| "Sturdy lads from the mill towns …" The
words are ones to which I keep coming back, citing them again and again. They are
inscribed at the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a means of honoring the men who founded this
game.
Good souls. They would go out on Sunday afternoons and kick the bejesus out of one
another more for the sheer love of the game than the money involved, which wasn’t
much.
Because of these men, a game received an impetus. It would thrive. It would become the
game of our times. Those playing it would come to represent a privileged class. And the
working class, which was there in the game’s beginning, has been excluded by ticket
pricing which has made professional football available only to those of substance.
If you live in the East, you have to be aware that hockey is the game for the working
class. Show up at Giants Stadium, to cite just one NFL facility, and you see the
up-and-coming of this world, corporate types with their blue blazers and their fancy cars
and their trophy wives.
You don’t see many guys who look as if they had been wearing blue shirts through
the workweek.
The most egregious example of what has occurred in our game is the Super Bowl. You
seldom see children attend one of these things.
The reason?
The game is so expensively priced that one must strive (and succeed) for a lifetime in
order to be able to meet the price of admission.
For these reasons, one must applaud what owner Arthur Blank is doing with the Atlanta
Falcons, the NFL franchise for which Blank, a co-founder of The Home Depot, paid $545
million. Blank is offering season tickets to Falcons games in the Georgia Dome for $100.
In the first three or four days of the sale, the club sold more than 10,000, according to
Aaron Salkin, Falcons director of communications.
If you have visited Atlanta, you probably know that the Georgia Dome is in the area
known as Vine City, which is not suburbia. As Falcons season tickets were priced before
Blank’s price cut — $330 for the cheapest seats — Vine City’s citizens
could not afford season tickets. They can now.
The Falcons, of course, are getting something out of this — selling seats that
otherwise likely would have been unsold. By Salkin’s account, last season the Falcons
had an average attendance of 54,000 in a stadium accommodating 71,000.
Slashing the prices of some season tickets — others are available in Atlanta for
$370, $240 and $190 — was something Blank hit upon after he flew home with the team
following its final game a year ago, a 31-13 defeat to the Rams in St. Louis.
Blank had a question for his athletes: "What can we do?" The answer he
received was that the team needed excitement in its building; read "more
people."
Blank also retained a marketing firm. It found that while the Atlanta public considered
ticket pricing a problem, it also was not pleased with parking in and around the Georgia
Dome or with opportunities to engage in tailgating.
Last season, the Falcons had 2,000 "dedicated" parking places, places persons
with the proper passes could be assured of occupying.
This season, it has more than 10,000, priced at $8 per game (down from $12 in 2001),
and most of them encourage tailgating.
A fellow mindful of economy who had paid more than $100 for a season ticket might not
be delighted to learn that the $100 admissions were available.
No problem.
The Falcons are giving him the option of having his seat location moved or receiving a
refund.
It also is possible to order these $100 bargains on the Internet.
Blank’s thrust is that once a person turns off the interstate and toward the
Georgia Dome on a Sunday in the fall, he should be aware that something special is
occurring.
Banners are to celebrate the Falcons. In the parking lots, there is to be entertainment
and a pavilion for organized children’s activities.
If you are taking a 5-year-old to a football game and the child should become restless,
you can leave the stadium with the child, have the little nipper do whatever children do
in pavilions meant for them, and then return to the stadium.
You wouldn’t want to miss too many of Michael Vick’s plays.
I am told there is a buzz about Atlanta relating to the Falcons. The chance of being
able to see the team’s games without having to pay an arm and a leg has to be in some
degree responsible for that chatter.
Then there’s Vick, who is going to be quarterbacking Dan Reeves’ team. One
way or another, Vick can make the game exciting. As a rookie, he was sacked once for every
six dropbacks (23 times).
All that for a season-ticket price of $100. How would you say "fine" in a
Southern accent? "Fahn"?
Say it.
Oh, yes. In my town, the Chargers’ lowest season-ticket price is $240. Most NFL
clubs play to capacity, or close to it.
Those that do not, and I can think of several, would do well to examine Blank’s
policies.
Pro football should not be only for the rich.
It did not start out that way.
Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1961 and for
PFW since its inception in 1967. |
