‘DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY’
Kraken change things up ahead of inaugural season
Tim Pipes may be the luckiest, unlucky hockey fan in Seattle. He opened The Angry Beaver, the city’s only hockey bar, in 2012, in the middle of an NHL lockout. Then, nearly two years before the NHL approved a Seattle franchise, his bar survived a gas explosion and a robbery.
It looked like the tides were turning when he heard the city would be getting a professional hockey team from Kraken owner and CEO Tod Leiweke, who had patronized Pipes’ bar over the years. Then another blow: The pandemic hit, with the United States’ first confirmed case in Washington state.
Pipes shuttered his business twice. It looked like The Angry Beaver would close forever, just months before the Seattle Kraken’s first puck drop. But thanks to the help of devoted, hockey-loving customers who raised thousands of dollars so Pipes’ bar could stay open, he kept going with one goal in mind: hang on for Seattle’s hockey team.
Pipes went from nearly closing his doors for good to hosting Seattle’s front office after the announcement of head coach Dave Hakstol. His luck was finally turning.
“I opened my silly little hockey bar completely selfishly – because I’m Canadian and I wanted to watch some damn hockey,” Pipes said.
“Come October, it’s going to be a really exciting time for me, for the hockey fans in Seattle. Part of my job now is to bring the sport to those people that don’t know much about it.”
“Seattle has been through such a hard time in the last 18 months and coming out of COVID to now have this new team really helps us imagine and frame a better future.” Jenny Durkan Seattle’s mayor
Symbol of healing
Before even playing a game, the Kraken have become a fixture in the community, something for the people of Seattle to look forward to during one of the most difficult times in recent history. Mayor Jenny Durkan, who saw firsthand how hard her city was hit
and two, that every game carries a significance beyond the final score, with layers and layers of meaning developed over generations of interactions between teams and among fan bases.
During a turbulent time for amateur sports, large-scale realignment promises to have the deepest impact on how college football is conducted on a national level.
Issues related to recruiting and roster management created by the coronavirus pandemic will pass. While the ability for student-athletes to monetize their name, image and likeness represents an enormous shift, this change has already been embraced by conferences, schools and legislators aware of the need to evolve the amateur model.
But this sort of realignment has the potential to carve an impasse between super conferences and the rest of the FBS.
The inevitable result would be a top level of college football condensed to roughly half of the current FBS membership; the rest would be left in the cold to fend for themselves.
Even if not an official split, the difference in revenue, publicity and opportunity would create a chasm separating these super leagues from the rest of the 130-team FBS.
The fallout could impact the next generation of the sport.
Fans of programs without a seat at this table would face a crisis of identity. What do you cheer for when you’re not competing on an equal plane for an equal prize? What do you care about on a week-to-week basis when longstanding rivalries have been tossed aside and your schedule is composed of strangers cobbled together out of necessity?
With college football leaders already worried about dwindling attendance and rising disinterest, the creation of an NFL-like super league could deal another blow to regional and national investment in the regular season. Why be invested in a sport that has removed its own investment in your school, your conference, your program?
This stage of realignment will accelerate the process of redefining what constitutes a successful season. When only a select few leagues have the wherewithal to compete for the national championship, how will fans, administrators and boosters stomach life at the bottom of the conference standings?
For example, adding Texas and Oklahoma will increase revenue for the SEC while making life even more difficult for Vanderbilt, South Carolina, the two Mississippi schools and others, who now have two more national powers to steer through before reaching bowl eligibility, let alone competing for something grander.
That part of the process lays bare the two concepts at war during this coming stage of expansion. One asks what’s good for the sport. The other asks what’s good for revenue. You know which side is winning.