Last weekend, I had one of those unforgettable fatherhood moments when I took my 11-year old son, an avid pee-wee tackle football player, back to my home state to watch our Packers play the 49ers at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. From the moment we got off the plane and were greeted by Packers insignias and the smell of deep fried cheese curds, we knew we were in for a great weekend. We made our way past the single-story homes decked out with holiday decorations, the tailgate parties overflowing with brats and beer, and the front yards rented out for parking (my favorite sign was, 20 bucks: parking and toilet) until we reached the hallowed ground of Lambeau, with a statue of the great Vince Lombardi out front.

Aside from the fact that we watched a Packers victory on a warm afternoon or that the UW Marching Band played at halftime, there was something else that made this day perfect. It was the essence of the Packers themselves—the only team in the NFL owned by fans.

Packers lore has it that shortly after Curly Lambeau started the team, he ran out of money and kept the team afloat by selling shares in the team. The only catch was that you could own no more than one share and you had to live in Wisconsin. To this day, the Green Bay Packers are owned by their fans.

And it shows. In a city of just over 100,000 (the 70,000-seat stadium would hold most of them), every house, business, school, and street sign seems to show team pride. The stadium isn’t located ten miles outside of the city, surrounded by an ocean of pricey parking lots—it’s right in the middle of town, surrounded by regular houses, bars, and gas stations. The players and fans share a bond captured in the “Lambeau Leap.” The stadium’s name and logo doesn’t change every year, depending on who paid for the naming rights, it retains the name of the team’s founder and first coach.

It’s impossible to imagine some outsized-ego-owner shaking down Packers fans for more taxpayer money and threatening to move the team away, like what’s going on just to the west in Minnesota, or insider deals at the State capitol to win special breaks without benefits to the fans, like what’s going on in LA (where they still don’t have a team, by the way). The fan-owners wouldn’t allow it.

Every sports fan should make a pilgrimage to Lambeau Field at least once, just to see what professional sports looks like when the fans are given a meaningful voice, when fans control the destiny of a team. Leaving Lambeau with my son, who by this time was sporting a cheese-head and a Donald Driver jersey, I not only realized that this would be a fatherhood moment I’d never forget. I also was heading back to DC with a renewed resolve to give fans the seat at the table they deserve.

-David Goodfriend

Read posts from the SFC Chairman every Thursday here at www.SportsFansCoalition.org.

Pollin was SFC approved for putting up his own money to build up a rundown part of Washington, D.C. with the construction of the MCI Center (currently the Verizon Center). 

We mourn his loss.

More details on his life here.

Some quotes from those who cared about the man:

“He didn’t particularly come from wealth, but he certainly made money in his lifetime.  The term ‘saint’ should be reluctantly applied to people, and I don’t use it often, but if there is such a thing as a saint, I would say Mr. Abe certainly should be considered…He had a saying, and lived by this saying, he never wanted to be the richest man in the graveyard.  And, Mr. Pollin, you were a very wealthy man.  I doubt you’ll be the richest man in the graveyard, but you will have given more riches than anybody in the graveyard…He was a remarkably generous man.”

 -           James Carville praises the late Abe Pollin for his generosity.

“Abe Pollin loved us.  He was my father away from home.  He was the one who believed in my, who took a chance on me when I was 19, 20 [years old].  I couldn’t do any wrong in his eyes.”

 -           Washington Wizards star guard Gilbert Arenas on Abe Pollin.

“He put a lot of trust into me from day one.  Nobody has given me that trust ever really as far as just doing my job and just me being who I am [as a person].”

 -           Washington Wizards All Star forward Antawn Jamison on Abe Pollin.

Now is the time for Fans to take the field and have their voices heard in the Capitol, the State House and in City Halls. No longer should Fans’ shouts only be heard in stadiums.

It has been said that “the squeaky wheel gets the oil”, and Sports Fans Coalition is here to give Fans’ voices greater reverberation.

We cannot do it alone. We need your help. Please let us know what is happening in your home towns.

If games are being blacked-out in your area on TV – let us know. If ticket prices are pricing you out of attending games – let us know. If your tax payer dollars are going to fund sports stadiums –let us know. If you need to sound the alarm on sports issues that affect the ability of Sports Fans to enjoy or participate in their favorite college or professional sports – let us know.

