It did not take long for the Carolina Panthers’ breathtaking scamper to the Super Bowl to generate plenty of grand pronouncements. Local airwaves and news pages are full of bold predictions that the Panthers’ magic will rub off on Charlotte and the region. The Charlotte Observer even gushed that the game “will bring the world to [Charlotte’s] doorstep.”
Not to be a Panthers’ party-pooper, but let’s take a step back for a little perspective on what a trip to the Super Bowl can and cannot do.
First up, the oft-repeated revenue effect. The Panthers do not manufacture money. In the short run, at least, sales of t-shirts or bobbleheads or game-time six-packs all come out of the same discretionary income pie. Somebody, somewhere is getting a smaller slice of this pie. And in at least one instance the Panthers’ gain could be someone else’s pain.
The nascent Charlotte Bobcats will begin play in the NBA next year in a town now absolutely gaga for the Panthers. Will that franchise be able to justify the massive public investment in the team’s new downtown arena?
Recent history suggests it could be difficult. When Atlanta’s “Dirty Bird” Falcons made their unexpected run to the Super Bowl in 1999, few could have predicted the NBA’s Atlanta Hawk would soon be teetering on the edge of an abyss, averaging barely 14,000 fans a game and with no prospect for improvement. Atlanta belongs to Mike Vick and the Falcons now and – for one weekend a year – the SEC Championship football game. So it is not hard to imagine the Panthers’ success actually having a detrimental effect on some of their direct, local competitors for scarce entertainment dollars.
Still, a trip to the Super Bowl is bound to be great, free advertising for Carolinas, right? Well, it depends. There is little doubt that by kick-off time in Houston many more people around the country will know that the Panthers play in Charlotte. But what will that new notoriety actually change for Charlotte? Again, recent history suggests just a marginal impact, nothing truly transformational for the city. Outsiders’ opinions of Charlotte will still turn on fundamentals: Is it clean? Safe? Bankrupt?
In search of an example of the power of the Super Bowl, the Observer oddly settled on Nashville, which saw the Tennessee Titans make a Super Bowl run in 2000. That’s the same Nashville that is one of the few “second-tier” cities in the NFL that had an identifiable national reputation long before the Houston Oilers moved there. At least since the 1960s, Nashville has been world famous as the country music capital of the world. But evidently some Nashvillians wanted the Super Bowl to help them change that. Why, it is not clear, but it is also clear that change did not happen.
Who greets visitors to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau Web site? Why, Reba McEntire. What kind of things can you do in Music City USA? Why, take in a taping of the Country Music Across America TV show or get tickets to the Country Music Awards Music Fest 2004. Going to the Super Bowl sure doesn’t seem to have changed Nashville much. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Professional sports teams cannot remake a city or region. Win or lose in Houston, Charlotte still gets the Monster Truck rally a week later. Players do not repair potholes or teach kids to read. At best, sports teams reflect their fans’ essential passions and, at the margin, help bring a community together around a common pastime while championship success can support a franchise for years to come.
In the Panthers’ specific case, what trip to the Super Bowl can do is erase a recent past filled with real human tragedy. Until now the most famous Panthers of all-time might be Rae Carruth and Fred Lane, murderer and murder victim, respectively. No more.
Confronted with negatively and despair, the Panthers front office retrenched and went back to basics. They abandoned the flashy quick fixes that produced a 1-15 season and opted to build a strong foundation around players of character and commitment. They hired a coach, John Fox, who stresses fundamentals and openly disparages statistical manipulations of the game.
Maybe civic boosters and leaders in Charlotte and across the Carolinas should take those lessons to heart and attend to the basic functions of governance and tone down the rah-rah cheerleading for themselves and their pet projects, and resist the urge to engage in some dubious marketing clumsily grafted onto Super Bowl hype.
Go Panthers!
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Taylor is a Charlotte-based writer for Reason magazine and a contributing editor at Carolina Journal, the statewide newspaper of the John Locke Foundation.