Gridiron BASH (As in the Slamming Motion, not the Party) - Something is Fishy
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What do LSU’s Les Miles and Pop-Rock bad boy Kid Rock have in common?
I mean beside their natural poise when dropping the f-bomb.
They’re both a part of a failed attempt by MSL Sports & Entertainment to cash in on what this company sees as a money-making machine - college football. Why? Because college kids spend money on things like…Kid Rock…
Let’s back up a second.
Gridiron Bash was announced back in January/February when MSL announced that they were partnering with Fiur Productions to take a convoy of musical superstars around the nation, doing huge concerts at college football stadiums. Musical guests announced at this point included acts like Kelly Clarkson, Maroon 5, Dierks Bently, OAR, and Counting Crows, among others. Kid Rock wasn’t mentioned.
The concept was that it would start off as a pep rally, with fans paying over $40 a seat to see their 2008 football team introduced, hear their coach talk, and then see a great concert.
That’s not all, though. Fans were then asked to text or call in votes for their school, and the schools with the most votes would bring in $1 million, $500K, and $250K on top of their cut of the ticket sales. It was gong to be one big money-making party.
Fast forward to yesterday, when MSL officially announced that the event would be postponed. Before we even talk about the NCAA regulations, let’s look at something rather fishy…
Somewhere between January and April, the big names dwindled to B- and C-list names. For example, this note about the postponement refers to the event as a pep rally and Black Crowes concert. From Counting…to Black…hmmmm…
This announcement does mention that Kelly Clarkson was to perform, but it sounds like it was only her…not the rest of the traveling set of celebs. hmmm…
Another report I read seemed to think that this concert tour wasn’t really a concert tour - each artist was just gong to perform at one school (ie, JUST Fergie at Penn State, JUST ZZ Top at Texas A&M, etc). That’s pretty different from the original announcement, which sounded, to me, like all of these artists were going on a tour, kind of like Ozzfest or the Warped Tour, but with pop-rock stars. hmm….
ESPN’s own announcement of the cancellation mentions Fergie, the Goo Goo Dolls, and Alan Jackson, while stating that the first show, scheduled to be at LSU, would be host to Sara Evans and Kid Rock.
(Oh, and on a note, the official website isn’t even fully functional at this point, so I’m not going to reference it…)
But whatever. The real story here is not about the weird “star” confusion, but rather about the NCAA’s decision about the football players getting involved. They said no.
Well, duh. It’s pretty clear to me that according to NCAA rules, student athletes are not allowed to participate in events to raise money for profit. It kinda sounds to me that instead of doing their research or…you know…ASKING the NCAA, MSL just decided to plow ahead and hope that they could ask for forgiveness later. Thank god some of the coaches questioned it and it was brought to the NCAA’s attention. Otherwise. the profits made by the schools would have been eaten up by paying fines, and it might have even caused participating players to be ineligible. All the while, MSL would have been raking in the dough.
That is, if they could have even sold the tickets.
In another fishy turn of events, it sounds like (perhaps due to the somewhat crappy billing), ticket sales weren’t doing so hot. An AP correspondent writes,
LSU sports spokesman Herb Vincent said MSL Sports cited the potential for rules problems in canceling the show in Baton Rogue, La., although school officials were disappointed in the public’s response since only 1,500 tickets had been sold a week before the event.
Tiger stadium, according to Wikipedia, holds 92,400 people. They sold 1,500 tickets for next Friday, and by looking at the pictures they’ve posted, it looks they were hoping for a full crowd.
But now there’s this big push to make the NCAA the bad guy. Well you know what, MSL? NO. NCAA rules aren’t always clear, but everyone was questioning this from the start. If you would have done a bit of research, you would have found out that it was against the rules for the players to get involved.
In addition, the NCAA didn’t ask them to cancel the event. They simply gave them outlines as to what the players could and could not do. There could still be a big pep rally. There could still be a concert. There could still be a texting contest. The students just couldn’t get free tickets or be a part of the show.
But MSL decided to cancel anyway. Was this really about the football players or was it more about the drain of money due to lack of ticket sales? I’m assuming that by “postponing until the fall” (ie, likely canceling completely in the coming months), they won’t have to pay their “big name stars” most of the money, nor will they have to pay for the costs of putting on the show.
It looks to me like they are trying to cut their losses and conveniently blame it on the NCAA…
But I’m just one BCS blogger, and this is just one humble theory about the event. I only hope that those who did buy tickets will get their money back.
What do you think - is the NCAA the bad guy here or is MSL just trying to slink away from the blame?
Pictures from Wikicommons by JustDog and GeeJo.
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