Sockers’ Fight for Survival Extends Beyond This Playoff Series

Don’t pay any attention to the marquee at the Sports Arena tonight. It will say something about a Major Indoor Soccer League playoff game, but it will be lying.

What we have, in essence, is a cross between Barnum & Bailey and Indiana Jones.

What we have is the Sockers tiptoeing across a high wire over a pit of cobras. One false step will have the most uncomfortable consequences.

You see, the concept of survival is two-pronged for the Sockers these days. It is a matter of (a) beating Kansas City and forcing a seventh and deciding game for the Western Division championship Saturday night and (b) keeping the franchise alive and in San Diego.

Accomplishing the first could well go a long way toward accomplishing the second.

En route to five successive indoor championships from 1981-82 through 1985-86, the Sockers may not have played a more important game than last Saturday night’s 7-1 victory in Kansas City. A loss would have knocked the team out of the playoffs and the franchise into the twilight zone.

What that victory did was bring the series back to San Diego, where the sport could be showcased to a group of prospective investors who might otherwise have been forced to contemplate buying into a product they had not seen.

“Timing’s everything,” said Ron Cady, a lifelong San Diegan who is the club president. “The timing of being alive.”

Bringing the series back to San Diego was of such importance that Cady delivered a brief address to the players after practice last Saturday. Though his oratory did not match Lombardi’s for bombast or Rockne’s for poignancy, Cady had a less-than-subtle message he wanted to convey. He was literally all business.

“The club’s future is their future,” Cady said. “It’s easy for everyone to see what they’re doing on the field, but I thought it was right for management to give them a report card on what we’re doing off the field.”

What management is trying to do is stabilize the franchise, both fiscally and geographically.

It seems incredible that a team so artistically successful should be in such a position. Very quietly, the Sockers have been San Diego’s team of the ‘80s. Imagine the fuss and fury hereabouts if the Padres or Chargers put together five successive championships . . . or even one .

The Sockers’ problems, it would seem, are not rooted in the lack of a following but rather an inability to expand that following.

Their attendance figures, in fact, can be baffling. They averaged 11,415 during the 1983-84 regular season en route to their third of five consecutive titles, but slipped to 9,595 in 1984-85 in spite of winning once again. Of course, they diluted the product by going from 16 home games to 24.

In either case--11,415 or 9,595--the figure is quite respectable.

But it isn’t growing.

The 1987-88 Sockers averaged 8,996 during the regular season, but attendance has slipped to 7,777 for the playoffs. Four sevens would be a jackpot on a slot machine but not in postseason attendance.

Regardless, the core of fans, although remaining substantial, has grown smaller rather than larger.

My theory is that the franchise made a substantial public-relations blunder before the 1986-87 season, when it went from free television of selected road games to cable television. This decision put the lid on growth, because casual sports fans were no longer going to stumble across a Socker game on their televisions and decide this might be fun to watch in person.

Going hand-in-hand is the contemporary mentality that dictates: “If it ain’t on the tube, it cain’t be important.”

This also ties in with the fact that the MISL generates nothing of consequence in terms of national television exposure . . . or income. It also is lacking in national merchandising income.

Thus, individual franchises are left to make do with what they produce locally.

These circumstances cause San Diego’s team of the ‘80s to be playing through what should be the most electric time of the year under the shroud of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The franchise filed for reorganization April 25.

This was certainly not a pleasant route for Ron Fowler, the managing general partner, who has been quite successful with his Liquid Investments Inc. Cady had been an executive vice president at Liquid Investments before Fowler dispatched him to his new assignment at the Sports Arena last fall.

“(Filing for bankruptcy) was very embarrassing for Ron and I,” Cady said, “but we needed a relief mechanism so we could lay out plans for the future. If we had been in court for the past three weeks, all our efforts would have been negative and very unproductive.”

It has been a matter of buying time. Fowler, Cady said, is willing to continue to proportionately invest at his current 30% rate but is unwilling to step up and fully fund the franchise. It is a matter of seeking additional investors, locally first and elsewhere as a last resort.

Of course, in a different but related way, the players themselves also are buying time. They bought another game with that victory in Kansas City Saturday night. And they can buy another with a victory tonight.

“Every game,” Cady said, “is important.”

In more ways than one.