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Friday, December 3,1993
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NFL takes big risks choosing Jacksonville
Pride key to new team's success
By Dave Goldberg The Associated Press
Commissioner Paul Taglabie and a lot of NFLowners were gushing about the selection of Jacksonville as the NFL's 30th franchise.
"The Southeast is the nation's most rapidly growing area," Tagliabue said, adding that NFL ratings in Jacksonville were higher than any of the other four contenders.
"We get a lot of our players from there," said Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, who indeed have an inordinate number of players from the state of Florida — thanks largely to the fact that Jimmy Johnson coached college football in the state and knew the talent there.
But the fact remains that the NFL is taking a calculated risk by tilting to the Southeast with its two newest franchises.
Because the NFL's most loyal fan base is in the northern half of the country — where it began and where college football doesn't have the incredibly deep emotional loyalties that run through the South.
Why?
teams that have the deepest loyalties, year in, year out, win or lose — Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Buffalo; Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Green Bay and Denver.
To put it another way, draw a line from Washington west to Denver and turn it up north and you find the NFL
If the fans don't come to cheer, they come to boo the "Dawgs" in Cleveland's pound may not like Bill Belichick, who show up to razz him. The same is true in Philadelphia, where you see signs every week suggesting that owner Norman Braman return to Florida, the south of France or anyplace but the misnamed city of Brotherly Love.
The Sun Belt?
About the only city where an NFL team draws consistently well is New Orleans, which has the mindset of those northern cities—we'll go to the game to cheer or boo, but we'll go.
Forget Los Angeles, where USC, UCLA, the Dodgers and the Lakers are king — the Rams have to win to draw and the Raiders have never really settled in.
San Francisco?
One reason the Niners are a good road team is that their home crowd is quite laid back. If they ever start losing, how many of those fans will take their wine and brie elsewhere?
Dallas?
The Cowboys may be "America's Team," but they belong to Texas only when they're winning. During the awful years of the late '80s, they were drawing only 60 percent of capacity to Texas Stadium — the best crowds were for Tex Schramm's 1987 strike replacements.
And Florida is no great NFL stronghold.
Miami has been a consistent contender since Don Shula got there in 1971, yet still doesn't sell out every week — moving to safer and more comfortable Joe Robbie Stadium from the Orange Bowl didn't do the trick. And visiting teams draw fans there — watch this week's game with the Giants and check out how many transplanted New Yorkers are cheering for the visitors.
Jacksonville could be a different story — a city looking for an identity that the NFL might put on the map. Being "the only game in town" has made NFL boomtowns of Denver, Buffalo and New Orleans, and Jacksonville residents say the city has a similar kind of civic pride.
But the south is college football territory and always has been. Florida and Florida State are within a two-hour drive, and south Georgia, from where the Jaguars also hope to draw, is a place where "How about them Dawgs?" is part of the dialect.
The NFL hopes that civic pride will take over because none of those colleges has any public identification with Jacksonville, although Georgia and Florida meet there annually.
The question is what happens in the fourth season, after the Jaguars are 2-5 after having gone 1-15, 2-14 and 4-12?
If they get 73,000 raucous fans in the Gator Bowl booing the hometown heroes, the NFL will know it's made a wise choice.
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