For years,
the city has searched for something – anything, really – that ESPN could do for
the community aside from growing and growing and growing.
Now nobody’s
complaining about all that growth. It’s helped keep the city coffers full and
done all sorts of wonderful things to bring fame and glory to this little New
England gem.
But
officials have long hoped the sports colossus would offer some spillover that
would attract tourists to town – from a little exhibit of sports stuff
downtown, which is plausible, to an ESPN Zone, which never was.
It turns
out, though, that ESPN itself has created the opportunity the city has longed
for: A Fan Hall of Fame.
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| Today's Bristol Press front page. |
Don’t
snicker.
There’s real
promise in this.
Listen to
what Aaron Taylor, ESPN’s top marketing guy had to say during the second
induction ceremony of particularly outrageous fans at the company’s Bristol
campus.
After
correctly pointing out that ESPN is “the world’s biggest sports fan,” he said
that it figured out there was “a glaring deficiency in the sports landscape”
that included halls of fame for every from baseball to boxing. Almost every
sport has a hall of fame somewhere attracting people to come gawk at the
memories enshrined within.
But there
was no hall of fame for fans themselves.
As “The
Georgia Joker,” Pierce Wallace, said in his acceptance speech, fans are “kind
of half the game” and without them, there’s not much to sports. ESPN, of
course, caters very much to those fans. They are its lifeblood.
Taylor said
the hall of fame ESPN created in 2012 – which has inducted two small groups of
fans so far – is an initiative the company will sustain over time.
Public
approval for it, including hundreds of thousands of online votes, “has
reinforced our belief in its long-term potential.”
“We want
this to be an institution,” said Ben Shields, the ESPN marketing guy who led
the team that created and pushed for the new hall of fame.
“It’s
something we intend to do every single year,” Shields said.
That sounds
pretty promising, doesn’t it?
But what is
the hall of fame itself? Just a few vintage stadium chairs bolted down beside a
sidewalk on the ESPN green in the middle of its increasingly college-like
campus. Tiny signs indicate the names of those inducted in 2012 and 2014.
Forgive me,
ESPN, but that ain’t a hall of fame.
Nobody can
even see it unless they’re lucky enough to find some excuse to get escorted
onto the campus, something that even most people in Bristol have never had the
chance to do.
A hall of
fame doesn’t have to be as awe-inspiring as Cooperstown or Canton. It doesn’t
have to include a giant basketball like the storied museum in Springfield.
But it has
to include a building, a place where people can come and see who’s been
inducted and why.
And a real Fan
Hall of Fame offers so much to both Bristol and ESPN that it’s seems like a can’t-miss
opportunity.
Imagine
people driving past ESPN on Route 229, gawking at its satellite dishes and
wishing they could catch a glimpse of Stuart Scott or Hannah Storm, and then
continuing on to a new Fan Hall of Fame.
Inside they
could see videos of the inductees in all their glory as well as walls of
pictures of other fans, maybe divided up by teams or sports or colors,
whatever.
Have a
computer where people could look up a previously filed fan profile of himself and
then call up their pictures on a giant monitor lined with ESPN logos or
something so they can picture themselves in the hall of fame.
Have some
monitors showing highlights of fans over the years, from the idiotic to the
tragic moments, and some showcases with their pig noses or green hair or bald
heads or whatever. The country’s chock full of the appropriate flotsam. And
ESPN itself has plenty.
Carol
Wallace, the mother of the Georgia Joker, told Taylor ESPN ought to consider
putting up a real hall of fame.
And you know
what? She’s right.
Right here
on the border of Red Sox Nation, where the New York Giants and the New England
Patriots fans begin to meld together, at the very place where every game in
every land seems to pour in to ESPN’s vast headquarters to be sliced, diced,
analyzed and highlighted.
This is the
place where fans should be honored.
Let’s build this
Fan Hall of Fame. It would spur tourism and bring more glory to Bristol’s
biggest employer and taxpayer.
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