Together we can assure an end to “business as usual” when it comes to the Fans.  For too long, Fans have been taken for granted and we want to end those “games” and concentrate on the games we all want to enjoy – the ones played on fields and courts and not in smoke filled backrooms.

Brad Blakeman, SFC Board Member

Cincinnati is in a world of hurt.  On November 10th, Assistant Hamilton County Administrator Christian Sigman estimated that the county that houses the Reds’ Great American Ballpark and the Bengals’ Paul Brown Stadium will come up $13.8 million short in 2010 with respect to the cash promised to subsidize the teams and the Riverfront district. 

If nothing is done to ameliorate the situation, the five-year projected defecit is staggering.  A whopping $93.4 million in the hole, the stadium sales-tax fund is nothing less than a personal piggy bank for the owners of the city’s sports franchises.

The initial remedy proposed by Sigman and company would reduce the property tax rollback on Hamilton County homeowners.   The measure, which was promised to taxpayers in 1996 while enforcing a half-cent stadium tax hike, would take away roughly $120 per $100,000 of home equity. 

Not only are county officials targeting their residents to make up the difference, but Bengals and Reds fans should be wary of increases in ticket sales, concessions, and stadium parking.  And you thought it was expensive to bring the family to a game THIS year!

Amidst all of this ill news, it is important to recognize how sports teams are treated by the local goverment.  Not only did Hamilton County promise to subsidize the cost of building these stadiums, but now that the return on investment has not accrued the anticipated tax revenue, it is trying to renegotiate with Cincinnati Public Schools.  The School board will decide on Monday whether to defer a $5 million tax payment to bail out the county until 2011.

Let me get this straight.  So, the investment in your sports stadiums didn’t pan out like you thought.  And now, you’re considering borrowing from your school fund to get the cash you need to pay off your stadium fund debts next year.  AND Mangini has turned out not to be a man-genious afterall! 

Hamilton County residents, we feel for you. 

But these deals happen all the time.  That’s why we created the Sports Fans Coalition, and why we’ll keep fighting the good fight to provide recourse for those sports fans who continue to pay for publicly-funded stadiums, and get the proverbial shaft.  You deserve cheaper tickets.  You deserve to have someone fighting on your behalf to change the system.  JOIN THE COALITION today.

It seems odd that the BCS has hired the original Final Four director, Bill Hancock, to maintain the false front that this system works in college football, and that it really is in the best interest of fans.  How will Hancock go from administering one of the most successful and profitable playoff tournaments in sports to the unjust BCS format?  With the amount of public outcry, his job won’t be easy, but it shouldn’t be. 

No playoff means no trust from fans that the governing body genuinely has their interests at heart.  The fact of the matter is, no matter what Hancock says, those cashing BCS checks in the ‘approved’ conferences don’t care about their fans’ wishes one iota.  Nor do those Universities and Conferences care about those on the outside looking in. 

This type of exclusion is maintained by a group of well-paid University Presidents and NCAA Officials or, as Washington Post columnist and ESPN co-host of Pardon the Interuption Michael Wilbon described it at the 4th Annual Shirley Povich Symposium last week, this “cartel” we mistake for a legitimate organization locks out whichever teams and conferences it chooses.  

The organized crime continues through 2013 with the signed TV contracts, and the current rules state that ‘the champions of the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and Southeastern Conferences will have automatic berths’.  Any school outside of these major conferences needs to jump through hoops just for the chance to be considered, and even then, you’re a computer glitch away from rejection.

For the sports fan, the problem with caring about your alma mater’s football team so much is that no matter how well the players compete on the field, they still might be left out of contention for the BCS National Championship.  When teams like TCU, Boise State, and Cincinnati knock on the door of a perfect regular season, but know from the outset that no mathematical outcome could grant them admittance to the big dance, the inequity is glaring and egregious.

How do you think Tom Brady and the 2007/08 Patriots  would respond after being told they can only play one post-season game, win or lose, following their perfect 16-0 regular season?  If  Bill Belichek’s perfect Pats were competing in the NCAA, they’d never meet the New York Giants in a proper finale, and ‘the catch’ would never have been. 

The bottom line is titles should be determined on the field of play.  Not in the offices of NCAA Conference Commisioners, University Presidents, or in the plush new confines inhabited by the first Executive Director of the BCS.

Don’t just sit there and wait for change.  JOIN THE COALITION today, and get all your family and friends to do the same.  There is strength in numbers.