Tag: Liberty Bowl Stadium

Categories
Opinion

Al ‘Jazeera’ Gore, ADA, RGIII, Webb-cam, and Nashville

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Did you see where the New York Times this week did a big story on Nashville as possibly the hottest city in the United States? And with a picture featuring a mannequin of Elvis — ouch! This after Outside magazine in 2011 named Chattanooga “Best Town Ever.” Think their gain is partly our loss? I do. So what do they have that we don’t? Manageable rivers, hills or mountains, car manufacturing, and fill in the blanks.

The Memphis City Council had little choice but to vote in favor of spending another $12 million on Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium after Robert Lipscomb played the “shut down” card. The Flyer has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the specific documents in which the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department says that in regard to compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Meanwhile, news organizations — guess which one — that failed to report that the agreed upon 564 wheelchair and companion seats are “additional” seats to the accessible seats already there are willfully negligent.

A 1984 Memphis magazine cover with a picture of Al Gore (“Born to Run”) used to adorn the wall behind my desk at work. Since our office was remodeled, the mag cover is gone, and I won’t miss it, or him. Gore always struck me as someone that, had he been around during the Old West, would have sold used blankets to the Indians if he thought there were some bucks in it, and then proclaimed himself a humanitarian. I say this as one who voted for every Democratic Party presidential candidate from McGovern to Obama but switched to Ralph Nader in 2000. I liked Gordon Crovitz’s column on Gore and Al Jazeera the other day. And nobody has better lines about Clinton and Gore than my colleague Jackson Baker. Clinton gives you 15 seconds but it’s a good 15 seconds. Gore gives you a perfunctory handshake and a thanks for your help in Shelby County. Those were the days in the 1990s when the Memphis vote mattered and the Democratic ticket stormed into Shelby County and piled up a big margin and carried Tennessee and locked up the election. With a big assist from third-party candidate Ross Perot, of course.

Silliest debate of 2013: whether too much camera coverage and commentary was given to the Alabama quarterback’s gorgeous girlfriend, Katherine Webb, during the big game. It’s football, people! And she was a Miss USA competitor, in a bikini. And the game was a rout.

Serious debate of 2013: When teams should shut down star players. Washington D.C. is ground zero, with a baseball pitcher whose arm was saved by limiting his innings and a quarterback, RGIII, whose knee is a mess. It’s easy now to say he should have been benched sooner, if not held back the entire game, but the pressure to play him, from RGIII himself among others, must have overwhelming. I hope the success that he and Russell Wilson and other multi-threat quarterbacks in the NFL had this year gives hope to Michigan’s Denard Robinson. The Wall Street Journal this week ranked Michigan as the second most valuable football program in America. Without Robinson’s heroics the last three years, an otherwise mediocre team would have had losing records, no bowl appearances instead of three of them, no national interest and tens of thousands of empty seats at the Big House. He wasn’t the nation’s best player, but in that sense he was the most valuable.

One more item of interest from the national media. Tennessee ranks fourth most attractive in a survey of 650 business leaders by CEO Magazine about business climate in all 50 states. Low taxes and low regulations.

Categories
Sports

Right Sizing Memphis Sports and Venues

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The professional men’s and women’s tennis tournaments could be leaving the Racquet Club of Memphis next year for Rio de Janeiro. Big deal or, as one of our commenters succinctly put it, a big yawn?

In the big picture, this is all about “right-sizing” sports facilities and events, from the Racquet Club to AutoZone Park to Liberty Bowl Stadium to public playing fields, golf courses, and amateur sports complexes like First Tennessee Fields and Snowden Grove in DeSoto County. More on that in a minute.

First though, as someone who has played and watched tennis, racquetball, and squash at the Racquet Club for many years, I guess I should be in the “big deal” camp, but I’m not, at least not without qualifications. Teams and tournaments come and go, and this one is 36 years old and has gone by more names than an inmate in the county jail — U.S. Indoor, Volvo, Kroger, Regions Morgan Keegan to name a few. The women’s tournament, ten years old, was sponsorless this year.

