Is a $100 Million Reward the Answer?
July 10 , 2007
| By Mark Rasy
| 
Discuss
The upcoming 10,000th loss of the Phillies got me thinking the other day. Why has it been over 23 years since we had a championship in this city even though we are good fans who spend their hard earned money supporting these teams? Instead the owners continue to exploit this loyalty for profit and basically spit on us with some of the teams they put out there. Looking at the history of these teams, especially the phillies, a lot of it has to do with owners that are cheap and are really just in the game to make a dollar, rather than attempting to actually win a championship. I guess all those stadiums paid for by taxpayer money isn’t good enough incentive for the owners to go out and spend the money needed to get the players that would win us a championship. Since it’s all about money for these owners we fans need to step up and provide that incentive for them. And the best way to do that is offer a reward.
That’s right, we fans offer the 4 major sports in town a reward of a 100 million dollars to the first team that brings back a championship trophy to Philadelphia. This kind of incentive might actually get these owners to really try to win, instead of just putting mediocre teams out there to just get the money out of our pockets. And just think about it, we fans might even get a few championships out of this because if all the owners are putting together good teams vying for that reward money we should have a few really good teams and might win a couple championships at the least. However, the money would only go to the first team to have a parade down Broad Street.
Now your probably wondering where this money is going to come from because there is no way the city is going to put up that kind of reward for something as trivial as sports when there are so many other pressing needs in the area. And I agree, the taxpayer shouldn’t be paying for something like this, it’s bad enough cities use taxpayer money to build stadiums for these already wealthy owners.
The money would come from the fans directly who could contribute to a fund that would be an independent run and monitored fund with the money placed in a bank account where it would collect interest increasing the reward that would continue to grow until a championship is brought home. Therefore, if no one wins a championship anytime soon, the reward fund just keeps growing and growing. Who knows how big this reward could become? If it became big enough, I’m sure the greedy owners would do everything they could to win it.
An independent group would be organized that would place boxes around the stadiums so fans could just drop in their loose change, or whatever amount they wanted to donate, to the fund. All the money would be then placed in this bank account that would be monitored publicly so that no one could get their greedy hands on it and try to use it for something else. Unlike other funds that are started and then politicians and greedy rich people always seem to get their hands into, this fund would not be allowed to be touched for anything else except as reward for a championship. It wouldn’t be used to subsidize team payrolls or any other scams these greedy owners could come up with. This money would only be awarded once a team has brought a legitimate championship back to Philadelphia.
So my fellow championship deprived fans, if we really want a championship in this town were going to have to stop hoping and counting on these owners to do what’s best in the interest of winning and not just the dollar. All they care about is making money so we are going to have to give them that incentive in the form of a reward. Is $100 million even possible to get out of the fans of the area by contributing small donations? I don’t know; it may just end up being a symbolic gesture to show the owners of this town that they need to step up and get the players we need to win a championship, now.
