Leaving Las Vegas - the Las Vegas Gladiators March out of Town for... Cleveland!
MAJORBLOGS.NET - The announced departure late last week (Raw Feed, 10.20.07) of the Las Vegas Gladiators of the Arena Football League (AFL) to Cleveland was brief, with a notification to all season ticket holders to call in and get their refunds. No fanfare. No thank you to the community for all of their great support. That's because there wasn't much. No love lost for the AFL team in Sin City, at any rate.
What it says, rather loudly, again, to mayor Oscar Goodman, a doctoral candidate at Las Vegas' other college, Delusional State, is that support for major league professional sports in his town is still a long shot.
The polychromatic politico has loudly ballyhooed the notion of bringing MLB to LV, NV, in spite of the rather tepid enthusiasm that locals have had for professional minor league sports over the years.
The Las Vegas strip and its surrounding areas have been the boulevard of broken dreams for many an aspiring sports mogul in the big four pro sports. Since 2000 there have been four failed professional basketball franchises, two hockey clubs, and now AFL football. Even though the Los Angeles Dodgers now call Cashman Field their Triple-A minor league home (Las Vegas 51s), the antiquated facility adjacent to the old strip hangs on, but does not wow many.
Gladiators owner Jim Ferraro's decision to ask the AFL to pull out of Vegas indicates that he saw no future for AFL football amidst the loud din of one arm bandits and the hundreds of other shows and events that are available to grab both tourist and local dollars.
It is a minor black eye to the AFL, whose fortunes have been on the rise with their ESPN television contract. Losing a high profile town like Vegas for Cleveland is a bit like your son dumping his perfect blonde Phi Beta Kappa girlfriend to marry Edna, the three-toothed gal on the swing shift at the meat packing plant... in Cleveland.
Apparently even though they have the New York, New York hotel in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, when it comes to pro sports, if you can make it anywhere, you can't make it here.
Right now, the only full-on success story outside of boxing that we know of is the Las Vegas Wranglers ECHL hockey club. The club plays at the Orleans Hotel right on the Strip, and draws well.
Perhaps it's Ferraro's fault. Had he partnered up with the community better, he could have made the venture a success.Get some performers to twirl on the safety nets and call it GLADIATORS: A Cirque du Soleil Sports Experience. Or perhaps paint up all of the players for the BLUE MAN TEAM.
Many supporters of major league sports in Vegas, including the overly optimistic Oscar, have tried to pass off the failures of pro sports in the area to the fact that they are minor league: Not well run. Not grand enough for a grand town like Las Vegas.
Yet the ECHL Wranglers and should they ever get a better venue, the 51s, prove that there is a market within the local community for minor league sports.
The AFL, both by its contracts and its ratings, is the rising major league sport. When their roll in Vegas turns up snake eyes, and they pack up out of their suite and head off to Cleveland, it won't take the CSI guys to tell you why major league sports in town is a dead idea.
Goodman should get on board with a new home for the 51s, and dump the MLB crusade. Las Vegas is the province of Penn & Teller, not Loria & Selig.
The Gladiators march out of town pays no homage to Caesar, or Wynn.
Brian Ross
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