If they are replaced, as seems likely, by a “lower-level” pro tournament, the average fan, not to mention the non-fan, won’t notice the difference. Case in point: Andy Roddick and Milos Raonic have been recent finalists in Memphis (a “500” tournament) and, a week earlier, San Jose (a “250” tournament). Above the satellite-tournament level, the strength of the field is determined by convenience as much as anything, and several big names have either failed to show up in Memphis or made an early exit.

The Racquet Club and the tournament are the legacy of William Dunavant Jr., founder of the club, cotton magnate, tennis player, but no longer actively involved in day-to-day Memphis. He sold the club to Mac Winker, who pledged to keep the tournament in Memphis, as indeed he did. Winker sold the club to Sharks Sports & Entertainment in San Jose, which reportedly plans to sell it to IMG, a sports marketing and management company with global connections.

Winker told me that in his early years as manager of the club, the tournament was supported by the club, but that flipped in the later years, and the tournament supported the club and its declining membership. He said his mantra was to make the tournament an event, with a St. Jude tie-in and as much fanfare and as many sponsors (bannered around the stadium court) as could be mustered. Tennis big-wigs such as Barry McKay and Donald Dell were regulars in the boxes, courtside seats were cherished, there was fancy food in the Walnut Room, and sport jackets and dresses were not uncommon for the packed finals. There was no competition from NBA basketball, and American players like Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Michael Chang, Brad Gilbert, Todd Martin, and Pete Sampras were among the Memphis champions and in the world Top Five.

There are more foreign players in the tournament these days, although Americans Roddick and Sam Querrey have also been recent winners along with Jurgen Melzer and Tommy Haas. But none of them are as well known as the tennis Big Four of Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, and Murray who dominate the Grand Slams.

The women’s tournament lost Cellular South as its title sponsor, and the prize money is less than the men get. The crowds for the women’s finals have been smaller, with the exception of Venus Williams matches. Overall, I think the twin tournaments suffer from “too much tennis” syndrome when you take into account split day and evening sessions, qualifying matches, singles and doubles, action on multiple courts, and $40-$60 tickets.

There is some fear among members that the Racquet Club itself could now be sold along with the tournaments. Giving credence to that, San Jose is clearly calling the shots. Tournament director Peter Lebedevs and Morgan Keegan managing partner Reggie Barnes both told me they got the news on Monday morning, like everyone else in Memphis. Lebedevs had just returned from a trip to Australia and said he couldn’t comment on a possible sale of the tournament. Allen Morgan Jr., one of the founding partners of Morgan Keegan, committed to the title sponsorship for six years and an additional year to fill the breach after the sale to Raymond James. He noted that he once tried unsuccessfully to buy the pro tournament in Atlanta. After a nine-year absence, the ATP tour returned to Atlanta in 2010, but the event is played in a smaller venue with less prize money than Memphis.

Winker, now retired, said he has been contacted by at least one company interested in putting several million dollars into another southern ATP tournament but declined to identify the company or location.

Racquet Club member and commercial real estate investor and developer Trip Trezevant thinks the future of the club is secure.

“If they (the owners) have $8 million in the club including renovations then that is now, just land cost, of $36 a foot which is too expensive for residential. The owners purchased the club to be a tennis club and I am certain that is what they will do. They have done a great job thus far on improving the club. I think we will end up getting a 250 series tennis tournament and still have the same players that we had for the 500 series and they probably got money selling the 500 series which will go back into the club to improve the club. Just a guess.”

While Winker was owner, some courts along White Station were replaced with housing, leaving the club with 11 indoor courts and 16 outdoor courts used by members and the University of Memphis.

To my eye at least, that may still be too many. I’ve seen too many empty outdoor courts on a beautiful weekend afternoon or empty indoor courts at times when they are being lighted and air-conditioned. The three racquetball courts are lightly used, and racquetball, once a Memphis institution, looks like a dying sport. As for squash, all I will say is that I helped bring the former number-one player in the world to Memphis a month ago and drew about five spectators to a free exhibition. These are not called minor sports for nothing.

