GatewayRedbirds.com

The PD is going down not with a bang, but with a whimper.

What complete trash.

Not because of Hochman, but I dropped my paper subscription last month. Pained me at the time -as an old paperboy and an intellectual*

*definition of an intellectual per my late favorite Uncle.
Someone who reads the newspaper on the terlet.

I think the P-D knows it doesn't have long to live and doesn't want to spend too much on an actual good journalist.

Hochman's piece on the potential MLS stadium in St Louis is absolutely unbearable.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/ ... 6b079.html

He's deliberately trying to piss people off, right? "Progressive" is a weird thing to call a sport which has been around in codified form since 1863. Future =/= "progressive". This idea that billionaires should pay for their own business locations is surprisingly difficult to get to sink into peoples' heads (kudos to Ortiz of the P-D for making that point).

Famous Mortimer wrote:Hochman's piece on the potential MLS stadium in St Louis is absolutely unbearable.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/ ... 6b079.html

He's deliberately trying to piss people off, right? "Progressive" is a weird thing to call a sport which has been around in codified form since 1863. Future =/= "progressive". This idea that billionaires should pay for their own business locations is surprisingly difficult to get to sink into peoples' heads (kudos to Ortiz of the P-D for making that point).

Yeah, who can't be annoyed by this regardless of whether you are millennial.

Pro soccer is wildly popular among millennials. Yes, they get a bad rap sometimes. And yes, some millennials aren’t too keen on giving rich people public money to build their own companies. That said, it’s understood that Major League Soccer is the league of many millennials. And they are the future adults, if they’re currently still in your basement or not.

It would seem that if St Louis is the soccer hotbed that the pro-stadium contingent is painting it as, then no-one would need any financial incentive to come here. Surely just providing the service that all these millenials are desperate for would get the money rolling in?

I've got a Hochmanesque idea for STL MLS team name

[SHOW]

You guessed it. St. Louis Millennials

This post begins with the preface that MLS is my favorite soccer league in the world and I have been a keen observer since 2005. I know a lot about the league, how it's grown and changed and what it's potential is. I also know a lot about St. Louis sports and have spent a lot of time in the city. I also have read and heard a lot of Hochman.

It’s 2037 and St. Louis is stale.

It’s 2037 and St. Louis is stuck.

It’s 2037 and our city is wondering where it went wrong, why companies won’t move to town, why big events no longer take a chance on the city, why Kansas City is so progressive and vibrant and St. Louis is so complacent and plain.

It’s 2017 and St. Louis has a chance to navigate its path.

Hochman is someone who champions St. Louis as an underrated, livable city with a lot of good things happening in terms of development and business. When the Rams left, he wrote about it at length. Here he is playing with the same stereotypes that he crucified Kroenke and his feasibility study team for using. FOH.

Voting on April 4 for the soccer stadium — and also the MetroLink expansion — plants a seed in downtown in regard to development, declaring that St. Louis wants to be something more. It’s recognizing that this is our one shot to get Major League Soccer, a flourishing league for a sport that you might not love, but your kids sure do.

1. If there's one thing that Miami, Los Angeles, Tampa/St. Pete, and pretty much any long-time observer of Don Garber and the business of MLS can tell you, it's that there's no such thing as an "only shot" at getting an MLS team. They're really good at fostering potential ownership groups and patiently waiting to get deals done.

2. Steadily growing? Yes. Not going anywhere? Yes. Shrewdly working towards becoming "flourishing?" Yes. I'm not sure what Hochman's definition of flourishing is, but one look at MLS' TV ratings would show you that you're stretching it pretty far in relation to other major leagues to call it "flourishing."

3. You probably don't love MLS. Your kids probably don't love MLS at a similar rate. By and large, your kids like the FIFA video game, watching clips of Messi, Neymar, and Ronaldo on youtube and making you buy them cool jerseys. There are many kids who love MLS, but it's not some well kept secret that there's an army of under-18 MLS fans. If they grow in an MLS city, they might be fans, but if not, probably not.

“We’re really excited about everything that’s going on in St. Louis,” said Howard Handler, the chief marketing officer of Major League Soccer. “... And if I was to single out anything that really, truly sets our league apart — it’s that our fans feel like they’re part of a movement.”

They say that about literally every city that comes to them with a potential ownership group and stadium. They've even said that about Chattanooga. Chattanooga.

Guys. Chattanooga.

For Americans age 18-34, professional soccer is the second-most popular sport. This is from third-party research, numbers then shared by MLS.

Yes, this is probably true. They love Barcelona, Manchester United, etc. They do not love the Chicago Fire or FC Dallas.

Pro soccer is wildly popular among millennials. Yes, they get a bad rap sometimes. And yes, some millennials aren’t too keen on giving rich people public money to build their own companies.

F off.

That said, it’s understood that Major League Soccer is the league of many millennials.

LMAO. Define "many." I'm a millennial. I love MLS. I have exactly 0 friends IRL that love MLS.

“It’s a really big group, and it gets batted around quite a bit, but the things we’ve seen in demography is — our millennials are a little bit different,” Handler said. “They’re a little bit wealthier — I wouldn’t say wealthy — but they skew a higher income. They are better educated. They skew professional. And they are active — running, hiking, playing soccer, playing other sports. And they’re also very tech-savvy and eco-aware.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/201 ... /96530338/



Listen, MLS will be really great in StL. It'll be a ton of fun. You guys will hate Sporting Kansas City and the Chicago Fire. You'll drink beers and connect to the team. Every city that has run their MLS team well on and off the field has experienced very strong growth in their fan bases and the ceiling is very high in terms of a cultural connection to the city, but Hochman doesn't have a [expletive] clue what he's talking about and when he gives this hard sell about why it's worth taxpayer's money, he sounds like every huckster that has sold that line of crap everywhere else, including Kroenke.

Famous Mortimer wrote:Hochman's piece on the potential MLS stadium in St Louis is absolutely unbearable.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/ ... 6b079.html

He's deliberately trying to piss people off, right? "Progressive" is a weird thing to call a sport which has been around in codified form since 1863. Future =/= "progressive". This idea that billionaires should pay for their own business locations is surprisingly difficult to get to sink into peoples' heads (kudos to Ortiz of the P-D for making that point).

There was an article Hochman could have written about demographic trends and soccer, as well as St. Louis' long association with the sport.

What he wrote was just dumb. I'm sorry, I'd like to be charitable, but it was just lazy garbage.

It’s 2037 and our city is wondering where it went wrong, why companies won’t move to town, why big events no longer take a chance on the city, why Kansas City is so progressive and vibrant and St. Louis is so complacent and plain.

The core city has been emptying out for more than three-quarters of a century, and is hamstrung by a ignorant charter from the 19th century that helped set it behind Chicago, as well as a legacy of racial antagonism and political corruption. But pass on professional soccer, and man, things look bleak. Conversely, build a soccer stadium and stuff will happen. Tons of stuff. The Golden Age of St. Louis will begin. Death rates in Kansas City will skyrocket as acid eats through its citizens's stomach linings as they watch St. Louis' soccer team usher in a utopia unforeseen in human history. Utah will ask to merge with St. Louis, but no, the city is just fine, thank you very much.

Gott im Himmel, that article is the intellectual equivalent of a dirty bomb. I've been infected by stupidity anthrax. How on earth could a human being write something this dumb? Is he missing 15 or 20 chromosomes?

To be honest I already hate Sporting KC and don't even have a remotely valid reason.