The Battle for the Passion of the Florida Sports Fan
Attendance, Barack Obama, Minor League Affiliates, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Tampa Bay Rays, Tampa Bay Rowdies 10 Comments »
On August 3rd, 1980 more than 16,000 people packed Tampa Stadium for the “Last Tango in Tampa”, a Championship Wrestling of Florida event featuring the best wrestlers of the day. Through a sweltering heat – the air was “hot and heavy” according to announcer Gordon Solie – fans watched legends such as Andre the Giant, Nikolai Volkof, and Dusty Rhodes duke it out in the squared circle. According to the Tampa Sports History blog, fans “came from all corners of the state” to see the show and be part of what was then the largest crowd to see a professional wrestling show in the State of Florida.
Besides record-setting wrestling crowds, 1980 was a good year in the turnstiles for other Tampa-area sports clubs. While the Tampa Bay Bucs were drawing over an average of 62,000 per game, the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the local professional soccer club, were also setting their franchise attendance season record. The sports fever wasn’t exclusive to Tampa either, as the Florida State Seminoles were also averaging nearly 52,000 per game, a surprising 101% of their stadium capacity, and over 125,000 people sat in the bleachers to watch the Daytona 500.
With two pro teams and three college football powerhouses (FSU, UF, and the University of Miami), there was no doubt in 1980 Florida was a football state that dabbled in soccer, pro wrestling, and the occasional NASCAR race.
As the population of Florida exploded from 9.7 million in 1980 to 18.5 million in 2010, so too did its sports climate. While Championship Wrestling of Florida folded (only to return as Florida Championship Wrestling in 2007) and the Rowdies folded (only to return in 2008), nearly a half-dozen major league teams joined the fold. The state is now home to a third NFL team, two NHL teams, two NBA teams, and two Major League Baseball teams. And that does not include representatives in the Arena Football League, the XFL, the Senior Professional Baseball League, the Lingerie Football League, numerous minor league hockey teams, a gaggle of minor league basketball teams, and an alphabet soup of professional wrestling organizations. And the Florida State League is still alive and well. And the University of South Florida is now a force to be reckoned with on the state college football scene.
Strictly from a major professional sport perspective, whereas there was once only two teams (the Bucs and Dolphins) for slightly less than 10 million people, there are now nine major professional sports teams (the Bucs, Dolphins, Jaguars, Magic, Heat, Lightning, Panthers, Marlins, and Rays) for under 19 million people.
Earlier this week, New York Times best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell explored the difference between passive support and passionate, active support, particularly as it pertains to online communities. Whereas Gladwell peered into the world of social media as the platform of his examination, he could have easily looked into any group of people spread too thin trying to follow too many things. Although programs such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and YouTube are great for getting out messages or receiving and following messages from a group of people, as Gladwell postulates, actions based on these social media messages are rare.
How fitting then that one of this week’s major admonishments of the active support of the Tampa Bay Rays came via social media – posted on my Twitter feed ironically somewhere between Lightning pre-season scores and press release statements from the Bucs coaching staff.
But David Price wasn’t the only public figure lamenting lack of active support. On the same day Price and Evan Longoria called out the people of the Tampa Bay area, Orlando Sentinel writer Andrew Carter stated that average attendance to Florida State football games had dropped drastically from over 80,000 in 2006 to barely over 60,000 in 2010, a nearly 20% decrease. Granted, the performance of the Florida State Seminoles had been lackluster at best over the last decade, but this season was supposed to bring new hope in the presence of new head coach Jimbo Fisher and Heismann Trophy candidate Christian Ponder.
Meanwhile, on the exact same day the Rays and Orlando Sentinel stated their claims, President Obama likewise called out his Democratic support base, calling their apathy “inexcusable”. This from the same president with 5.5 million twitter followers and who was widely praised for his ability to utilize the Web in the 2008 elections.
So is apathy a local dilemma, a regional calamity, or a national trend? Read the rest of this entry »