It wasn’t my first sports miscalculation. Some years ago I got it in my head that outdoor basketball tournaments were a perfect fit for Memphis, but they died after a year or two downtown. Then I went through a baseball phase when my son was growing up and playing at Snowden Grove, USA Stadium in Millington, and Dulin’s academy. First Tennessee Fields filled that need, and there’s plenty of competition from baseball complexes in Jackson, Tennessee, and Jonesboro, Arkansas and Tipton County, Tennessee. AutoZone Park is too big for the Redbirds much less college or high school teams. I had a brief fling with soccer as an American fan favorite, but last week a game between the United States and El Salvador in Nashville, with an Olympics berth at stake, drew about 8,000 fans. And, briefly, I had hopes for the River Kings hockey team and indoor soccer in the Coliseum. I thought the people who go to meetings about bike lanes on North Parkway and other city streets might actually use them. And surely golfers would flock to T. O. Fuller, Riverside, and Davy Crockett when they were threatened. Nope.

I have counted the house at old Tim McCarver, new AutoZone Park, and the 60,000-seat Liberty Bowl on nights when you couldn’t get to 3,000 without kidding yourself. The only regular near-capacity crowds seem to be at FedEx Forum for the Grizzlies or Tigers. And the amateur sport that never ceases to amaze me with its growth in participation is distance running or walking for some cause.

What’s the deal? Big screen televisions. Too many venues. Ticket prices. Fees. Changing habits. Declining neighborhoods. Fitness machines. Sloth. Boredom. Whatever, tennis isn’t the only sport being right sized.

Categories
Opinion

Liberty Bowl Tenants Ready to Pay “Substantial” Sum

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Worlds are about to collide as the financially-strapped city of Memphis decides how much money to put into Liberty Bowl Stadium improvements along with tenants from the success-at-all-costs parallel universe of college football.

City Councilman Reid Hedgepeth told his colleagues the tenants — the University of Memphis, the Southern Heritage Classic, and the AutoZone Liberty Bowl — are prepared to pay a “substantial” amount of the unspecified cost of a new scoreboard, Jumbotron, field surface, lights, elevator, and press box. He brought the resolution for “appropriate funding” to the Parks Committee Tuesday to get it on the agenda for March 20th, when he said specifics would be provided.

Pressed by colleagues, Hedgepeth said the tenants would pay “at least half” of the cost, but that might not satisfy council members who have already spent $16 million on Tiger Lane two years ago and are looking at a $17 million deficit in this year’s budget.

The University of Memphis starts play in the Big East Conference in 2013, and backers want the stadium upgraded before that. It takes five or six months to get a new Jumbotron, Hedgepeth said, adding that Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam got stuck in the elevator last year and the current Jumbotron is so outdated that it is difficult to get parts for it from Chicago. He said he and the tenants would lay out funding sources and dollar amounts in two weeks.

“They are very aware that if they don’t come up with significant funding we will never hear them” he said.

The city has lost money on the stadium the last two years. Cindy Buchanan, director of the Parks Division, said the shortfall was about $200,000 in the $1.5 million budget for the fairgrounds, which consists of the stadium and the vacant coliseum and lots of parking and grass. The city gets parking and concessions revenue but does not get advertising revenue from the Jumbotron under the present contract. That is why it is so important to increase actual attendance, as opposed to “tickets sold” attendance at the eight or nine games a year.

Actual attendance for University of Memphis football games was below 5000 for some games under former Coach Larry Porter. The figures were not immediately available. Porter was paid $750,000 a year, most of it by private donors to the athletic department. The mayor of Memphis makes about $172,000. Executive directors of college bowl games make as much as $600,000 or more. And new head football coach Justin Fuente is making $900,000. Former Memphis basketball coach John Calipari made much more than that, but he turned the program around, packed the house, and his teams won most of their games.

City Council members, on the other hand, live in a world where city employees took a 4.6 percent pay cut last year, where a tax hike of 18 cents is a very big deal, and where they are routinely pilloried for spending other people’s money. They are well aware of the city’s philanthropic community and football boosters. I have a feeling that “half” might not be enough.