Stat Boy

For those of you that enjoy PTI, I'm going to be playing the role of Stat Boy for a moment here. Reason being - there was so much posting overnight that the people I was conversing with might not want to scroll more than halfway down the page to check in on the comments field. So, I'm bringing the river to the horse, if you will...

To Jon: Love the anti-salary cap argument you use with the Bentley and the Pinto. I'd buy a Bentley too. But you bash the Yanks and then use their argument for why salary caps are bad. Sort of a self-defeating argument there. You can't hate a team and then quote them verbatim on why you'd do it the same way. Makes no sense. Hockey needs a salary cap. Needs it because as the least popular "major" sport (it's really a niche sport at this point), it can't scrap with the big boys. If hockey wants to stay in business, it needs to totally overhaul its economic system. Check back to your posting for more detailed comments.

To Hitman: Minor point of information about San Antonio's market size - it's the 37th largest, not in the top 10. Market size is determined by television market reach, not by total population of a metropolitan area. As such, San Antonio's reach is considerably smaller than its population. Why else would San Antonio not already have a pro football team if not for the fact that it carries less weight with the NFL's network parters during TV contract renegotiation time.

The glut with the Cowboys, Texans and UT is a fair point, but I don't believe there is a risk of glutting the Texas market with football. Each of Texas' three cities are very distinct and non-overlapping markets. Also, pro and college football fans tend not to overlap as much as you might think. There are far fewer female fans of NCAA football (despite the fact that over 50% of the college population is female - weird, huh?) and the NFL does an excellent job of marketing to women in order to expand their footprint. I think three teams can easily thrive and survive in Texas. Plus, and this is the lynchpin argument, name one football team that is losing money. None of them are. All 31 teams have black ink in the revenue and operating income line items. It's the very nature of the way the league was structured that any team can survive in just about any market.