League of Fans

As the NBA season gets underway, League of Fans would like to draw attention to the efforts of Stephon Marbury of the New York Knicks for the introduction of his new $15 sneaker, the Starbury One, which he will wear on the court during games.

As Business Week reports:
“‘Two hundred to buy a pair of sneakers,’ Marbury says, ‘that’s groceries for the week.’ He wants Starbury One’s low price to show kids how little it costs to make a high-quality sneaker. ‘History is going to say Stephon Marbury changed the game,’ he says.”

(Letter co-signed by: Jim Bouton, former Yankee pitcher and author of Ball Four; Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and author; Neil deMause, co-author of Field of Schemes; Dave Zirin, columnist for SLAM magazine and author of What’s My Name, Fool?; Robert Weissman, director of Essential Action and co-author of Corporate Predators; and Shawn McCarthy, director of League of Fans.)

Council of the District of Columbia

Dear Council member:

The District baseball boondoggle is swirling out of control at an ever accelerating pace.

(Ralph Nader’s Washington Post letter to the editor on DC Mayor Williams’ plan to increase public spending on stadium.)

Ballpark Bait and Switch
Letter to the Editor – Washington Post: Page A20

In the Oct. 7 editorial “Don’t Doff the Spending Cap,” The Post rightly advised the D.C. Council to reject Mayor Anthony A. Williams’s play for $75 million more from taxpayers for the stadium project.

In the Pennsylvania race for governor, pro football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann was easily defeated by incumbent Ed Rendell in the November 7 mid-terms. Swann’s celebrity status and former position as chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (2002-2005) couldn’t carry him to victory as they did Arnold Schwarzenegger in California (Schwarzenegger was Chairman of the President’s Fitness Council from 1990-92).

On this occassion, League of Fans remembers opposing Swann’s peddling of junk food to kids while Chairman of the President’s Fitness Council. At a vending machine trade group press conference on January 13, 2005, Chairman Swann was paid to appear next to a vending machine filled with junk food alongside elementary school kids.

More teams scalping their own tickets. In a column titled “Yankees Show Contempt for Their Most-Loyal Fans,” Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg News explains how the Yankees are policing ticket resale websites and revoking season tickets from fans who have sold their unused seats online.

At the same time, the Yankees are planning an operation called Pinstripe Marketplace, which the Yankees describe as “a new and exciting feature which will create a forum through which full season ticket licensees will be permitted to resell their tickets.”

As the debate rages over whether or not Chief Illiniwek should remain the University of Illinois mascot, Darla M. Wiese of Quad-Cities Online (IL) writes a thoughtful piece on the American Indian mascot issue. Please note that an excellent reader discussion follows her article, under “comments.”

Carter Strickland of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on the commercial takeover of college and university athletic departments by Nike, and other apparel companies:

“Being new to Bulldog Nation, Matthew Stafford wasn’t braced for the reaction when he sauntered onto the University of Georgia practice fields a few weeks ago dressed in an offensive T-shirt. Go Gators? I Love Spurrier? Nope, it was even worse. ‘He’s got on Reebok,’ Mark Richt yelled to the other Georgia football coaches. He sent the star freshman … back to the locker room for a change of clothes.”

Victory! Voters in both Seattle, WA and Sacramento, CA went against sports team owner demands for corporate welfare in ballot measures on Tuesday, November 7. Field of Schemes has the breakdown:

William Rhoden of the New York Times — one of our favorite sports columnists for his consistently provocative social commentary on the sports community and for his refusal to cheerlead (contrary to many in the sports pages) for the sports powers-that-be when undeserved — is out with a new book that’s sure to upset the sports establishment: Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete.

Neil deMause, co-author of Field of Schemes and blogger of fieldofschemes.com, highlights exactly what everyone knew would happen after the DC Council approved the worst stadium deal ever — that it would continue to get even worse for DC residents and taxpayers: