"I predict that many teams will go out of business and the size of the leagues will be greatly reduced"
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McDonough’s line lands like a cold front: not a hot take, not a pep talk, but a blunt forecast that treats pro sports less as mythology and more as an industry with a burn rate. The verb “predict” is doing a lot of work. It signals the voice of a columnist who’s seen enough owner spin, stadium politics, and TV-money hype cycles to trust patterns over promises. He’s not asking you to panic; he’s asking you to stop pretending the machine is invincible.
The real bite is in the pairing of “teams” and “leagues.” Teams “go out of business” is almost offensively literal, stripping away civic romance and exposing franchises as enterprises that can fail like any other. Then he widens the blast radius: “the size of the leagues will be greatly reduced.” That’s not just a few weak clubs folding; it’s contraction as a structural correction, a world where expansion-era optimism collapses under debt, overbuilding, labor costs, or revenue models that don’t scale.
Subtextually, it’s also a warning about the fragility of fan loyalty as an economic asset. If teams are businesses, communities are customers, and customers can be left holding the bag when the numbers stop working. McDonough’s intent isn’t merely to forecast doom; it’s to puncture complacency and force readers to see the sport they love as something that can be mismanaged, overleveraged, and finally downsized. The sentence works because it refuses the comforting lie that institutions survive on tradition alone.
The real bite is in the pairing of “teams” and “leagues.” Teams “go out of business” is almost offensively literal, stripping away civic romance and exposing franchises as enterprises that can fail like any other. Then he widens the blast radius: “the size of the leagues will be greatly reduced.” That’s not just a few weak clubs folding; it’s contraction as a structural correction, a world where expansion-era optimism collapses under debt, overbuilding, labor costs, or revenue models that don’t scale.
Subtextually, it’s also a warning about the fragility of fan loyalty as an economic asset. If teams are businesses, communities are customers, and customers can be left holding the bag when the numbers stop working. McDonough’s intent isn’t merely to forecast doom; it’s to puncture complacency and force readers to see the sport they love as something that can be mismanaged, overleveraged, and finally downsized. The sentence works because it refuses the comforting lie that institutions survive on tradition alone.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sports |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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