Calgary Stampeders' Shannon James tries unsuccessfully to break up a pass to Toronto Argonauts P.K. Sam during their Canadian Football League game in Toronto, Saturday, Septmeber 27, 2008. THE CANADIAN PRESS/J.P. MoczulskiJ.P. Moczulski/The Canadian Press
It's lonely at the top, but here at the bottom, it's not much fun either.
How bad have things gotten for our resident cellar-dwellers? In 2009, not a single one of Toronto's six professional teams (Maple Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays, Rock, Argos, FC) made the playoffs. None. By comparison, Philadelphia had all four of its major sports teams qualify for the post-season last year. And once again the perennial anthem of "there's always next year" will ring true as franchise players such as Roy Halladay, and possibly Chris Bosh, run for the border.
The Big Smoke has become the sports world's "Big Joke."
"It's an absolute train wreck in Toronto," says Sports Illustrated's Michael Farber. "It doesn't mean it will never get better, but right now if you take a snapshot of what is going on in Toronto, you have to avert your eyes."
As 2010 begins, it's business as usual: The Leafs are near the bottom of the NHL standings, the Raptors have a losing record, and the Doc-less Blue Jays will need more than meds to survive what promises to be another mediocre campaign.
When was the last time one of Toronto's big three teams won a playoff series? Here's a hint: Dubya was campaigning for a second term in Washington under the banner "mission accomplished." Yup, in spring, 2004, the Leafs beat the Senators in the first round of the postseason, mostly attributable to a windfall of bad goaltending. In the interim, the club's owners have been enjoying their own windfalls.
In November, Forbes magazine reported the Leafs are the NHL's most valuable franchise, worth $470-million, an increase of 132 per cent since 2000. During that same period, the magazine reports the Leafs' operating income increased by a whopping 339 per cent. Bullish if not baffling numbers completely incongruent with the team's dismal performance. The Maple Leafs brand is so strong, it's a licence to print money.
CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell calls Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment "recession proof." MLSE is Toronto's sports conglomerate - it owns the Leafs, Raptors and Toronto FC.
Mr. Rovell says the Leafs' legions of loyal fans provide the ideal business model. "It's the perfect confluence of all the things you want. The bottom line is that there are not enough seats for people who want to see a professional hockey team play in Toronto."
And there's the rub: Take a city with an insatiable appetite for hockey, add bottomless corporate pockets and you are left with a sold-out arena watching a sub-par product.
Toronto sports fans are nothing if not patient. We sit, we wait and we hope. We invest our emotions, our money and our time. We internalize our failures and celebrate our small victories.
Blind optimism is our best friend and worst enemy. It has numbed our pain, while blurring the reality of what has become a frightening local sports scene. We should avert our eyes, but how can we? We're all scared if we turn our backs and look away we could miss the moment, that tantalizing moment we have been waiting for.
So what can we do? Is all hope lost? Not if fans and owners follow our four New Year's resolutions.
Embrace the culture of protest
When we suggest bringing the NFL to Toronto, we're not talking about the Bills, thanks very much, Rogers. (As if we need another losing team.) What we'd like to import is something from NFL fans in general. Like, say, a profound sense of outrage.
Last October, an 18-year-old unemployed Bills fan named Ryan Abshagen raised enough money through an Internet campaign to rent a billboard in the Buffalo area to advertise his frustrations. It read: "It's time to clean house, RALPH," referring to the team owner, Ralph Wilson.
But in what ended up being a year of fanned frustrations, there were spectator uprisings across the land: In Cleveland, where two men from the Browns' so-called "Dawg Pound" organized a boycott. In Washington D.C., where displeased chants directed toward the owner's box culminated in an apology from the Redskins owner, Daniel Snyder.
In Kansas City, where spectators successfully lobbied to strike Chiefs running back Larry Johnson from the roster after he made disparaging remarks about Chiefs coach Todd Haley and homosexual references about fans over Twitter. Mr. Johnson was eventually cut and then signed with the Cincinnati Bengals.
Protesting is not a very Torontonian past time, but think of it as newfangled kind of garbage strike.
Cheaper beer means a happier customer
Okay, so maybe this is more of a plea for common sense and decency than it is a solution for what ails Toronto's sports teams. But if we are going to buy tickets to watch some of the worst teams in all of sports, can't we at least afford to get drunk enough to not remember it?
No team has a longer history of losing than the Chicago Cubs. Still, a trip to Wrigley Field is a must for any sports fans visiting Chicago. Sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley on a warm summer day is an event. There is a certain feeling, a certain smell and a certain taste. That taste is cold beer - affordable cold beer.
