ONE MO' THING, 6/17/11 EDITION
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THE RUNDOWN
Pioneer speakers bumping as I smoke on the pound.
Guests
3:45 - Chris Mack. Successful coach of a local basketball squad.
Topics
The Bengals, their rebuttal. and whether the customer is always right.
The Reds, the Jays, and the joy of six.
Brandon Phillips says it'll be hard to keep him. It should be.
A six-foot Burmese python was found by the Anderson Township KFC. Sorry, we have to discuss this.
That and other awesomeness that I'll probably make up, staring at 3:04 today on ESPN1530. Hit play, turn up, and walk away.
Oh, and get your tickets for the Reds Tweetup.
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This is an interesting take on the NCAA's reaction to UK celebrating John Calipari's 500th 458th win.
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There are plenty of ways to breakdown the Bengals' rebuttal to the ESPN The Magazine Franchise Rankings. None however, will top this effort from CincyJungle.com. This is as accurate as they come...
You can believe what you want with the Bengals response to ESPN The Magazine's rankings. But at some point this team has to stop treating their fans like mindless zombies, a cash cow willingly handing over hard earned money that's becoming a rarer commodity as the struggling economy stretches while not getting something in return. We realize you can't win every game and we realize there's going to be down seasons. That's just the nature of the NFL. And most of us have even excepted that 2011 will largely be a rebuilding year; the type of year that wins will be nice, but progress towards 2012 is better.
At the same time, rather than acknowledging that fan relations is down, the Bengals excuse themselves from the dire consequences of a fan base that grows increasingly agitated. The disconnect continues.
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A FEW MO' THINGS, 6/17/11 EDITION
From ESPN.com
ESPN The Magazine says the Bengals are the 122nd best franchise in North American Professional Sports. The same publication says the Reds are 15th.
The gap between the two is wider than a mere 107 places.
The magazine bases its rankings on a number of factors, and winning percentage is obviously one of them - none of the teams in the bottom ten made the postseason in the past year - but the criteria goes far beyond on-field, on-court, or on-ice performance. From ESPN...
In all, 122 teams from the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball were ranked in order, based on a weighted average of scores in eight different categories ranging from the quantitative to the emotionally subjective: “bang for the buck” (24.3%), players (16.6%), fan relations (16.5%), affordability (14.1%), stadium experience (9.1%), ownership (9.0%), title track (6.7%), and coaching (3.9%).
“The best teams in sports find ways to reward their fans’ devotion,” said ESPN The Magazine editor, Peter Keating. “The teams at the top of our Ultimate Standings are winners on the field, but, as we write in the magazine, they’re truly notable for returning fans’ love—keeping core players, discounting tickets, investing in their communities. Value, both economic and emotional, has always figured prominently in our rankings, but this year we heard louder than ever that a team’s commitment to its fans matters more than anything else, more than even new stadiums and championship rings.”
And there's the reason for the Banks project-sized gap between the two franchises in ESPN's rankings, on the field, and in our community.
Look where the Reds are. 15th, ahead of franchises like the New England Patriots, San Francisco Giants, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Miami Heat, and Dallas Mavericks, to name a few. Each of those teams have won championships in the last seven years, and all would be reasonable bets to continue competing for titles while the Reds just enjoyed their first winning year in a decade, so the won-loss record is a factor, but it's clearly not The factor.
It's how a team embeds itself in the community. It's how a team builds its brand. It's how it connects with fans. It's how it rewards them, both on the field and off, for their loyalty. It's likability. It's customer service. It's how good you make people feel about your organization even in the toughest of times.
These things transcend the standings. The Reds are obviously coming off a great 2010, maintain high hopes for this season, and appear to have built an organization that looks capable of competing for postseason berths, and maybe even a World Series title, for the next few years. Those things obviously enhance fan confidence.
