THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 1, 1995 TAG: 9511010582
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: CFL: What's in it for Hampton Roads?
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SHREVEPORT, LA. LENGTH: Long : 175 lines
Nobody should have been fooled by those lines out of the banks, where they sold the season tickets in those early, giddy days of the first campaign. By those 15,000 commitments that arrived in little more than two weeks. By the businesses, citizens and lean, ravenous fans here in Ark-La-Tex, football country to the core, who intentionally snapped up more tickets than they knew what to do with. All in the name of bringing the Shreveport Pirates, their Pirates, to life.
Nobody should have been fooled, but you can see how it happened. Shreveport-Bossier City, combined population roughly 350,000, was dying for a professional football team. Lonie Glieberman had one, a new Canadian Football League entry asking to move into Shreveport's Independence Bowl.
``It was almost un-American not to buy a season ticket back then,'' says Taylor Moore, longtime owner of Shreveport's Double-A baseball team, the Captains.
And so the match was made.
The messy divorce, less than two years later, is under way, with Hampton Roads suddenly cast as a soft shoulder for Glieberman's burden; a salve for what some in this corner of Louisiana call a horrible business decision, reached through lust but doomed from the start.
``I said at the time this area's not big enough to support a CFL team,'' says Moore. ``It probably wouldn't have made it anyway, but a lot of their problems came from mistakes management made from the beginning, and by local people who tried to fast-track it.''
The thing is, it wasn't even that nice while it lasted. The Pirates lost their first 14 games. The ownership group haggled with the Internal Revenue Service and the city over money. They made only a token attempt to sign quarterback Matt Dunigan, a Louisiana boy who was one of the best players in the league this season for Birmingham.
There was still some hope that first year, even after the 14 losses, when the Pirates won three of their last four.
They drew 32,011, albeit at discount prices, to their finale, a four-point victory over Ottawa, where Glieberman ran the franchise the year before.
Not long after, though, the inevitable breakup gained momentum. Glieberman requested $1 million from Shreveport to help offset his losses, in exchange for a promise to stay three seasons. After much controversy, the City Council agreed, but the seams were splitting.
Season-ticket sales for the 1995 season dropped. Overall attendance fell 4,000 per game to 13,800. The losing continued, on and off the field - the Pirates dropped 13 of 18 games and another $3 million dollars. At midseason, a week after the best draw of the season, Glieberman admitted he was looking into moving the team.
The awkward goodbye was at hand.
Every day you heard some complaint about money. We're the people who should have been complaining. This is a football city, we know football, and they weren't getting any better.'' - Joseph Green, 21
``The Gliebermans didn't have to give us a CFL team but they did. . . . I think this area is full of fair-weather fans.'' - Tommy Falgout, in a letter to the Shreveport Times.
``I think we need a CFL team, but we don't need this trouble. I'm not really sad (the Pirates are leaving). I'm looking forward to the CBA season.'' - Joseph Green
Eli Jacobson would be glad to hear that last statement. His Continental Basketball Association team, the Storm, arrived last year from Columbus, Ohio. That club lost money, too. A friend of Jacobson's says Jacobson wonders if Glieberman, by his public gaffes, didn't poison the financial well in the corporate community.
Jacobson, though, professes empathy for Glieberman, but tells a revealing story: Jacobson says he put together a group that wanted to buy the Pirates last year. He did a study using all the readily available market figures. And no matter how he twisted and turned the numbers, they never added up.
The unspoken message: What was Glieberman thinking when he came here?
``You'd have to do it on a philanthropic basis,'' says Jacobson, smiling, in his downtown Shreveport office. ``There is no chance for a CFL team to make money here. Take away all the management issues; it doesn't work. This market is too small to support it.
``Their attendance could've increased 50 percent, it wouldn't have worked. I've got to be fair; I think it's tough to yell at somebody who's lost $6 million of their own money. And when you lose money your first year and there's a dropoff the second year, why stay a third year?''
Because they promised, that's why, says Larry Merrell. He's the president of the Pirates Armada, a booster club 200 members strong. And he differs with Jacobson and others who say Shreveport is no place for the CFL. A team will work here, Merrell says, because of the enthusiasm that would be generated by a winning, first-class product.
Merrell insists that enthusiasm would overwhelm the demographics that say the area is too small and economically challenged to support a league that suggests to its teams the following basic targets for success: budgets of $6.5 million, average ticket prices of $18.50, average crowds of 23,000, a $5 parking charge for 7,000 spaces, 5,000 game programs at $3 each.
``I would really like the Pirates to be here. I would like the Gliebermans to be somewhere else,'' says Merrell, 38, a computer analyst who says he likes Lonie Glieberman personally. ``He's always been very, very nice. I'm just not real confident in his ability to run a business.''
At the end of this season, when Glieberman announced a last-ditch ticket drive to keep the Pirates in Shreveport, Merrell says the team foisted responsibility for that effort upon the Armada, which had volunteered only to help out.
It failed miserably, as everybody knew it would.
``Yes, I'm bitter. It's earned bitterness,'' Merrell says. ``I feel like I've been cheated and lied to. I've gone out on a limb for this team, pushed for them after they promised they'd be here three years. I was on the streets campaigning to get that million, sending letters to city councilmen.
``I feel I hoodwinked the people of this city. I think others feel the same way. It gets me, the promises that were broken. Here's what I'd tell people in Norfolk: Get everything in writing.''
This town's real finicky if you don't win every game. But it was a good thing. Good entertainment.'' - Mike Hatfield, 25
``This is a last-minute market. They figure, why buy a season ticket if they know they can buy a good seat the day of the game? They'll wait to see how the team's doing first. And if they're losing, nobody wants to see them get romped.'' - Gilbert Little, Captains general manager
``Lonie tried to push too hard, he ticked off too many people. He drained us; Virginia's next I guess.'' - David Wasicek, 24
``I'd go to some games, when I got free tickets. I'd like to see them stay. It makes people think Shreveport's not that bad a place.'' - Brandi Breen, 14
Shreveport-Bossier City's definitely not a bad place if you're a riverboat gambler. Three casinos have been anchored on the Red River for nearly two years and a fourth is planned. They teem with people, many thousands on a busy night, filling out a traditional scene of smoke-filled air and tables of green felt, clanking and jangling slot machines, pastimes like craps, blackjack and Caribbean poker.
Some locals think the boats have sucked patrons from other entertainment options like the Pirates. But the casinos support the local teams, the CBA's Jacobson says, and actively backed the Pirates. And since much of the boats' business comes from Texas, as a check of license plates in any parking lot attests, it seems unlikely that people were too busy gambling to go to football games.
Still, despite the area's profile as a good sports town for its size and wealth, its sports pillars clearly are teetering.
The annual Independence Bowl still draws well, and high school football, as always, is huge. But the Pirates are all but gone. The Storm lost about $500,000 its first season, Jacobson says, but season tickets are up. He, too, got city money to offset losses, but a killer lease at the Fairgrounds arena that denies him parking and concessions revenue threatens the Storm's health.
And the Captains could leave. Moore sold them to a group from Austin, Texas, but the deal fell through last April. With no season-ticket base to speak of because of the team's supposed lame-duck status, attendance dropped nearly 600 per game. Now, Moore, also stuck with a terrible lease, is dickering with the city for more favorable terms. He'll sell to local investors, he says, if he gets a break.
It all has bombarded the populace with money talk where sports talk used to be. But that's a price you pay for professional sports, and many people think what money the Pirates had was misused.
``You ever heard of the philosophy you've got to spend a dollar to make a dollar?'' Merrell says. ``That's not the way this team was run.''
``The club didn't market the thing hard enough,'' says Ben Williams, 25, the Pirates' All-Star defensive tackle. ``You've got to put faces, faces, faces out there.''
But would that really have worked? Would it have made any difference if Glieberman used his money better, had he not constantly yammered about financial trouble? If he had established more ties with the community? If he had lied at midseason when asked if he was looking for a new home?
The area would be better served to consider those issues rather than by taking ``fruitless'' shots at the Gliebermans, reporter Kent Heitholt writes in a Shreveport Times column. ``It does nothing to answer the question of whether this area can support a professional football team'' regardless of ownership.
The prevailing winds fairly shout it. The Pirates never had a prayer. ILLUSTRATION: JIM HUDELSON\ SHREVEPORT TIMES
Shreveport Pirates Ben Williams, left, and Mario Perry celebrate a
sack. The team took a beating on and off the field in 1995. It
finished 5-13, attendance fell 4,000 per game and the red ink added
up to another $3 million.
Color photo
Some in Shreveport blame mistakes by team president Lonie
Glieberman, left. But others look at the demographics and conclude
that a market of 350,000 just wasn't big enough.
KEYWORDS: CANADIAN FOOTBALL by CNB