In a 2008 CNBC business report, the Blue Jays were listed as having the fifth most expensive beer prices in the major leagues (46 cents per ounce). That's nearly twice as expensive as the majors' cheapest beer, found in Philadelphia (24 cents an ounce).
For games at the Air Canada Centre, you'll also need to be loaded just to get loaded. At last check it cost $14 and change for a large beer. Maybe that explains why Leafs home games are often some of the quietest in the NHL.
I don't think alcohol is mandatory at a sporting event - in fact, sometimes the combination of beer consumption and testosterone can be downright scary.
But if you are already getting gouged with the league's highest average ticket price, as we are with the Leafs, and the highest Fan Cost Index in the NHL - the total cost of four tickets, two small draft beers, four small soft drinks, four regular-sized hot dogs, parking for one car, two game programs and two adult-sized caps - is it really necessary to also feel like a chump?
Take the Tiger Woods approach
No, not that one. The other one: spend tons of money - not hush money - but the scads that could lure a superstar athlete to our city.
Ilya Kovalchuk is the best NHL player available this July as an unrestricted free agent. Assuming the Atlanta Thrashers can't re-sign the 26-year-old forward, Leafs general manager Brian Burke needs to step up and make sure he lands what would be a major piece to a championship puzzle. Yes, the NHL's salary cap gets in the way, but if the Penguins can somehow afford both Sidney Crosby and Evegeni Malkin, Mr. Burke can make room for one superstar in Toronto.
Similarly, the Raptors can't afford to see another former first-round pick and franchise player leave at the first opportunity. Bryan Colangelo needs to plead with Chris Bosh to stay, not just for his skills on the court, but to signal to other American NBA players that they too can live large north of the 49th.
As former Raptor Jalen Rose puts it, "In Toronto, the stigma that exists is that I'm going to have to pay more to play there." Mr. Rose says he loves Toronto and enjoyed playing here, but as an American citizen working in Canada he had to pay "Uncle Sam 43 per cent, Queen Elizabeth 4 or 5 per cent and my agent 2 per cent to 4 per cent." He adds that he saved more than $1-million in taxes in 2006 when he was traded from Toronto to the New York Knicks.
The Blue Jays, backed by the Rogers media empire, need to become buyers, too. Don't forget, when the Jays were hanging championship banners in the early 1990s they were also boasting the major league's highest payroll. Playing in the ultra-competitiveAmerican League East, the mandate is clear: Go big or go home.
"Unless there is a great tectonic shift and somehow Toronto gets out of the eastern half of North America, the Jays are in trouble, because as long as they're competing with the Red Sox and Yankees, nothing is happening there," says Sports Illustrated's Mr. Farber.
The Jays don't need to match the Yankees outrageous $200-million payroll, but they do need to spend some serious cash down the road or they risk following the Expos literal and figurative trip south.
Follow the Beantown blueprint
No city has enjoyed more success in the last decade than Boston. Since 2001, Beantown has been "wick-ed awe-some," with three teams celebrating six sports titles.
Boston's recipe for success has been equal parts smarts, luck and the willingness to take risks. Rather than nickelling and diming with second-rate executives, Boston hired top-shelf executives and coaches, a strategy Toronto has finally adopted by signing respected GMs Bryan Colangelo and Brian Burke.
The New England Patriots turned the city's sports fortunes around in one lucky move at the 2000 NFL draft when they selected Tom Brady with the 199th overall pick. Three Super Bowl wins and four Pro Bowls later, Mr. Brady has established himself as one of Boston's greatest sports icons. (Status we in Toronto reserve for the likes of Darcy Tucker.)
Meanwhile, the frustration of the Red Sox nation came to an end thanks in large part to boy wonder GM Theo Epstein, who made a number of calculated moves at the 2004 trade deadline.
Mr. Epstein's biggest move was his riskiest, a blockbuster four-team deal where he moved Nomar Garciaparra, one of the city's most popular athletes. With improved team chemistry, the Sox became a team of destiny, coming back from a 3-0 series deficit to beat the Yankees in seven games in the ALCS, and then win its first World Series championship in 86 years.
Soon after, Celtic pride was restored to Boston by two shrewd and timely moves in the summer of 2007. In one month Celtics GM Danny Ainge traded a bunch of young players and draft picks for perennial all-stars Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett. The Celtics went from league doormat to a championship team, the sort of quick turnaround Leafs fans have been dreaming about for decades.
Don't fret, Toronto. It can be done. Both Brian Burke and Bryan Colangelo have shown they're not afraid to make bold moves, and if they can make the "perfect move," a championship may follow soon after.
Special to The Globe and Mail