And the Bengals are coming off the most disappointing season in Cincinnati pro sports history and are enjoying an even more miserable offseason, with the craptastic Mike and Marvin press conference in January, the Carson Palmer saga hovering over the franchise, a lockout keeping the team from making and changes, and a fan base that seems as uninterested as ever in financially supporting their product.
But when you compare the two, go beyond 91-71 and 4-12. We're not talking about two franchises with an exceptional recent history of winning, we are talking about one franchise that continues to build relationships with us in ways that have little to do with anything that happens on the field and another who seems less interested in doing that than they do hiring competent people to run their football operations.
Think of how often you see the Reds, or more important, the Reds brand in our community....RedsFest, The Reds Community Fund, The Redlegs Run, The Reds Rookie Success League, The Reds Hall of Fame and Museum, Reds UnCut, Reds Fantasy Camp, The RedsHeads Kids Club, The Reds TweetUp, the Reds Caravan, The Rosie Reds, and the Reducation program.
And the Bengals? Well, they offered a rebuttal to the ESPN The Magazine rankings on their website. And it'd be unfair to not point out that the team does throw some money toward some very worthwhile organizations
There are some extremely admirable attempts by those connected with the Bengals to reach out to the region. Marvin Lewis' work with his community fund will undeniably be a big part of his legacy whenever he's done coaching here, a number of current players have made some very positive contributions to our community on their own, they have some very likable players, and even Chad Ochocinco's Twitter account has helped him reach out to and interact with fans. But these efforts are largely done independent of the organization.
But where's BengalsFest? Where's a Bengals caravan? Where's a Bengals Hall of Fame? Where are interactive fundraisers designed to engage fans and help the team's charitable endeavors? Where's the organization continually trying to foster goodwill? Where do they consistently reach out? Why don't the Bengals push their brand to the point that it means something beyond how the team does on the field?
That's a problem. The Bengals brand, sullied by two decades of fan discontent and detachment, is one of the worst in sports. While the Reds push their brand to a city and a fan base in ways that work regardless of the team's won-loss record, the Bengals ignore theirs and allow it to solely represent losing.
And that's reflected in ESPN's rankings.
Look, I'm not writing this to slurp up the Reds....their ticket price hike this offseason worries me because I fear what happens when and if the team does have sustained success, I think the team should have done more to keep spring training closer to home, and Good God that riverboat in center field looks more hideous each time I feast my eyes on it...but when I think of the Reds, when I think of the organization, when I think of the brand, I think happy thoughts.
And when I think of the Bengals, I think about climbing to the top of that hideous riverboat and jumping off. I think of losing. Then I think about how they compound the losing by making almost no attempt to build and maintain relationships with you and I. I think about the time I yelled at by their security people for doing nothing wrong. I think about non-functioning Paul Brown Stadium escalators. I think about an owner who doesn't do interviews, who refuses to put together an offseason fan-fest, who does nothing to celebrate the team's history, and who needs to hire a brand manager as much as he needs to employ a general manager. I think about a franchise detached from reality, and more important, detached from a city that's just dying to support them.
I think of the Reds, and I think about being embraced.
I think of the Bengals, and I think about being alienated.
And I say this as a loyal customer of both, who badly wants both franchises to succeed.
107 spots separate the Reds and Bengals on ESPN's list. The gulf between the two is much, much wider than that.
-Interleague play! The Toronto Blue Jays!
The Major League leader in home runs the since 2010 has 68 plate appearances at Great American Ballpark, and has one homer.
There. There's your Reds/Jays nugget that took no effort to look up.
Other than that, I'll talk more about Reds starting pitching.
Why not a six-man rotation?
Homer Bailey should be back soon, even though he was beaten up pretty good last night. When he returns, the usual debate about the makeup of the rotation will commence. Who goes? Not gonna be Cueto, it can't be Leake, won't be Arroyo, and it isn't gonna be Volquez.
Maybe its Travis Wood, but his last two outings have been encouraging, even if there's been some issues with control he's pitched through them, and he is the only lefty.
