Why man should study history - Part 4 (or an MBA case study for sports management majors)

A few entries back, I'd commented how great it was to see professional major league indoor soccer available again as a spectator sport. I'd commented how the league eventually folded back in the early 1990s. Official league reasons for said demise were things like "declining revenues," "fading fan interest" blahblahblah.

Unofficial but powerful forces that contributed were that the quality of refereeing just kept continually sinking to new highs in "low." I personally witnessed one player whose career was ended by being slammed into the boards so hard it ruined his knee. And as he lay there writhing in agony, the ref simply stepped over his thrashing body and gave the signal to keep playing. In other words, no foul.

I remember reading a newspaper article where it was mentioned that at a recent MISL game in Tacoma Washington, they'd had a seat cushion giveaway promotion. The first so many thousand fans thru the gates on game night won a really cool seat cushion with the Tacoma Stars logo on it. The refereeing was so bad at this game and so many fans threw their free team seat cushion out onto the pitch in protest of the bad calls, they were able to gather up enough thrown seat cushions they were able to sponsor another seat cushion giveaway night. Now, that's pretty bad.

Now let's connect the dots of the previous MISL postmortem.. As the quality of the refereeing worsened, fan interest faded because they were plunking down money to buy tickets in hopes of escaping the frustrations and stresses of everyday life only to leave games more frustrated and stressed than when they'd went in. Hence, fans stopped coming to the games in ever bigger numbers. Fewer fans buying tickets led to declining revenues, and before long MISL team owners started listening to sportscaster "Dandy Don" Meredith's advice to "Turn out the lights, the party's over."

But, when the MISL was resurrected from the cold, lonely grave and a new team placed back in my town, I was all excited. Now I'm not so sure.

At last night's game, I witnessed the worst job of refereeing it's been my displeasure to witness in decades - since the Major Indoor Soccer League(MISL)  folded the LAST time around. Deja Vu all over again.
Yeah, my team lost. Yeah, their playing wasn't the best and didn't win them the game. Yeah, most of the time referees don't win or lose a game. But, it's damned hard to beat 6 opponents AND two referees.

Sure. Refs are human. Sure, they're going to miss something now and again. But, the refs on the pitch last night were living proof that "the best place to speed is in front of City Hall." They not only missed an occasional minor infraction here and there as is bound to happen, but also missed blatantly violent acts - numerous blatant pushes, punches and overall tauntingly unsportsmanlike conduct, etc committed right in front of them that they were looking straight at! And perhaps they'd whistle a minor infraction - or not. I thought they'd left their blue cards in the locker room the first half. Took a near melee to get 'em to finally pull a card and put some thug in the penalty box - once. To put it bluntly, there wasn't a pair of eyes - or kahunas - between the two officials tonight.

Then in the 2nd half one of our players gets hammered to the pitch to the point of a concussion and they red card the him out of the game. Idiocy! It's the job of the REF to control the emotions and conduct in the game and they blew it BIG time tonight! And you could just see the emotions and violent behavior escalate with each missed opportunity to crack down, gain control over the players emotions and stop the nonsense. During one of the Mayhem Moments, there were 4 players and even an assistant coach protesting and/or pleading the case in the referee's crease - a place that's supposed to be saved for only team captains and referees and only when they can behave themselves..

I think if the refs didn't even physically show up for the game tonight (God knows they weren't there mentally) these players could've done a better job of self-reffing the game than these clowns did.

Heads up, MISL; lousy refereeing is what played a big part in the demise of the league the LAST time. You had thousand dollar players, but ten cent refs. THIS time, your League has barely got off the ground again. If you start frustrating your customer fan base like happened last time, it'll crash and burn and fold up again just like last time.  Just sayin'....