Part two took me a while

I had invoked the Heroes because I think they, rightly or wrongly, reinforce a stereotype about Huntington that we either cannot or will not support professional sports. The problem, though--and of course anyone reading this feel free to help me elaborate, or correct me, whichever needs to be done--is that from my reading the sports teams in this town have generally suffered from either terrible marketing or terrible ownership of one sort or another. Hockey will not sell itself--sure, it has its niche in the area, and I think on a consistent basis you would have a rock-solid base of 1500 fans, but a professional team in the Big Sandy Superstore Arena is not feasible on 1500 fans per game. "Feasible" in a league of 5000 or so seat arenas means a ballpark figure of 3000 per game. This REQUIRES promotion, it REQUIRES stability, and REQUIRES a real understanding of what it takes to succeed in the market you're in. Any one of these absent, and the whole enterprise is doomed to failure.

Less sleepy now (part 1)

Replied to a comment yesterday about the prospects for another team landing here:

"Not a lot. In '03-04 there was an effort to get a team back in the arena in the SEHL/SPHL, but the arena GM at the time wasn't very receptive to the idea. As recently as last year though the current GM proposed refurbishing the arena with, among other things, new hockey boards and equipment; however, being a municipal facility, this would require city money, and the city is a bit on the cash-strapped side. Still, I think if the right people got their heads together... well I'll elaborate a bit more tomorrow, when I'm less sleepy"

So I'm less sleepy now. The big problem right now is that I have no idea who would take on the role of putting together such an operation. That aforementioned (actually ACHL) effort was mainly spearheaded by Mark Williams, the Blizzard's old VP of marketing, had some relatively high-dollar people in talks (quite a few people namedropped local attorney Buck Crews), and the endorsement of old Blizzard guy Jim Bermingham, who went to Knoxville after Huntington folded up and became the IceBears' coach. Again, this fell through to a great extent because of resistance from the arena then-management.

Since that time there have been, in my opinion, two significant developments, one positive and one negative. The positive one, first, is the hiring of AJ Boleski as general manager, who has stated a willingness to put money toward fixing up the old hockey equipment--as the H-D's David Walsh had told me, "he's open to just about anything". Then there's the rise and fall of the Huntington Heroes indoor football franchise, which was poorly promoted, had trouble paying its bills in a good season, and then suffered through a nightmare 2008 season in which they went through two owners, went 5-1 in their first six and then won one game the rest of the season when much of the team quit due to lack of payment!

More to come later--this is a LONG tangent I'm going on here.