For someone who has his own locker-room cubicle, high-fives the players during introductions and sometimes even warms up with the team, these are strange times for Jazz owner Larry H. Miller. Everywhere he looks, things are changing.
With the move of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, the reality of modern-day professional sports hit home to Miller again last week. As Dallas Mavericks coach Dick Motta pointed out years ago, "Everybody's house is for sale."So it seems. But unlike moves carried out by desperate teams hoping to find a place to survive, the Browns' move involved a franchise that was a model of fan and owner stability. This was no Rust Belt has-been hoping to find a place in the Arizona sun. This was the Browns, and they were the sold-out darlings of the city.
At best, teams move when old stadiums and old agreements can't generate enough revenue to keep pace with escalating salaries. At worst, it's mercenary behavior, in which the owner sells to the highest bidder. You make outrageous demands, and if the taxpayers don't come through, you take your toys and leave.
Miller, on the other hand, thinks a team and a community belong to one another. That it isn't just a business proposition, it's an emotional commitment. That when Brigham Young started laying out wide streets in Salt Lake, it was so one day Karl Malone could turn his big-rig around withoutbacking up.
So when he sees teams such as the Browns leaving their city, Miller furrows his brow, winces and wonders whatever happened to loyalty. "As a fan, I'm torn," he says. "But as an owner, it's a situation I can relate to. I just hate to see where tradition means nothing. We've had free agent players for a number of years. Now we have free agent owners."
Miller, of course, knows all about moving teams and building buildings. In 1990-91, when the Jazz were still playing in the Salt Palace, he began considering the ramifications of staying in an arena that didn't have luxury suites, a message screen or adequate sign space.
The place had atmosphere, it just didn't have a way to make money.
As the Jazz continued to improve, salaries escalated at an alarming rate. Signing an All-Star guard to a long-term contract was expensive. Signing a backup guard was even expensive. Miller says if the Jazz had stayed in the Salt Palace for the 1991-92 season - their first in the Delta Center - he would have lost $5 million. Which figures out to the approximate cost of 143 Toyota Land Cruisers.
Meanwhile, offers to move the team poured in. There were promises of better arenas, bigger markets, booming revenues. Interests in Minneapolis, Miami, Tampa, Nashville, St. Louis, Toronto, Anaheim and Santa Ana contacted Miller about purchasing and moving the Jazz.
But Miller rebuffed them all. He hunkered down and said he wasn't moving. It was his town and his team, 'til death or the demise of all his car dealerships do they part.
Miller hasn't just been asked about selling the Jazz. He's been asked about buying other teams. "Somebody called me the other day and said `Why don't you buy the Cardinals and keep them there (in St. Louis)?' I like the Cardinals, have since I was a kid," says Miller. "But I don't want to own a major league franchise in any other city. I own one here because of how I feel about the community. If I want business deals, there's a lot better business deals than pro sports franchises."
Miller, of course, is fast becoming a brontosaurus extinctus. For every owner like Miller, who thinks you're supposed to keep a team in town just because the town loves and supports it, there's two Al Davises, waiting for the next sweetheart deal to come along.
"I hope we never become completely obsolete," Miller says. "What happened in Cleveland, I don't know. But it's a sad day when that happens. First, for Cleveland, and second, for pro sports. It's just symptomatic of what can happen."
So Miller continues to watch in dismay, wondering whatever happened to the old familiar towns and their old familiar teams. And if pro teams will eventually just become clubs without cities and without emotional connection. It will all be as personal as the Home Shopping Network. Then is when he'll get out of pro sports.
"Then," he says, "there's no reason to do this any more."
Because when you get right down to it, there's no reason to own a team if you can't share it with your neighbors.