Oklahoma City vs Louisville: A Basketball Case Study

The Kentucky Colonels once dominated the sports landscape in Louisville.  Why hasn't a modern revival happened sooner?

With the NBA Finals starting in earnest last night the question has been repeatedly floated around the air-waves and blogosphere of Louisville "If Oklahoma City can have an NBA franchise, why can't we?"  And it's an interesting question because on the surface so many things would seem to shift in the favor of Louisville being a viable home for a professional basketball franchise.  Why is it then that Louisville is often overlooked in that discussion?

When you examine the peripherals, again, it appears that Louisville should hold its own in any NBA argument.  Louisville ranks higher than OKC in terms of population and size of media market (42nd vs 43rd), Louisville has a higher median annual household income than OKC ($39,457 vs $34,947), and Louisville has more Fortune 500 companies from which to draw sponsorships than OKC (3 vs 2).  But the turning point really comes when you consider the mobility and hunger of the two fan bases.  First of all, Oklahoma City, while it is close to Norman and not far from Stillwater, has no specific ties to a particular college sports programs, and has no significant major sports franchises other than the AAA Baseball OKC Redhawks.  Beyond that, the closest major sports town to OKC is Dallas and its over 200 miles away - a further distance than Louisville is from Nashville.  The next closest bastion of top level athletes lies in Kansas City which is nearly 400 miles away, and more than a 5 hour drive.

How do these folks get their sports fix?

Louisville, in contrast, has major college sports littered all throughout its community fabric with the University of Louisville competing at a high level in all its major sports, and Bellarmine University competing extensively as well.  When you throw in the University of Kentucky, which is a mere 75 miles away in Lexington, the picture gets pretty cloudy when you consider which entity is going to get your entertainment dollar.  Beyond that, Louisville is within 250 miles of four major sports towns in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Nashville, and many people around here already have deep ties to teams in those locales because, frankly, they've had to find somebody to root for all these years.  When you add to that the Kentucky Derby, and horse racing in general, along with the Louisville Bats.  You have a sports landscape that pretty well ties up the demands of any fan's tastes all year round, not to mention their dollars.

But OK, I love Louisville, and Kentucky in general (that's what this blog is all about right?), so lets say that the fan bases are equal and the penchant for spending on sports is equal.  Basketball is obviously king in the KY right?  So what are the hold ups?  Well first, the University of Louisville is the primary tenant for the KFC Yum! Center which would house any professional team that were to grace our presence (has anyone been in Freedom Hall lately?  It's a leper colony down there), and has two basketball teams (both men's and women's programs) housed there.  The powers that be, including Men's Head Coach Rick Pitino, set things up this way as a deterrent to any pro franchise who might want to split time at The Bucket.  Upon further evaluation, though, this really isn't such a big drawback.  When comparing the 2010-2011 schedules of both UL men's and women's basketball to that of the OKC Thunder (just for sake of example) we find that only 9 dates in their schedules from October to March overlap.  This problem would be easily solved, mainly on the professional team's end as their 82 game schedule could easily be back loaded with home dates during March and April when college basketball is in the midst of their tournaments.  Problem solved.

The bigger issue, though, appears to be a willing party to sponsor such an undertaking.  The Oklahoma City Thunder were purchased in 2006 by Clay Bennett, an experienced NBA minority owner with the San Antonio Spurs, who pounced on the opportunity to buy the then Seattle SuperSoincs after seeing the outpouring of support for NBA basketball during Oklahoma City's housing of the displaced New Orleans Hornets from 2005-2007.  A sports fan his entire life, he was able to pair the team with other equally interested owners from large nearby companies, who provided more than adequate support.  This is where Louisville really falls short.  While the town has plenty of money and talented individuals who control it, most of the prominent individuals who would have the resources to do something similar to Mr. Bennett are either very old and unmotivated, or simply not interested.  And while Mr. J. Bruce Miller, the local attorney who has made it his life over the past decade to seek out an NBA franchise for Louisville, thinks that he can attract a foreign investor to line our pockets with basketball bucks, it just doesn't have the same cache and weight that someone fighting directly for our city might carry.

At the end of the day Louisville is a growing metropolis that is slowly catching up to its neighbors in terms of overall competitiveness and metropolitan attraction.  And while many of us would love to see a pro sports franchise be a part of our cities landscape, the truth of the matter is that in this case it would be better for us to never love at all than to have loved and lost.  Eventually it will come, people.  If we continue to take the steps necessary to grow employment, population, and wealth in this city we will continue to grow and continue to gain notoriety.  And when that day comes that we can see the first pitch, kickoff, or tip for a major sports team in Louisville, then it will be ever sweeter.  In the meantime, just root for the Thunder, Spurs, Kings, and other small-market teams who will one day aide in making our dream a reality when we finally make Louisville Major League.

Indianapolis and the Story of the Super Bowl

In this mornings Courier-Journal an article ran by USAToday columnist Mike Lopresti describing the ascent of Indianapolis in the 1970's and 80's from a quiet mid-western town that was "evaporating," as a former mayor put it, into one of the region's leading hubs of commerce, and the host site for the 2012 Super Bowl.  Essentially the story goes that the powers that be in Indy realized that their downtown landscape was going to shambles and they needed something to rejuvenate their scene.  Enter the Indianapolis Colts, the RCA Dome, (eventually) Conseco Field House, and (now) Lucas Oil Stadium.  What they did was basically drive interest through the use of sports.  People began to flock back to downtown Indy like the Salmon of Capistrano (to use the parlance of our time) in order to attend these games, go to these events, and be integrated in the city's new sports scene.  And you know what - IT WORKED.

This is a classic argument of what comes first, the chicken or the egg, but it's a great case study for Louisville.  When the Yum! Center was completed last year at the corner of 2nd and Main Streets critics howled about the lack of interest in Downtown Louisville, and the thought that an arena on the waterfront would be unsustainable, and a waste of resources.  And while there definitely questions still to be answered about the former, I think we can all agree that the latter is proving to be false.  Without question the addition of the KFC Yum! Center to our downtown landscape has increased interest in our city's main business corridor to levels I have never seen in my lifetime.  Previously the thought was that it was too expensive, too much of a hassle, and too big of a headache to do anything other than work downtown.  Now the commentary is on how we get MORE things downtown.  People are going to games, going to dinner, attending plays and shows, and experiencing all Louisville has to offer at a record pace.  In a few short weeks Louisville will be host to a portion of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament's first two rounds, and has the potential to do even more with that event.  Concerts are being headlined in the facility nearly every week, and residents are beginning to see what an asset the building is becoming to our city's landscape.  It might only be one step, but it's a big one in the right direction to Louisville gaining national prominence once again.  Just as Indianapolis discovered forty years ago and are reminded of today, if you build it they will come - it's time for Louisville to continue to capitalize on it's own Field (arena) of Dreams.