Toellner Tells it

Live Strong Sporting Park

Earlier today, Sporting Kansas City announced that in a cooperation with Lance Armstrong's Live Strong Charity the name of the new stadium near the Legends will be called LiveStrong Sporting Park.

This is obviously a very high-profile charity to associate a sports stadium with -- and is very different than the typical corporate-sponsorship type of sports stadium name. Apparently, Armstrong's relationship with the Stowers Institute which does a lot of cancer research led him to be interested in this sponsorship here in KC. 

There are a lot of exciting things happening for Sporting Kansas City -- with the name change, the new stadium, and the new stadium name. They are a great, and sadly often overlooked, addition to the Kansas City environment and hopefully this new relationship will bring more visibility to the team, the cause, and the Stowers Institute.

Footage of the announcement is here.

KC back in the running for a NHL Team?

The KC Business Journal is reporting that Kansas City is again a part of potential talks surrounding an NHL franchise coming to town.

It's still a bit of a long-shot at this point, but there's a bit of a chance.

The Phoenix Coyotes is a team currently being run by the National Hockey League -- who took over the franchisse when it went bankrupt during the 2008-2009 season. The NHL has no desire to continue to own the team and is seeking to find a new owner by the end of June.

Ice Edge Holdings is one company mentioned in the negotions and Jerry Reinsdorf -- owner of the Chicago Bulls and the White Sox.  Ice Edge holdings is a group that was formed with the intent of buying the Coyotes and keeping them in the Phoenix area - -however, has admitted that it would play some games in different areas of Canada in order to boost revenue (a couple of the owners of Ice Edge Holdings have ties to Canada).

However, also mentioned in the mix is Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) is a part of the NHL's backup plan. AEG runs the Sprint Center -- and would have a vested interest in actually filling the arena with an anchor tenent which they said they would try to do when the funding for the Sprint Center was approved.

Meanwhile, the city of Phoenix -- and specifically the arena in Glendale - is a horrible fit for the NHL. The warm climate, lack of overall interest in Hockey, and a suburban Hockey arena far from the majority of the population base of the city makes all of it an odd fit -- and difficult for people to get to weekday games in crazy Phoenix traffic. Because of this, the Coyotes have the lowest attendance of all the NHL teams at only 11,725 fans per game -- for a team that is currently 47-25. Nothing like not supporting a winner. This marks the three years in a row that the team has been in the bottom 3 of overall league attendence.

Meanwhile, Winnipeg has also been mentioned as a possible site for relocation -- as the Winnipeg Jets moved to Phoneix in 1996 to become the Coyotes and has never drawn a profit there.

Now, it's still unlikely that a Coyote's move to KC is likely -- but it seems probable that they could move from Arizona. And it would be great for AEG to step up to the plate and deliver on an anchor tennent for the glossy new Sprint Center.

Kauffman rated 27th best location for a stadium

Apparently the folks over at Sports Illustrated surveyed different people than David Glass did in determining what fans thought of the location of Kauffman Stadium.

In an SI poll, fans rated the 30 baseball stadiums on 10 different criteria:  Affordability, Food, Team Quality, Tradition, Atmosphere, Fan IQ, Hospitality, Promotions, Trafic and the Neighborhood.

The fans rated The K as the 12th best stadium in baseball.  That's pretty good. The high score comes primarily from it being rated #1 in affordability, #2 in Hospitality, #7 in promotions (LOVE T-shirt Tuesdays and Fireworks Fridays) and #8 in Food (Sheboygan!)

Fans rated the neighborhood 27th -- besting only the Mets, A's and Marlins (who have a new dowtown stadium coming soon).  The Mets and A's are in really crappy neighborhoods.  Kansas City was also ranked 19th in traffic getting to the game.  I'll note that 7 of the top 10 stadiums for traffic are basically downtown stadiums and most of the top ones for neighborhood are also downtown stadiums.

Great stadium.  Bad location.  Just sayin'.

Performance Enhancers in Baseball

The Mitchell Report came out this week -- naming names of those that might be associated with Steroids in Baseball. Nothing in the report was really all that surprising...and IMO, it was a lot of hoopla over what we already suspected.

However, here's a link to one of the more interesting things I've read this week. It's a post from June 4th, but it's a statistical look at baseball hitters that were statistical outlyers that defied the usual decline in production that comes from aging by having their better years much later in their careers.

