Thats pretty bad... we were 1 and 15 last year... the stadium is rarely packed with our fans... yet ticket prices have increased? hmm something doesnt make sense here.
He's just writing to write. He has no real Dolphins news. Looks like Ireland and Sparano have shut him out.
The seats are empty but still sold. Still sold out all the games. Corporations own a lot of Season Ticket packages who pass them on to their customers as a benefit. When the customers don't want to attend, the seats are still sold.
I think this instance is less of Huizenga running the organization into the ground and more about a sucking economy. Increase prices + devalued dollar = extreme suckage. Additionally, and probably more closely related, you have an ever increasing salary cap, that extra money doesn't just show up in the teams bank. It's placed there, by the fans. As a fan I can't really blame Huizenga, he has done everything he knows to do. The dolphins organization is a dang good job to have. The only area I see he jacked up is letting Wanny hang around as long as he did. Want to see a God aweful owner, look at the Raiders. Now that is a good example of being run into the ground. Makes Huizenga look like a football god.
I'm not really referring to the on-field misgivings of Huizenga. There is absolutely no reason the Dolphins should have trouble selling out, in one of the largest markets in the NFL, and the Bills don't. From the marketing of players, to the lack of control he has had over the media, this team has struggled mightily.
I'd love to hear the rationale for this. Some of the things Wayne H. gets bashed on are laughable to me. He hasn't been perfect. He's had very bad luck on good decisions he's made and allowed himself to get talked into a disaster in hiring Wannstedt but besides that he's been a fantastic owner always trying to build a winner. Blaming him for "lack of sell outs" is absurd IMO. First off we're not near as bad as some try to insinuate we are in sell outs. Paid ticket sales and actual attendance are two completely different animals. Second, we have one of the larger stadiums in the league and even when we don't sell out a game we have more tickets sold than many other areas do with their smaller stadiums. Thirdly, the shift from the OB to Dolphins stadium led to more of a focus on prime seating geared towards execs and to the increase of pricing which is pushing many of the regular fans out of attendance. In addition to that, over the past 3 decades we've had radical shifts in ethnic population levels in S. FL. paired with huge decreases in American born populations. These influxes of foreign born hispanic and black populations don't have ties to American football. Things have changed quite a bit ethnically from the days that the OB would be packed with FL. Native fans that grew up here as Phin fans. Yet another factor is the success of the team. Recently you've had a team that is sinking like a brick as well which will lead to decreases in ticket sales in just about any town. Also you now have a putrid economy which is going to force out even more lower to middle class folks from having the expendable income to purchase expensive trips to an NFL game. The reasons we don't have packed houses on a weekly basis here in S. FL. are numerous and complicated. You'd be ignoring quite a few very valid issues by choosing such a simplistic argument as pointing a finger at the owner. I really believe Wayne H. gets way too much grief. I just hope that Ross is half as dedicated once he gets full control.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/attendance?sort=home_avg&year=2007 Here's some attendance reports going back to 2001. You'll notice that despite all the issues mentioned were still in the top 10 for attendance every single year.
That is the main issue for all fan bases IMO. The success of the game of course has inspired the same type of over the line greed that corp. America displays. The game is pricing itself out of the range of the fans that made it what it is today. It's a damn shame.
