Heckert: Running back will be a “very big positive” this season
May 10, 2012Trent Richardson Would Like to Have Contract in Place by Friday
May 10, 2012While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
Mark Titus with a must read piece on former Buckeye Greg Oden– “Dealing with another season-ending injury and now nude pictures circulating on the Internet, Greg sought out sports psychologist Joseph Carr. In the spring of 2010, Greg began seeing Carr regularly, and he paid for their sessions with his own money. Months later, when the season started, the Blazers also hired Carr, who started showing up at games and practices. Greg said he saw Carr talking to Blazers front office personnel on several occasions. This seemed like a conflict of interest, Greg said, and he couldn’t shake the suspicion that Carr was sharing details from their sessions with the team. In response, Greg stopped meeting with Carr and his distrust of the Blazers deepened.” [Titus/Grantland]
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Conrad’s season recap– “It was an incredibly hectic and eventful season that went by in a flash, even though at times it seemed to go on forever. We’re now two seasons removed from one of the most successful eras in Cavaliers basketball history. Give it two more years and this upcoming era might surpass it. The Cavs will add another impact player at the end of June and the playoffs are a definite possibility for 2012-13.
Two years ago, it was hard to get pumped to watch the Cavs. Now, I’m already counting down the days until the Summer League starts. No one truly knows what the future has in store for this franchise, but the 2012-13 season is going to be damn exciting. Believe that.” [Kaczmarek/Fear the Sword]
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Very interesting Cleveland attendance chart. [Let’s Go Tribe]
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Transcript of Tom Heckert’s PFT interview– “MF: How much of the decision to go with Trent Richardson and install him as your workhorse, how much of that comes from the fact that coach Pat Shurmur had Steven Jackson in St. Louis and offensive coordinator Brad Childress had Adrian Peterson in Minnesota?
TH: Well, I think it doesn’t have a ton to do with it but it just, I think, the style we want to be as not only an offense but a team in general, obviously everyone knows our situation in this division, where it is, it’s a tough division and there’s a lot of weather that’s involved. Some days you’re not going to be able to throw the ball 40 times a game, you’re going to have to run the ball. So you know, I think it’s a combination of a lot of things, but it doesn’t mean a whole lot that those guys have been a part of those types of offenses, but it does help.” [Florio/Pro Football Talk]
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“This was the major takeaway from Dan Gilbert’s press conference for me. After replying to a question about what the organization has learned over the last couple seasons since “you know who left”, Dan first joked: “You mean since Zendon Hamilton left?” I laughed, because that was funny. What he went on to say from there was both interesting and revealing though, I thought. Dan Gilbert said that since that time, the organization has shifted their philosophy from generally “trying to build around superstars” to now trying “to build with them”. The “with”, he noted, as opposed to the “around”, was the important change in philosophy. I personally also think it’s indicative of a franchise that is learning from the past, growing, and maturing as well. But I don’t think most of my fellow bloggosists will ever give Dan Gilbert credit for something like that. Even though they maybe should.” [Bowers/Stepien Rules]
2 Comments
That chart is fantastic (for a numbers guy like me anyway). So basically it seems that the Browns’ existence is a small correlation, the Cavs’ moves a very weak one, and unemployment and winning percentages are strong ones?
Firstly, the Cavs season would only overlap with the Indians in the event of a deep playoff run by the Tribe (in which case they’d be sold out), or the Cavs (which is early in the Tribe season). The Browns overlap the entire month of September, which are all sellouts for the Browns, which is a key time only for an average or better Tribe team – so I’d imagine that those Tribe teams could lose a couple thousand fans who decide to save up for a Browns game instead.
But the bigger keys are obviously unemployment (people with jobs will spend $10-20/person on entertainment for an evening, people without won’t) and winning percentage. That makes far more sense.
I’d love to see this also accounting for season tickets vs. not. I’d be shocked if the number of season ticket holders doesn’t correlate strongly to winning % and unemployment as well.
That chart shows a lot. First, it shows that a new ballpark + a good team = lots of butts in the seats. That we all knew already. From 1994 to 2001 the team was good, in the playoffs, and Jacob’s Field still had the “new car” smell. In 2001 the Indians were sold to the Dolans at their premium. At the same time there was a philosophy change in the front office, the team on the field was also old and changing. This was the year Marty Cordova gave us 450 at bats and hit 20 hrs. Alomar, Visquel, Thome, Fryman, Lofton, Gonzales, Burkes, all on the wrong side of 30. To keep that team together would have been expensive and kind of stupid. So the Indians went into “rebuilding”. The “new car” smell wears off pretty fast when your car stinks.
Indians fans weren’t ready for it. We thought we’d win a World Series, at least I know I did. And then when the team all the sudden featured Matt Lawton, Casey Blake, Peralta, and Ben Broussard. By 2001 we were stacked, by 2003 a joke. Combine that with Jacob’s Field feeling more like an old friend than a new girlfriend…and you can start to see how we got to where we are.
Then a few things happened to really submarine the team/fan relationship. First, when the team started getting better with the new Sizemore, CC, Victor, Pronk nucleus, the ownership didn’t “spend money” in the ways Tribe fans wanted. We thought the ownership would bring in high priced free agents, but our ideas of “spending money” were different than ownership’s ideas of spending money (aka locking up Westbrook and Pronk, and investing more in the draft than we had previously). Fans just didn’t get it. So then the team started doing the contend-one-year-than-backtrack-the-next thing and I think honestly fans got upset that current ownership wasn’t willing to supplment our homegrown talent with other players to keep us in consistent contention.
Side: The Indians also missed on the CC trade, WFNY points it out all the time and they are right, we needed a superstar from that trade and we didn’t get one.
I hate the “this is a Browns town” argument. The Browns sell out because there are 8 games to go to and its the NFL. Also, lets be honest, it sucked when the Browns weren’t around and its honestly easier to watch a crappy football team than it is to watch NO football team. Yes, we love our football in Cleveland and that will never change. Still, this ‘Browns Town” seemed pretty excited to sell out the Q every night when the Cavs were winning 50-60 games. We sold out the Jake when the Tribe was winning 90+ games a year.
Right now, why should Progressive Field be full? I’m not a pessimist, but this is a team that hasn’t had any sustained success. (Side: Damnit Skinner, send the runner home! How many times do you get a chance to go to the World Series, take the chance and send the runner!!) 2007 was awesome but what about 2008? The Indians need to find a business model that works for them and works for the fans. Basically, they need to hope they can string some winning seasons together, because Cleveland fans follow the wins….unless there are only 8 home games.