Dollar Dog Night

Sometimes a promotional idea gets just a bit out of hand.  The Phillies experienced such a twist this week when they hosted the Miami Marlins on what was Dollar Dog Night.  I read one report that the concession stands sold more than 58,000 hot dogs for that game – – but not all of them entered an alimentary canal.  Some of those hot dogs turned into garbage missiles as fans threw hot dogs at one another.  One report by NBCSports – Philadelphia referred to this event as the “first Dollar Dog Night of the season.”  Given the reports and some of the videos of the event(s), someone in the Phillies’ braintrust might want to do a “re-evaluation”.

Fortunately, this event seemed limited to embarrassing moments; even a “direct hit” by a flying hot dog is unlikely to inflict serious damage on the “recipient” or damage to the facilities themselves. Such was not the case about 50 years ago when the Cleveland Indians hosted “Ten Cent Beer Night”.  Yes, that was a thing…

The idea was to sell “low-alcohol beer” for ten cents at a time when the normal price for a beer was about 75 cents.  That is an idea that one could believe would increase attendance for a night but looking at the details, one might have seen the seeds of failure here too.  Fans were not allowed to purchase more than 6 beers at a time, but there was no limit put on how many times they could go to the concession stands and buy six more.  Hmmm…

Obviously, a significant fraction of the fans in attendance were well-lubricated as the game took place.  There were streakers who ran the field; there were firecrackers set off; many of the folks who went to that game just to see a baseball game used their common sense and left early.  What remained in the stadium was a highly inebriated crowd and things got worse and worse.  In the ninth inning, the folks left in the stadium bum-rushed the field and the umpires declared the game a forfeit and left the field.

• Memo to Phillies’ Promotion Mavens:  The “food fight scene” in the movie Animal House was funny.  Having the Phillie Phantic shoot hot dogs into the stands from an air gun is silly but harmless.  Figure out something else to do with those other scheduled “Dollar Hot Dog Nights”; that was an embarrassing display.

`           Moving on …  Turn the clock back in your mind to the summer of 2009.  Tiger Woods was dominating golf as much as any athlete was dominating any sport at the time.  He was an athlete in tremendous shape who used his workouts and his physical stature as key elements of his dominance of his sport.  Back then, Woods and Phil Mickelson were rivals, but Mickelson was seen as a less-dedicated/more happy-go-lucky player on the PGA Tour.  While some people marveled at Woods physique, others made jokes about Mickelson’s man-boobs.

Fast forward to 2023.  Tiger Woods had to withdraw from The Masters because he could not walk without an obviously painful limp.  Meanwhile in this year’s Masters, Phil Mickelson finished tied for second place and – for a brief time – was the leader in the clubhouse.  I certainly would never have predicted this state of affairs back in 2009.

The great sportswriter, Dan Jenkins, said of Tiger Woods early in Woods’ career that the only things that could derail Woods from greatness were “serious injury or a bad marriage”.  That is what I call “prophetic”.

Switching gears …  I read a report last week that 20% of the basketball players in the Big East were in the “transfer portal” meaning most of them will switch schools by the start of next season.  As a back-of-the-envelope calculation consider what that might mean in college football.  There are 130 Division 1-AA schools, and a college team probably averages 80 players; so, if 20% of them are in the transfer portal, that works out to about 2000 “student-athletes” looking to be on the move.  That gives new meaning to the old come-on:

“You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.”

I am going to venture way out on a limb here and suggest a change that might – – if it is even feasible – – alleviate some of this chaos in collegiate sports.

• Colleges should no longer give scholarships to athletes.
• Colleges should enter into contractual relationships with their athletes.

The idea of contracts would allow the athlete to negotiate the duration of the contract as well as the terms and forms of remuneration.  If the athlete actually wants to go to class and get a degree, then some/all of his remuneration ought to be negotiated as tuition, lab fees, books and whatever.  If the athlete wants to be a one-and-done, then the remuneration need not take any of those sorts of things into account and the contract that results will terminate at the end of one athletic season.

I do not pretend to know anywhere near enough about contract law to know if these sorts of arrangements are workable; but let me pretend for the moment that they can be regularized to the point that there are templates for various art forms here.  This sort of environment would provide some small measure of “roster stability” in college athletics and I think that would be beneficial for the sports.

Obviously, a recruit or a free-agent athlete is going to choose to sign with a school that appeals to him/her AND he/she is going to join forces with a coach/coaching staff where there is some sort of positive relationship.  So, I would expect that these recruits/free-agents would be sure to include an out-clause in their deals saying that if the coach is fired, the contract is null and void.  Such arrangements supply stability for the school and for the athletes and may – perhaps – slow down the churning of coaching changes in college football and basketball every year.  Just a thought …

Finally, since I mentioned Dan Jenkins’ prophetic statement about Tiger Woods today, let me close with this from Lord Byron:

“The best of prophets of the future is the past.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………