One day at my home, an intriguing call came in. A brewery which
had taken part in
Uh oh. I needed a number. Not
just any number, either. This was something for which I had only
minimal data. The green jerseys we had worn
in New Haven & Milwaukee were a special collaborative effort
between my corporation, the New Haven Brwg. Co., and Rocky Fresh at
adidas®. We did make money. But it was more
important to have something for the players we then had, then to
maximize our profit.The deal was predicated for the one game, not
for the entire season. Why "not just any number"? Because
I was aware of three other teams in the League who carried jersey
advertisements: The Baltimore SPIRIT, Cleveland CRUNCH, and the
Wichita WINGS. If the price I requested was far, far beneath what
any of them were getting; then I was sure to here from someone that
I had seriously damaged other teams' profitability. ["Chicago
sold their jersey advert for the entire season for $____?! Here in
_________, we were getting quadruple that."]
So what I
did was to facsimile those three teams and ask them for a general
idea of how much they were receiving from their jersey sponsors. I
mentioned my concern, and hoped I wasn't requesting anything too
confidential.
I received one response. It came from Mr. Roy Turner of the WINGS. (I admit it: I used a trick to get him to respond. I sent the fax on a leftover sheet from the 1993 U.S.B.C. in Wichita.) In time, I've learned that Roy wasn't completely truthful in his answer to me, but the data I got was accurate enough for me to determine that I should ask for more money than this brewery was offering. In response, the brewery declined to increase its amount. (It still brews good beer, folks, which is one reason I won't mention it by name.)
There were some moves which I made, for which I took complete
financial responsibilty. The full-blown idea I had for publicizing
the team involved a double-edged attack. For those people who were
soccer fans, and who knew about the problems we had had the previous
season, the base was that now we were in charge and we wouldn't let
what had gone on occur again. The other wing involved attracting
people who were not sports fans, or who read publications which did
not feature much sports coverage or advertisements. This included
Generation X'ers and readers of the city's alternative
newspapers and zines. (People who didn't know about our
horrendous play of the previous season.) For them, we would sell the
point that there had been indoor soccer played in Chicago for 15
years, with hardly any notice of it. The motto for this wing would
be = "The Sport For You".
One such alternative weekly,
"NewCity" had its annual
"Best of Chicago" issue coming out on 29 September.
Its deadline was approaching. This was an issue with some shelf life.
It would be put aside and picked up again later. Plus, I knew it
reached a good portion of the people in the second wing described
above. (I deduced this without any five-figure advertising consultant
telling me so. More money saved.)
I contacted the paper and
inquired about the size and placement of an ad in that issue. It
told me what was available. I opted for a small sized ad. I designed
the ad. (I figured to design all our advertising. Again, how much
would this save us?) The 'look' of the ad was my hand-printing, which
is quite clear and distinctive, if I may say so.
If you still
have a copy of the September 29, 1995 issue of "NewCity",
on page 70 {right over a very nice health club ad, yum yum},
there is the ad I placed.
It
also included something which did cause me to lose some sleep.
The ad had to mention that we were playing at the U.I.C. Pavilion. When I placed the ad, the contract to play at UIC had not been signed. Every indication I had was that we would be there. The Rosemont Horizon was not an acceptable place to play any more. It was cohabiting with its minor league ice hockey team and didn't want any other sports events there (not even DePaul Univ. men's basketball). The Odeum in Villa Park was not quite up to the standard of UIC, was probably booked solid with Chicago's semi-professional leagues on the weekends, & I sensed the Gen X'ers in the city wouldn't travel to Villa Park. The Pavilion had to be the venue. I also felt being 'downtown' would allow us to appeal to those who didn't own automobiles.
Finally, something happened. The 29 September issue of the Chicago Sun-Times had an article by Len Ziehm. The details therein must have been leaked by somebody at the League Office. The article said that the League had found an owner for the team who would keep us in Chicago. It would introduce him to Chicago in the upcoming week. I hadn't yet read the Sun-Times that day. I first heard when someone called me at the office on Lincoln Ave. and wanted a comment.
The week came and went. No one was brought to Chicago. That
Monday, I was on hand at the 41 Sports Club for five would-be players.
I guess somebody cancelled our match for 7 October.
The 9th found
more people actually competing for spots on the 1995-96 POWER. It was
then that I finally got to speak with Boro Sucevic. I looked at the
release form Boro was having each participant sign. The name of the
corporation being indemnified was "Soccer Management, Inc.";
the League's holding company for unowned entities.
Only then did I learn that the reason the League hadn't signed a
lease for the office on Lincoln Ave. was because it had captured the
former headquarters of Kendis Industries, which was on the corner of
Dempster St. @ Austin Ave. in Morton Grove (a near north suburb).
After one of the morning practices, Boro told me to come down to it
and look it over. It was certainly adequate. During one lunchtime,
I went over to the Lincoln Ave. address and brought all the stuff I
had accumulated to Dempster St.
