Clarion Content

Two quick interesting sports links that crossed the Clarion Content's desk this week. One came from a local Durham painter who loves his sports. It is to a Jason Whitlock article about why the threatened NFL lockout will not or should not happen. The Clarion Content has been operating under the assumption that the lockout is faiti accompli. It is what we have read and heard elsewhere. Whitlock takes the common sense approach and analyzes the NFL's presence, as well as its cultural centrality.

Whatever discomfort billionaire NFL owners might have with sharing more than half of their total revenue with millionaire players, the owners will get over it when Goodell explains what their partnership with players has wrought.

The popularity, TV-ratings-driving and cultural-influence distances between the NFL and Major League Baseball and the NFL and the NBA have never been wider.

The Pro Bowl -- the most worthless sporting event known to man, a game ditched by 40 percent of the roster this year -- garnered massive ratings on ESPN. The NFL is a force of nature right now.

Read the whole piece here.

The other link is to an article that is a less sober analysis of the evening the Indians decided to hold "Dime Beer Night" at Municipal Stadium. Needless to say, shenanigans ensued, on a scale that makes Disco Destruction Night at Old Comiskey Park look like a family picnic outing in comparison. This link came from Bill Simmons.

Early on, the demand for beer surpassed the Indians' capacity to ferry it to concession stands, and a luminary, perhaps the same person who suggested the promotion in the first place, decided to allow fans to line up behind the outfield fences and have their cups filled directly from Stroh's company trucks. The promotion achieved critical mass at that moment, as weaving, hooting queues of people refilled via industrial spigot.

It is a crazy tale. Read it here.

Labels: baseball, NFL, Pop Culture, sports, Sports Economics