Tradition Vs. Progress
June 19, 2019 at 12:55 a.m.
Tradition Vs. Progress
By Roger Grossman-
List off the teams that comprise my favorites and you will see schools and franchises that are among the originals in their sport.
But much as the country struggles culturally and politically with the fight over tradition values versus progressive ideas, sports deals with the same things.
Notre Dame has installed field turf and a giant video board above the seating at the south end of Notre Dame Stadium. Traditionalists screamed that Fighting Irish Football should always be played on natural grass and a video board would just clutter the landscape on game days. Coach Brian Kelly and progressive types said not having turf and a video board was hurting recruiting and played the “if you want Notre Dame to win a national championship” card when discussing it.
Field turf was a non-issue for me. I am a big fan of it, especially for football. But the video board was a different story. I have been critical of Notre Dame athletics appealing to those “old money” season tickets holders and not the common man like me.
But there is nothing more unbecoming of Notre Dame as an institution than having a giant flashing message telling fans to “GET LOUD!” or “LET THEM HEAR YOU!”. Video replays, enhanced stats and out-of-town score updates greatly improve the on-site experience. But if that board ever becomes the head cheerleader…that’s a problem.
The Chicago Cubs have dealt with this a lot over the last 30 years. In 1988, their status as the only Major League Baseball team without a lighted playing field changed. Traditionalists screamed that baseball was made to be played during daylight hours. They howled that the experience of attending a night game at Wrigley Field would not be the same as seeing the ivy in bright sunlight. Progress-ives said the Cubs couldn’t attract elite free agents if every game was a day game, and the team’s legacy as “lovable losers” would never change unless game times did.
The lights went in the summer of 1988, and fittingly God made a storm that pounded Wrigleyville that night that sent everyone home.
The artificial illumination is still there, and 28 years later the Cubs finally took their fans to baseball’s version of heaven.
More recently, the Ricketts family footed the bill for a massive renovation project. Those changes included new clubhouse space for both the home and visitors, additional bleacher seating and two giant video boards that separate Waveland and Sheffield Avenues from the paying customers inside the park.
I toured the old clubhouses. They were awful. They were certainly not major league-quality working conditions. They needed to be changed long before they were.
The video boards were added as a new source of advertising revenue for the team, because they just don’t seem to have enough money (sarcasm alert!). I don’t like them, and I probably won’t ever really appreciate them.
But the new green area outside the ball park called Gallagher Way is really nice, the new hotel is an upgrade from the McDonald’s that once stood at the other corner of Clark and Addison and the Cubs store (where you can buy everything from game-used bases to shirts and hats) makes buying souvenirs really convenient.
On a broader scale, the battle ground of college sports is whether college athletes should get paid for being college athletes. Progressives claim college sports raise billions of dollars for institutions and coaches are making millions of dollars a year for coaching them—so why shouldn’t the people on the field get a cut of that?
The opposition reminds us all that those “student-athletes” are getting a free education. They will leave college, at some point, with little or no debt following them on to the next step in their lives.
They also point out corruption is already rampant in college sports and paying athletes will just open that flood gate. Plus, there are Title IX issues with how much men’s basketball players would get paid compared to women’s players, and how much cross country runners might get compared to the high-revenue sports.
While solving this problem is complex, the general philosophy has to be a simple one—upgrading and modernizing while preserving the feel of tradition. Finding the happy medium is the only way to make it work for everyone.
Think about this: if all change in sports was bad, the Indy 500 would still have cars going less than 100 miles an hour on cinder tracks.
List off the teams that comprise my favorites and you will see schools and franchises that are among the originals in their sport.
But much as the country struggles culturally and politically with the fight over tradition values versus progressive ideas, sports deals with the same things.
Notre Dame has installed field turf and a giant video board above the seating at the south end of Notre Dame Stadium. Traditionalists screamed that Fighting Irish Football should always be played on natural grass and a video board would just clutter the landscape on game days. Coach Brian Kelly and progressive types said not having turf and a video board was hurting recruiting and played the “if you want Notre Dame to win a national championship” card when discussing it.
Field turf was a non-issue for me. I am a big fan of it, especially for football. But the video board was a different story. I have been critical of Notre Dame athletics appealing to those “old money” season tickets holders and not the common man like me.
But there is nothing more unbecoming of Notre Dame as an institution than having a giant flashing message telling fans to “GET LOUD!” or “LET THEM HEAR YOU!”. Video replays, enhanced stats and out-of-town score updates greatly improve the on-site experience. But if that board ever becomes the head cheerleader…that’s a problem.
The Chicago Cubs have dealt with this a lot over the last 30 years. In 1988, their status as the only Major League Baseball team without a lighted playing field changed. Traditionalists screamed that baseball was made to be played during daylight hours. They howled that the experience of attending a night game at Wrigley Field would not be the same as seeing the ivy in bright sunlight. Progress-ives said the Cubs couldn’t attract elite free agents if every game was a day game, and the team’s legacy as “lovable losers” would never change unless game times did.
The lights went in the summer of 1988, and fittingly God made a storm that pounded Wrigleyville that night that sent everyone home.
The artificial illumination is still there, and 28 years later the Cubs finally took their fans to baseball’s version of heaven.
More recently, the Ricketts family footed the bill for a massive renovation project. Those changes included new clubhouse space for both the home and visitors, additional bleacher seating and two giant video boards that separate Waveland and Sheffield Avenues from the paying customers inside the park.
I toured the old clubhouses. They were awful. They were certainly not major league-quality working conditions. They needed to be changed long before they were.
The video boards were added as a new source of advertising revenue for the team, because they just don’t seem to have enough money (sarcasm alert!). I don’t like them, and I probably won’t ever really appreciate them.
But the new green area outside the ball park called Gallagher Way is really nice, the new hotel is an upgrade from the McDonald’s that once stood at the other corner of Clark and Addison and the Cubs store (where you can buy everything from game-used bases to shirts and hats) makes buying souvenirs really convenient.
On a broader scale, the battle ground of college sports is whether college athletes should get paid for being college athletes. Progressives claim college sports raise billions of dollars for institutions and coaches are making millions of dollars a year for coaching them—so why shouldn’t the people on the field get a cut of that?
The opposition reminds us all that those “student-athletes” are getting a free education. They will leave college, at some point, with little or no debt following them on to the next step in their lives.
They also point out corruption is already rampant in college sports and paying athletes will just open that flood gate. Plus, there are Title IX issues with how much men’s basketball players would get paid compared to women’s players, and how much cross country runners might get compared to the high-revenue sports.
While solving this problem is complex, the general philosophy has to be a simple one—upgrading and modernizing while preserving the feel of tradition. Finding the happy medium is the only way to make it work for everyone.
Think about this: if all change in sports was bad, the Indy 500 would still have cars going less than 100 miles an hour on cinder tracks.
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