame the short commute to Atlanta. Wherever the blame lies, it’s a sad situation.
There’s an effort out there to bring a minor league indoor football team to Macon. It’s a start. But there’s a lot of work to do to overcome the damage that has been done to the city’s sports résumé during the past decade.
Ten years ago, the Macon Braves played their final season at withering Luther Williams Field before departing for a brand-new stadium in Rome. Affiliated minor league baseball hasn’t come back since, and two full-fledged independent leagues spent just one season here before departing.
Minor league hockey, an experience that began with one of best team names around in the Macon Whoopee, closed down in 2005 when the Macon Trax dropped out of the Southern Professional Hockey League.
Arena football was the final significant minor league sport to leave town, with af2’s Macon Knights folding in 2006.
Three teams down to none. A full plate diminished to nothing.
The loss of hockey can’t really be blamed on Macon. There was a trend of minor league hockey franchises pulling out of the South even before the recession started. The hockey boom in the South took place when the Canadian dollar was weak, and the attraction of playing in the U.S. diminished once Canada’s loonie coin reached par with George Washington’s dollar bill.
The recession also hit indoor football hard. The Knights were one of the first casualties in a massive wave of changes that almost shut down the Arena Football League entirely by the end of the decade. The league eventually relaunched, but it no longer has a minor league circuit.
Baseball is the only loss that can truly be pegged to inaction by Middle Georgia’s leaders. I wasn’t in Georgia when the Braves moved to Rome, but the franchise shift should have been a wake-up call to area politicians to get moving on a new stadium. Unfortunately, the only thing we have heard is a desire to remodel Luther Williams, a facility that is outdated at best and rundown at worst, located in an isolated part of the city.
The effort to bring in an indoor football team -- the Macon Steel of the fledgling American Indoor Football organization -- to play at the Macon Coliseum is welcome news, but news that should be taken with a grain of salt. Indoor football outside of the Arena League framework is littered with false starts and quick stumbles. Several leagues have come and gone -- there are a couple of leagues that are trying to restart this year following financial issues -- so there isn’t a proven blueprint to follow.
How many times has Macon -- or any city of Macon’s size, for that matter -- seen promises of minor league sports teams, only to see those promises never materialize? I’m not saying that this effort is going to flop, and in fact I would like to see this effort succeed in order to generate interest in other projects, but any time you talk about a new minor league organization, a healthy dose of caution is needed.
There’s no doubt that people in Middle Georgia like football. And Macon could use a home team to root for. But there are a lot of questions that need to be answered about this effort.