APPENDIX C:  Bringing Needed Enjoyment and Enchantment to the Community

Home games also provide opportunities for parent-child bonding in a way no other state wide organization enables.  And for those women who enjoy football, the home team games enable women to move beyond the "soft side" of Sears to the "tool" side, in terms of both enjoyment of the game and camaraderie with fellow women fans, as well as provide them with a greater understanding of an experienced enjoyed by their boy friends, husbands, sons and fathers.  The home games also provide all fans with one of the few places left where any fan can engage in bonding with others, which takes place either at the game, before the TV set, in reading the same newspaper and magazine pieces, or in discussing it with others anywhere, anytime, any how

The home games are where tens of thousands gather to sing, dance, sway, do the wave, and get carried away with the enchantment of it all.  When the Mets won their last championship series game in NYC 2000, before moving on to Atlanta and defeat, the fans stood for 15 minutes, singing and celebrating and enjoying the moment.  Could you tell the difference between them and those singing and swaying at an evangelical crusade?  And how about the "wave" at both baseball and football games?  The sense of the transcendent quality of community with the home team runs deep in fans and citizens who are not quite big fans, and is part of the enchantment quotient.  We thus will do all that is necessary to bring clarity to the on-going debate regarding a stadium everyone wants but about which there is no current consensus on funding.  The issue is not whether to build it but how to finance it.  Missing is a consensus.  Our model presents a method that can be used to develop a solid, almost "super" majority consensus.

The pro team serves as a great collective choir director, as the citizens of the state join in the chorus to sing and dance and feel, if only for that moment and in the subsequent moments when the memory is recalled, an enchantment of life, transcending the ordinary everydayness of life.

The home team demonstrates that this interaction, on a deeply felt level, is reciprocated by its marvelous programs in the community, giving back to those who have given the support underlying their success, and for holding the home team in a special place in their hearts.  As noted above, the home team serves as a rallying cry around which diverse people find a common point on which to agree, and through which they find another point of meaning and excitement in the shared community of fandom.

 

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