Building a Franchise

For those that follow the NLL closely, you have likely heard about the 5 Kinghthawks players being arrested and subsequently suspended after a road loss to the Minnesota Swarm.  If not, check out this link (http://www.startribune.com/local/south/139357138.html).  Thinking about this story has me asking myself some questions.  Not things like "Why brawl in TGI Friday's?" or "Why would 30 people get into a fight over a menu being thrown?", but more like "Would this happen in-season in another major sport?".  It's no secret that professional athletes are often in trouble.  Just flip on ESPN right now and you'll likely hear about one or two, but this was rather large scale.  It makes me wonder if the NLL had a larger following, would teams spend time with travelling fans more often and perhaps prevent situations like this from occurring?

In order to get to the point where fans would regularly fly from Rochester, NY to MSP, or to replicate the major sports more: follow the team they grew up watching, the NLL and lacrosse as a whole has a lot of growing left to do.  The big debate in the lacrosse world right now is of course, how to grow the game best.  The obvious starting point is with the youth of the country choosing lacrosse as their sport growing up and this is happening all over the country.  Recently in a Syracuse scrimmage I had to laugh that during a faceoff, the wings for Syracuse were from Texas and Oregon.  Who saw that coming 10 years ago?

The second step though is Pro vs. College.  Is it more important to have a die-hard Pro fan base to make sure franchises stay viable (and sedentary) or to have the college game expand and continually play in new locations throughout the country.  Using history as a guide, you'd have to say college is the way to go.  With how much lacrosse is growing, there has still been much said in recent years about dwindling Memorial Day weekend numbers.  I know I'm biased, but I have to say it's the teams that are there which aren't producing the numbers.  I loved that Denver made it to the the final 4 and that Notre Dame is becoming a playoff regular.  We will see Michigan and Penn State at that level soon as well.  But go back and look at the numbers.  Your best weekends are when the crowds are filled with Syracuse Orange and Hopkins Blue.  For good home games at the dome, Syracuse can get 20,000 fans.  Put them with a championship on the line within a day's drive?  There are your ticket sales.

The two Rochester teams have started trying to pull fans down the highway by drafting scores of Cuse players.  Unfortunately for the Knighthawks, Syracuse to Rochester is one of the snowiest drives in the country in the winter months.  The Rattlers have a much better shot now that they're back in town.  Even with this added ploy, the crowd sizes are still tiny. I read into this as the pro teams need to be all about building a brand, not emphasizing the players.  They need to convince the casual sports fan than lacrosse is great to watch on its own; because that fan can't tell John Grant Jr. apart from John Galloway.

I do not want to act as though the players don't matter.  Until players can be paid more than just a few hundred bucks per game, you WILL NOT have the best product on the field.  You will have top to bottom great players, but not the best possible athletes and most skilled players available.  Lacrosse is still played for the love of the game, and that love can be filled in Vail, Lake Placid or the local field pretty easily.  The answer there?  I have to point to Ryan Powell's article from last year (http://laxallstars.com/ryan-powell-the-mll-a-players-league/).  He hit the nail on the head.  Allow your top players to market themselves and they may bring their own following with them.  You know that at least a few more people were keeping an eye on the Denver Outlaws just to see Mr. Con Bro Chill live in action.  You'll also free up their time to maybe do something crazy like spend 10 hours a day during the week studying film, practicing stick-work and training. Right now, they're squeezing it in before or after work and between running errands to keep life going.

So as the NLL is coming up on negotiations with the Player's Union, I can only hope that a good compromise can be met where players can be empowered to generate more of there own money while teams can spend more to build a brand and bring in fans.  In the end, we can only hope that lacrosse keeps on growing and replaces that pesky baseball sport I keep hearing about.