No no. Suit yourself. I’ll say no more.
I hate to hijack the thread any further, but I would like to point out what I always point out when the ACW is debated. Lincoln said he would have allowed the slave states to keep their slaves to preserve the Union. He never said he would allow slavery to expand into the territories, though. The reason for all the capital-c Compromises in the first half of the 19th Century was that southern politicians knew that maintining parity in the Senate was their only hope for preserving slavery. Once it had been confined to one corner of the country, it was certain to be eliminated. Also the economic system of slavery was less important than its efficacy as an instrument of white supremacism.
Okay, then there’s not much more to say, except that I don’t want to leave the impression to those reading this thread that what we have here is merely an intractable difference of valid opinions. My position is that you have failed to put forth a logical argument for your position at all.
Siam, I’m another person who’s confused by what you’re writing. You seem to be arguing that all the evidence contradicts what you’re saying and therefore you’re right. And when others question this logic, you just say you disagree.
What I find suprising is that here you have London – one of the world’s economic capitals, the political capital of its nation, one of the world’s largest media markets, the U.K.'s largest market for sports-related commerce, and, more specifically, football related commerce, but not one of the major football clubs in the area features the word “London” in its name? No one wants to step up and claim the loyalty of all of the residents of the great international metropolis? Where’s London City FC? London United? No?
London’s twelve pro football teams have all been around for years and all started as small local clubs. Their catchment areas were originally much smaller than the whole of London, and have remained so. It would have been arrogant and inaccurate for any of them to claim to represent London as a whole. If only one of those clubs had survived, it might have considered putting “London” in its name, but not otherwise.
Apart from Arsenal, they’re all named after a location. (Related to this, Arsenal are (I think) one of only two London teams to have ever moved across the river, the other being Millwall who did nonetheless stay in the same locality.)
Nobody could ‘claim the loyalty’ of anyone. There’s big geographical divides in loyalties and histories between the London teams. E.g. the case of Fulham, desperate to build a new stadium, but also want to avoid moving out of the borough, let alone to a completely different part of the city. Anybody who thought they could rebrand themselves ‘London FC’ would just be a laughing-stock.
Note that there’s another city which doesn’t have a team using the name, again related to social divides - Glasgow.
(Make that two - Edinburgh as well)
It IS the decision of the owners because a guy who buys a major league franchise pays a half a billion dollars to the league (and therefore to the other owners) for that right. Unlikely that your average minor league owner could come up with this cash. Even if a major league team took over the assets of the old minor league team, would you really consider it a promotion? What if the team is dead last in the league but happens to be in a strong market? That’s not really the idea behind promotion and relegation.
It should be noted that we’re not talking ribeye or sirloin here. Chicken fried steak is made from cheaper cuts of beef, usually top round that’s been tenderized through judicious use of a large mallet.
Like fajita meat (skirt steak) you take a cheap tough cut of beef and do something to it. In chicken fried steak–pound the hell out of it, bread it, fry it and add gravy and mashed potatos. In fajitas, marinate the hell out it (classically pound it as well) and add even more fun things. In a tortilla!
Greasy fat…PLUS CARBS!
Chicken fried steak is honestly…about the worst food for you tastes that good.
It’s every bad thing you can put in ONE meal.
And oh, how I love it.
Now I’m hungry.
I think the secret to a really great chicken fried steak lies in the gravy. Oh, how I love that gravy.
Neptunian Slug writes:
> It IS the decision of the owners because a guy who buys a major league
> franchise pays a half a billion dollars to the league (and therefore to the other
> owners) for that right. Unlikely that your average minor league owner could
> come up with this cash. Even if a major league team took over the assets of the
> old minor league team, would you really consider it a promotion? What if the
> team is dead last in the league but happens to be in a strong market? That’s
> not really the idea behind promotion and relegation.
And that’s the real difference between the American sports leagues and the British sports leagues. The American sports leagues are essentially a group of rich men who can keep anyone else from playing the sport at the top level except themselves. Every once in a while (when adding an expansion team), they allow another rich man to join their league, but he has to pay them a lot of money to join the league. British sports leagues are about making sure the best teams are in the league. They promote and relegate teams in order to keep the best teams in the top leagues.
No, American. Well, maybe there’s no real difference. 
Italian-Americans who call tomato saucy “gravy” will typically also call pizza “pie”, FWIW.
I don’t know about the tomato sauce/gravy thing, but I believe that “pie” is just a literal translation of “pizza,” so there’s a more-or-less logical explanation for that one.
