You can’t go home again.
Granted, Thomas Wolfe didn’t have the reincarnated Tampa Bay Rowdies in mind. And would that they could prove him wrong.
For now, behold the reborn Rowdies of the feisty but modest U.S. Soccer Federation Division II, a level below the established Major League Soccer.
Recall their antecedent.
The Rowdies, as a 1975 expansion franchise in the old North American Soccer League, were this area’s first professional sports franchise. They put the Tampa Bay region, which had a great airport, nice beaches, spring training baseball, Santo Trafficante and nothing else that outsiders seemed to notice, on the national sports map. Before there were the Bucs and classy, number one overall college draft choice Lee Roy Selmon (in 1976), there were the Rowdies and classy, number one overall college draft pick Farrukh Quarishi. Before there was a Bucs’ Super Bowl win (2003) and a Tampa Bay Lightning Stanley Cup (2004), there was a Rowdies’ Soccer Bowl championship (1975).
Flash back 35 years.
Back then, Mayor Richard Daly of Chicago had just won another term and Jack Nicklaus had just won another Masters. The U.S. ended its military involvement in Vietnam. Queen Elizabeth knighted Charlie Chaplin. “Jaws” won big at the box office. John Paul Stevens replaced the retiring William O. Douglas on the U.S. Supreme Court and Bill Poe had already taken over from Dick Greco as mayor of Tampa. The cost of mailing a first class letter went from 10 cents to 13 cents. Patty Hearst was caught. Jimmy Hoffa was missing. Francisco Franco was dead.
And the Rowdies were engaged in an intriguing experiment: debuting a relatively unfamiliar sport in a virgin pro market — but where the biggest competition was jai-alai, wrestling and greyhound racing. There was potential, especially among the young whose more tenuous ties to football, baseball and basketball permitted other options. But the approach had to be spot on.
It was.
The emphasis was on marketing. A combination of education and accessibility, plus a catchy fight song and bumper stickers that whimsically declared the Rowdies “a kick in the grass.” The onus was on the Rowdies to make the case for the sport known to the rest of the world as “football.” And they delivered. It was textbook, Marketing 101.
It was critically important that its players were seemingly sent from Central Casting. They were young, friendly and foreign — mostly from the UK, but Iran and Morocco were represented too — with attitudes and accents that served them well as de facto ambassadors. They put on clinics at schools, especially elementary and middle. They showed up at all kinds of functions — from civic celebrations to birthday parties. They gathered at Boneshakers in Hyde Park to down a few pints with their “Fannies.”
Nobody showed up on police blotters. Nobody talked “smack.” Nobody evidenced “swagger,” although Rodney Marsh could get clownish. Nobody thought community work was beneath them. Think Brad Richards and Derrick Brooks. Imagine a team of Mike Alstotts and Carlos Penas. That classy. Just not that rich.
That was then. This is not.
It’s still the Great Recession, and this area’s been hammered. There’s plenty of competition for those discretionary entertainment dollars. Soccer popularity at the youth league level still hasn’t translated into comparable success beyond that. No soccer game in the U.S., for example, gets as much coverage as the NFL draft, which isn’t even a game. Along with hockey, soccer still faces a tough slog for media credibility vis-a-vis the incumbent, football-baseball-basketball axis.
Back in the day, the Rowdies averaged nearly 30,000 fans one year. One Fourth of July, the Rowdies-New York Cosmos game drew more than 56,000 to old Tampa Stadium.
This latest Rowdie incarnation will play at Steinbrenner Field, which holds about 10,000. (The home opener is Saturday, 7:30 pm, May 8, against the Austin Aztex.) The Rowdies won their opener, 1-0, on the road against Crystal Palace Baltimore. Attendance was announced as 1,029.
No, this is not the return of the Rowdies as we once knew them. But if this latest iteration references the playbook from 1975, it has a chance to make a mark. The times have changed, but the script is still relevant. A well-promoted, family-oriented, reasonably-priced, entertaining product featuring athletes that fans can identify with has a shot.
Sure, the challenges are formidable, but when the original Rowdies debuted three and a half decades ago, there wasn’t even high school soccer around here. That’s all changed. Arguably, that — as well as the well-established youth soccer leagues for boys and girls — translates into meaningful demand.
No, you can’t go home again. But you can return to the basics.