Sacramento Kings moving franchise to the OC, CA.

I think Omaha is the place that strikes fear into the hearts of whatever remains of the Milwaukee Bucks' fan base.

 

For the most part, people in NJ with cash to put down for the expensive seats commute. They don't want to pick up their kids/spouse, dirve to a game and then drive home.

 

You guys might very well be right, and the fact that people are already fans of the New York and Philly teams would be something you'd have to deal with or overcome. But I get the feeling a team located in Central Jersey would be looked at differently by people there than a team up in Newark or the Meadowlands. People there seem to be reaching for something they can call their own when it comes to sports. You see people jump on the Rutgers football bandwagon when its competitive. One of my father-in-law's friends asked me the other day if I thought Monmouth basketball could ever be good like VCU or Wichita State because "it would be so much fun to have a team like that here." A common thing I hear is that people would go to more Devils games if they didn't have to go to Newark to watch them.

You'd have a very hard time dethroning the Yankees if you put a baseball team there, and I'm not sure the other sports would work, but I think you'd sell tickets and suites and get a decent TV deal. Most people in DC and Northern Virginia were Orioles fans before the Nats got there. Part of the reason Forbes said LA and New York were better for expansion than smaller markets was because of the rate of population growth. You have new people moving there all the time that aren't attached to the established local teams.

 

In DC/Northern Virginia, you had a large market with a baseball itch that had been seeking its own team for a while. That's not the case with Central Jersey. South Jersey gravitates toward the Philly teams. North Jersey has plenty of New York teams to follow. There's a very, very small strip of no man's land in Central Jersey where the New York and Philly fanbases are mixed but I'm not sure it's enough to leech off of. It's also not that difficult to drive or catch the train to either of the bigger cities to catch a game.

Another big problem is TV. There's hardly any TV stations based in New Jersey. No network affiliates, for sure. They're all in New York or Philadelphia. I grew up in Trenton and we had both on our cable system (which was great for NFL Sundays and the NCAA Tournament back in the day).
It'd be hard to sell a team as "Jersey's own" when their games are on a TV station broadcasting from one of the bigger markets and showing commercials from those cities. Even regional cable falls into that category, and an expansion team or relocated team isn't likely to have the resources to start up its own version of YES, NESN or MASN.

If you want to see how this would likely end up playing out, look at the Islanders. They've tried to follow your idea of being a suburban team, leeching fans from Long Island, Connecticut, and random unattached fans from NYC. They even had a great deal of success at one point. Now they're clearly a distant ninth among the nine Big Four teams in the New York market, are a small-market team located in the biggest market in the country, and are planning to move back to the city. I think a Central Jersey team would end up in the same situation before long.

 

Where is Durant going? I think he's signed for at least another three to four seasons.

 

Except you can drink in OKC...

 

There are no establishments anywhere in SLC where someone can have a drink?

 

That was more tongue-in-cheek than anything.

A better way to put it would be "you can get a drink and walk around with it in a bar and not be told to sit down at your table" in OKC.

SLC has some fucked up drinking laws.

 

You can't walk around a bar? What the fuck?

 

Don't you also have to order food to get a drink in SLC?

 

No. There were "private clubs" that served as bars, but the private club system was eliminated in 2009. Restaurants, I assume, required patrons to stay at the table while drinking.

It's not as if you an walk around with a drink at Applebee's elsewhere, can you?

 

To be clear, I'm not talking about Applebee's or any other chain restaurant.

If the bar serves food you can't move from table to table with a drink. Maybe it was particular to this one particular bar, I don't know. I've also been in multiple establishments where they wouldn't serve you another beer until you finished the one in front of you.