I had the nice fortune to be
reintroduced to Mr. Mike McGivern. Mike had been associated with the
WAVE quite some time ago, and now was working with the Milwaukee
The weekend of the NPSL pre-season tourney in Milwaukee was a bit
exhausting, but fun. The teams present there were us, the WAVE, the
ROCKERS, and the SILVERBACKS. I was staying Saturday evening at the
Grand Milwaukee Hotel, where the out-of-area teams were, when Chris
Mota, who was doing some work on our bench, had a request for me. Chris
had been hooked into driving Pato Margetic back to O'Hare on Sunday
morning. Would I do the POWER laundry then? [I usually don't exist
before 10:00 am.] Of course I would. Chris gave me a bunch of
dollar bills and told me the nearest laundromat to the hotel.
Naturally, I spent much less than Chris expected. I knew where the
Sentry Foods store that opened at 6:00 am was, and bought laundry
detergent there. I then stopped at a McDonalds® and had a
breakfast value meal to go. Keenly, the radio station playing in the
background at the laundromat was playing Country & Western oldies.
I did a very good job washing the clothes. I even scrounged a dryer
sheet lying remnant.
How did we fare? Well, we looked horrible on
Saturday, but nearly won the tournament on Sunday. We were within one
point of defeating the WAVE in the semi-finals. We hadn't practiced a
sixth-attacker unit. The WAVE won the tournament. (They were the only
team which had the core of their squad present. The other teams all
brought multiple players to see who would fill out the roster.)
Each day that week, I had been coming into the POWER office on Dempster St. at about 1:00 pm. As far as I was concerned, I didn't need a salary. I had been willing to put my own money into the franchise. Morton Grove was a little farther from my house than Lincoln Ave., but it had nearby expressway access and convenient off-street parking. [It was north of my house instead of east.] The League still hadn't produced our owner, but it had announced our new head coach: Mr. Alkis Panagoulias{!}. I was always respectful toward him. I never called him "Alkis"; I always addressed him as "Mr. Panagoulias". He had a little room in the office with a television and a VCR. The task I first accomplished there was to program the office's facsimile machine with the phone numbers of the other League teams, media outlets, and yes, even my house. I still didn't know if a long-distance contract had been signed, so when I programmed the numbers, I inputted the five-digit access code into each of the out-of-area numbers. But this ground to a halt on Thursday.
It was then when I learned of the existance of a communiqué
from the League. I found a copy of this on a desk. I made a copy,
and I asked Boro about it when he came back from afternoon practice.
Boro seemed dumbfounded. Now, here for you, is the exact verbiage of
this communiqué.
1995-96 NPSL OPERATIONS MEMO NUMBER 18
DISTRIBUTED VIA FAX--PAGE 1 OF 1
TO: ALL NPSL TEAM GENERAL MANAGERS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTORS
FROM: PAUL LUCHOWSKI, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
DATE: OCTOBER 14, 1995
RE: CHICAGO POWER ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBERS
The following is the Chicago Power's new address, phone number, fax
number and key contacts:
Chicago Power
5945 Dempster St, Suite 204
Morton Grove, IL 60053
708-966-2255
Fax: 708-966-2484
General Manager/Head Coach: Alkis Panagoulias
Director of Business Operations: Michael McGivern
Director of Player Personnel and Assistant Coach: Boro Sucevic
Director of Public Relations: TBA
Please direct media/public relations inquiries to Michael McGivern.
You should know that Steve DeRose has no official capacity with the Power.
Please contact me immediately should he contact you and represent himself
as a Power staff person.
This was crushing. At the least, I deserved at a call from the
League saying they didn't want my services. Sending a facsimile to
each of the other teams without even notifying me was a bit raw.
There was one loose end left to tie. That last week in September,
Southwest Airlines had announced
"Fun Fares". Remembering the snags in 1994-95 involving
vanning to close-in destinations; I had called Ken Broadhead at
Reflection Travel in Wichita and booked 20 seats for the majority of
our road trips. I couldn't beat air fares of $29 (each way) to Detroit,
Saint Louis & Cleveland; $39 to Kansas City; $49 to Baltimore; and
$65 to Tampa in February. The only trips I did not book were our
3-games-in-3-days foray to Cincinnati, Cleveland, & Canton in
December; our season opener in Buffalo (Because I would fly to
Cleveland, watch Buffalo play in Canton, and then motor on to
Buffalo.); and a Thursday morning game in Detroit.
I called Ken to cancel the flights and he told me there was a problem. If all twenty tickets for each of the reserved flights were cancelled, there would be a penalty fee assessed. At least one person had to travel on those itineraries in order to avoid the assessment. Take a guess whom that one person would be.
For someone who had "no official capacity" with the team that season, I attended more games than most of our players. We went through 43 bodies, bringing us up to seventy [70] over the last two seasons (on a 16-man roster - by comparison, when the Canton INVADERS went 36-4 in 1989-90, they used all of twenty players all season). I was present at 35 games this season. I went 4-31. Yes, somehow we went 2-3 in the games I wasn't there. On way too many of those nights, I struggled to keep a civil face. It is not much fun to be a visiting supporter, vastly outnumbered, in a city where my team didn't figure to win, or even to impress. Oh, well...
That's it. There are more details, but I don't need to include
them here. E-Mail me if you would like more information (be specific).
But if you can't bear to have this be the bitter end,
click here.