Why not simply add Homer to the mix?
It'd cost you a reliever. So Carlos Fisher, as gamely as he's pitched, goes away. I still have six relievers backing up a staff that's getting deeper into games, and now I offset the fact that Leake and Wood are in the infancy of their careers, the fact that in the last calendar year Volquez, Cueto and Bailey (x2) have spent time on the DL, and the continuing battle between Bronson Arroyo and the effects of mono as the season moves on. Each guy gets an extra day of rest between starts, each guy pitches less but is perhaps better equipped to go deep, and on a nightly basis I've got a guy sitting on four days rest in reserve I can use in a pinch.
Plus, I can continue to showcase these guys if a trade does present itself, and if one guy falls on his face, I'm not jobbing up the entire roster to replace him.
The White Sox did it for a bit this season. The A's have done it a couple of times in recent years. Why can't it work here?
-This is dead-on. The idiots rioting in Vancouver were hockey fans. From Bruce Arthur...
Surely, none of them were hockey fans. Not the guy in the vintage Trevor Linden jersey posing next to the burning truck in front of the Post Office; not the guys in the Pavel Bure or Alex Burrows or Roberto Luongo jerseys who rampaged through Vancouver’s downtown core, smashing windows and looting and setting cars on fire. Surely they were all just dead-enders, anarchists, professional felons. Makes sense.
Except it doesn’t, and the attempt to peddle the fallacy is not going to help Vancouver move past whatever sickness ails that city.
Vancouver Chief of Police Jim Chu told reporters Thursday, after the riot that marred the end of Vancouver’s chase for the Stanley Cup, that the rioters were “young men and women disguised as Canucks fans who were actually criminals and anarchists. These were people who came equipped with masks, goggles and gasoline, even fire extinguishers that they would use as weapons.”
Pretty organized for anarchists, when you think about it. And so many of them didn’t even hide their faces, which is probably another disguise. And they never seem to pop up anywhere else. Damned organized anarchists. There oughta be a law.
Ridiculous. Surely there was a criminal element in the crowd, but to say that there were no Canucks fans among the rioters is like saying there was nobody from Vancouver among the rioters. It’s convenient, and impossible.
It’s terribly convenient to say that the thousands of people who acted badly did not represent Vancouver, or were not even from Vancouver, or were not Canucks fans. Even if they were wearing Canucks merchandise, some said, they were not Canucks fans, or they were bandwagon jumpers. Real fans wouldn’t do that.
People love to believe that only good people are part of their group. But to say that being young and drunk and aggressively stupid does not make you a real fan is a fantasy, bent on self-protection; in an awful lot of cases, all those things make people more ardent fans, if anything.
And that is sports. Most sports fans are young men, and some of them are full of empty machismo or inchoate rage or the desire to add meaning to lives that they deem insufficiently meaningful. This is true everywhere.
-UK is changing John Calipari's win total.
-How do you not feel sad for Greg Oden?
-Odd as it sounds, I'm kinda glad the Pittsburgh Pirates are relevant.
-Know how Star Wars nerds line up for days on end each time a new episode comes out? Will stat heads be camping out for tickets to see Moneyball?
-You're a real man, guy in a Chris Young jersey.
-Get your tickets now for the Second Annual Reds Tweetup 2011. We'll have early admission into the ballpark to watch batting practice, a Reds TweetUp t-shirt, a pregame wing eating contest in the Fan Zone hosted by me (details to come), postgame fireworks, and the best Reds bloggers and tweeters will be there as well.
Tickets are $25 for Field Box seats ($34 value). For info and to buy tickets, go here. And go to yesterday's blog to see me talk about it. Exciting stuff.
-Speaking of Twitter, help me get to 6,000 followers by the end of today by following me and asking everyone you know to do the same.
-Check me out today at 3:04 on ESPN1530. This well-educated woman deserves to have a baseball taken away from her.
