there’s economic pain at the bottom of the league.
You don’t want to be the weak link in a partnership of 32 wealth(ier) men. They will move your franchise for you and take a piece of the action. See: St. Louis, San Diego, Oakland and Your City Here…
Baltimore will always be a small market. Many will tell you that it’ll become smaller in the coming years and there’s no data that disputes that population shrinkage. Our city never won the beauty contest on expansion 25 years ago and wouldn’t win it now.
London would.
As long as football remains a giant television show for networks footing the bill, the empty stadiums don’t create dire economic strife. But if the Ravens can’t embrace their smallness and community loyalty vs. larger markets, the competitive advantages disappear over time and the team becomes far less stable in the coming years with 20,000 empty seats every week.
The second marriage for Baltimore and the NFL has been almost storybook by any measure over the first quarter of a century – a promotional and civic success that, sadly, the honorable William Donald Schaefer didn’t live long enough to enjoy. It was always unique because of the longing and passion and appreciation our community brought the second time for the Ravens – from Tampa to New Orleans, from Billick to Harbaugh, Ray Lewis to Joe Flacco.
It brought people together in a way no politics, race, religion or temple could ever commune.
It was a beautiful thing, wasn’t it?
That pass in Denver. That afternoon in Nashville. That evening in Tampa. That march up the streets of New Orleans. That day in the snow against the Vikings.
There are a lot of tentacles to the empty seats and current problems that will need to be handled on