There are two very interesting parts of this list.  #1) of the 18 players on the list, 17 of them have played since 1987, 14 of them since 1994, and 10 of the 18 had their outlying year during a 5 year period from 1996 - 2001.  #2) 5 of the 18 players have been pretty closely linked to steroid use (or other performance enhancers).  Another 4 or 5 of them would not surprise me in the slightest if they were involved.  While I would expect today's players to perform better at a later age than those in the 30s and 40s, due in large part to better diets and training, I think it's pretty obvious that the past 12 years or so in baseball have been riddled with players usinng performance enhancing drugs.

BCS Football Bowl Playoff

This isn't about Kansas City.  It's not about advertising.  But the time has come for me to pipe up. It's becoming an embarrassment that my favorite sport, College Football, remains the only major sport in the world that does not determine a national champion through some type of playoff system. If I want a national champion chosen based on someone's opinion of who's better, I'll start watching more gymnastics, diving or figure skating (not that I'm bashing those sports, or the talented athletes in those sports, I just don't like the winner chosen based on someone's opinion).

There are many reasons people give for not changing the current college football system.  To the best that I can tell here are the major reasons why people feel like college football should not have a playoff:

1) The Bowls, and the cities that run them would be out the money from the bowls being in their area.

2) With so many games in a playoff, it would drive travel costs up significantly for fans, causing games to not sell out.

3) There is history and tradition in the bowls.

4) Too many games for players.

No one really claims that the current system works, but I can see #1 and #2 being pretty significant factors. #4 is bunk as the average high school champion team plays as many games as the current college guys, so I think they can handle a couple of extra games as they mature.  So, here's my plan, that I think covers off on most of the objections, and gets college football a true national champion, with a bonus thrown in.  Here's the deal:

1) 8 team playoff.  6 teams are chosen based on being the conference Champions of the 6 BCS conferences.   2 would be at-large teams to capture great teams from non BCS conferences (this year's Hawaii) or the best of the conference #2s.  For the purpose of my discussion, I'm going to use Hawaii and Missouri for this (although my guess would be in the real world Georgia would fill this role in real life).

2) Games are played at a predetermined location based on conference affiliation, tradition and location for easier travel by fans.  I'm less concerned with "seeding" these teams than I am with having them play each other in a playoff -- this would be the High School concept where all the Kansas City teams play first to meet with the St. Louis area schools in the HS Championship.  It doesn't matter that the best two teams meet in the National title game.  So here are the matchups and locations:

     a) Rose Bowl - Big Ten winner vs Pac 10 Winner (Ohio St vs USC) -- keeps the Big 10/Pac 10 tradition alive and makes for easy travel for the USC fans.  Maintains the pagentry of the Rose Bowl.

     b) Cotton Bowl -- Big 12 Winner vs the Western Most At Large team (Oklahoma vs Hawaii) -- Most Big 12 schools are within relatively close driving distance to Dallas, and most of the at-large teams will be too (Hawaii of course is not within driving distance to anywhere). 

    c) Sugar Bowl -- SEC Champion vs Eastern most At Large Team (LSU vs Missouri) - -Maintains the historiy of the affiliation between the SEC and the Sugar Bowl.  New Orleans is easy to get to for the vast majority of SEC teams, and likely the Eastern most at large also

    d) Gator Bowl - (ACC Champ vs Big East Champ) - Virginia Tech vs West Virginia -This one is chosen base on location more than the quality of the current Bowl. 

    Semi-Finals --

    e) Fiesta Bowl - Winner of Game A and Game B

    f) Peach Bowl (Atlanta) - Winner of Game C and Game D (chosen more for location than the quality of the bowl currently)

National Championship - Orange Bowl, Miami (figuring these teams know this is the last game and folks will travel to the National title game regardless of location).

I think the geography helps fans prepare for trips they plan to make (seeding would make it a very last minute decision on where to go) and the geographic proximity will help teams' fans to travel. 

The bonus here is that if you win your conference championship, you're in the playoff and have a chance at a national championship.  I think the now not having the fear of losing a pre-conference game hurting your national title hopes, will also encourage more big schools to play each other during the pre-conference season.  That would be a bonus for all college football fans (I can do without another Mizzou/W. Michigan or KU vs anyone matchup personally).

Every team from a BCS school has a chance to make it in the tournament and win it all.

I think it'd be a huge hit, and huge boom for these cities.  If they wanted to keep the 2nd tier bowls for other teams to get a chance to play somewhere (and to entertain me during the week between playoff games) that's fine with me. 

What do you think?