Miami Will Never be a Sports Town Sitting in Liquor Lounge on 16th Street after the Super Bowl on Sunday, my friend Jimmy made an interesting observation. “Look at this, Meltzer,†he says to me in his raspy, South Boston inflection. “All these people, any of them Dolphin fans? People here aren’t real fans. They’re frauds. Only here can you jam pack every bar with fans of other teams.†EVERYONE’S TEAM ALLEGIANCES ARE FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE TOO Jimmy’s observation was hardly a revelation to anyone familiar with the South Florida sports scene. Bars showing the NFL’s Sunday Ticket are rarely if ever filled with Dolphins fans. And even local sports bars that only carry the local games are usually colored with jerseys of teams other than Miami’s.  One could point to the overwhelming transplant population here as the reason why. But if you think about it, that’s sort of a cop out. Yeah, we do have a lot of people in this area from other parts of the country. But – especially once you get up into Broward and Palm Beach counties – we have a lot of people born and raised here too. But for whatever reason, few if any bother showing much public support. And even more choose to support teams from whatever city their families came from instead of the local ones. WINNING MIGHT HELP
I guess the Dolphins being an irrelevant franchise for the better part of the last 20 years has a lot to do with that. If, say, you were born in South Florida to parents from New York, and they brought you up as a Jets fan, that was what you learned in your house. Then, when the Jets are competing for Super Bowls and the Dolphins aren’t even competing, you may tend to gravitate towards the team that gives you more vicarious thrills. South Floridian sports fans are bandwagon at their best, so if your team can’t win here you can’t expect any kind of fan base.  Take a look around. By the end of the year the Dolphins were playing to a bunch of empty, orange seats. The Marlins play to a nearly-empty stadium every night if they’re NOT playing a team from the northeast. The Hurricanes have returned to their “find-your-parents-in-the-stands†attendance figures of the early 1980s. And the Panthers are about a step away from offering you a couple of line shifts if you buy lower bowel tickets. The Heat draw. But put that freak show at a 20,000 seat arena in Northern Alaska and it would still sell out every night. If you went last year, they were throwing in nose bleed seats, with the purchase of an entrée at Bubba Gump’s restaurant at Bayside. MEDIOCRE SPORTS DOWN THERE ON LIST OF SOUTH FLORIDA ATTRACTIONS
Really, Miami’s collective sports apathy has to do with a lot of things. It has to do with our weather, which makes sitting inside on an 80 degree day in December to watch football not seem that appealing. It’s our population, that for the most part comes from American cities with more successful teams or countries where these sports don’t even exist. And it has to do with that great Miami attitude of Me first, Me second, Me third. In other words, we don’t do vicarious thrills here, and that’s what pro sports fandom more or less is. Despite the optimistic musings of our local sports franchises, Miami will never be a place that supports pro sports like they do up north. We have too many other options and not enough long-time residents. And unlike our sunny weather/transplant counterpart Los Angeles, we don’t have 18 million people to draw from. Miami is a great city for a great many things, and still the best place to be in the country for 6 months out of the year. But if you’re looking for sports fans who care, look somewhere else.
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11 Comments on"Miami Will Never be a Sports Town"
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EIC says:
You guys could use an editor. There are a multitude of errors in this paragraph:
“Take a look around. By the end of the year the Dolphins were playing to a bunch or orange seats. The Marlins play to a nearly-empty stadium empty night they’re NOT playing a team from the northeast. The Hurricanes have returned to their “find-your-parents-in-the-stands†attendance figures of the early 1980s. And the Panthers are about a step away from offering you a couple of line shifts if you buy lower bowel tickets. The Heat draw. But put that freak show at a 20,000 seat arena in Northern Alaska and it would still sell out every night. If you went last year they were throwing in nose bleed seats with the purchase of an entrée at Bubba Gump’s.”
Posted on 02/10/2011 at 9:43 AM