And they tend to pick someone who won’t rock the boat too much. When a troublemaker like Charlie Finley or Bill Veeck somehow gets through, they get very annoyed and do their best to get rid of them as soon as possible.
Strangely enough, politics also plays a major part. I believe that since 1900, every city that has lost a major league team has eventually regained one through expansion or relocation (except for Montreal, of course). And I believe that members of Congress have exercised pressure (generally by threatening to take away baseball’s exemption from the antitrust (pro-competition) laws) for the quick returns of major league baseball in the form of the New York Mets, Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers, and Seattle Mariners, whose cities had been recently abandoned by clubs seeking greener pastures.
With the recent relocation of the Montreal club to Washington, one of the possible new ownership teams in Washington was one headed by noted philanthropist George Soros. Republicans and conservatives hate George Soros for his support of liberal causes and Democratic candidates and I believe that Tom Delay and other prominent Republicans openly threatened M.L.B. with repercussions if they allowed Soros to join the league.
I don’t find that hard to believe. When baseball started, it was all about the local teams: the Altoona Mountain Citys, the St. Paul White Caps, the Wilmington Quick Steps, plus the Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Browns, Boston Unions and the St. Louis Maroons of the old Union Association League. Also, the Chicago Pirates and the Pittsburgh Burghers played in the Players’ League.
The old American Association had six teams playing from the state of Ohio (at different times): the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the Columbus Buckeyes, the Toledo Blue Stockings, the Cleveland Spiders, the Columbus Solons (who took over Columbus after the Buckeyes were gone), and the Cincinnati Porkers (likewise taking over after the Red Stockings).
These days, our teams are changing over from local names (Anaheim Angels) to more regional names (Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). Our expansion teams are the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies — named for states and not for cities. Consider the Angels: named Los Angeles Angels in 1961, changed to California Angels about 1965, then named for Anaheim… now we’re back to Los Angeles. (Somebody waffled and couldn’t decide how to capture the biggest market share and still remain local, evidently.)
Same goes for basketball teams: the Utah Jazz, the New Jersey Nets. Oh, and don’t forget the Carolina Panthers and the Houston Texans. (Must have been named by the genius that named the Angels.)
I’d say our trend away from local names and into regional names is relatively recent, maybe starting with the Brooklyn Dodgers becoming the Los Angeles Dodgers — trading loyalties from a borough of 2.6 million for a city of roughly the same size.
The Angels were the Los Angeles Angels at first because they played at Wrigley Field. No, not the one at 1060 W. Addison in Chicago, but the OTHER Wrigley Field, former home of the Hollywood Stars and Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. (The Stars, by the way, moved south after the 1935 campaign and became the San Diego Padres.) They also shared Dodger Stadium for a couple of years.
The MLB version of the Angels became the California Angels in 1965, their last year in Dodger Stadium, before moving to Anaheim Stadium in 1966. The change was made because the Angels were the only AL team in the state (until the Kansas City A’s moved to Oakland in 1968) and because no one knew where the hell Anaheim was.
What the British call “biscuits” is what we Americans call “cookies.” That’s probably why he thought you were mad.
This isn’t necessarily true for all colleges and universities. I went to a state school in Florida, and, much like other state schools in Florida, funding is separated in a really, really strange way. There’s alumni associations, who fund alumni events and gatherings and in no way actually support the school [except in getting drunk and rowdy at football games], booster associations, which fund sports [mainly football], and academic fundraising associations, which are otherwise known as the university’s foundation. None of these associations are directly associated with the school, as they are state institutions and this breaks a lot of laws concerning government organizations accepting donations. Below I’ll outline how it works in some university foundations, as this is what I’m familiar with.
This is how it worked at Florida State University when I worked in one of their academic fundraising offices. The government will hand over 25% of the funding that the university needs to run its business and teach students. 50% comes from tuition and fees that are charged to the students. This last 25% is made up by calling up alumni and other academic donors and asking them for money over the phone. This is generally not done directly by the university, but by a company that is the [insert name of university here] Foundation. They, in turn, will collect this money from donors, sort it as requested by donation stipulations, and donate it to the university academic departments.
As for the function of the booster organizations, they work differently, but from what I understand, they give incentives to people who donate, which are generally better access to one thing or little freebies of some sort that have little actual value. Lastly, I am not sure how alumni associations work, but their main purpose is for people who all went to the same university to feel connected via hanging out their fellow alumni afterward. [This may not mean that the alumni they befriend were actually people they would associate themselves with in college. It’s just people in the area they moved to that went to the same school at some point in time.]