Sunday, May 06, 2007
Sports

Ready or not

Women’s sports in the ATL: Bring on the WNBA  

By Adam Krohn

The last time we had a professional women’s basketball team? The WABL’s Atlanta Glory, which featured Teresa Edwards (left), seen here playing the Portland Power in Atlanta in 1996. CREDIT: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

Would Tennessee phenom Candace Parker draw crowds to Philips? CREDIT: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

“We’re not like Chicago and the Cubs, where they love to watch a losing team. This is an area that is thirsting for a winner … I think if you put a winning team out there, I think Atlantans will support whatever it is.” —A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress

Does Atlanta really need another sports team? The city already has teams in all four major sports, plus an Arena Football League team and a men’s soccer team, to say nothing of the metro-area teams like the International Hockey League’s Gwinnett Gladiators.

And here’s the irony: Even with those franchises, the city is notoriously (and perhaps unfairly) labeled by pundits everywhere as one of the worst sports towns in the country, supposedly due to a disinterested fan base. But is bad fans or bad teams that account for all those empty seats?

When the Braves began their improbable dynasty in 1991, the fans were there. When the Falcons made their run to the Super Bowl in 1998, the fans were there. Even Hawks games sold out during their perennial playoff run of the ’90s. So maybe it’s not that the fans in Atlanta are disinterested—maybe we just have more sub-par teams to be disinterested in than most other cities.
Whatever the case may be—why would anyone want to add yet another team to this controversial mix?

And yet, a group of prominent Atlantans—major players in both the political and entrepreneurial arenas—are campaigning to do just that. They’re thinking: women’s hoops.

By adding a WNBA franchise, the idea would be to broaden the sociological parameters of the city’s fan base, and to create a regional outlet for female athletes all over the Southeast to play basketball on the highest level—and do so close to home.

And here’s the thing: It looks like it’s going to happen. Whether the team will be successful in terms of attendance or performance—well, that’s another story.

The big idea

Flashback to summer, 2006: A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, a private business organization that focuses on downtown economic planning and development, meets in Atlanta with long-time friend Donna Oreander, who just so happens to be the president of the WNBA and who is in town on unrelated business.

“We both had a mutual interest in bringing a [WNBA] team to Atlanta,” Robinson tells The Sunday Paper. “We shared the idea that there were no teams in the Southeast and that Atlanta could be just such a spot for sports and, in particular, for women’s sports in the Southeast.”

And so the idea of an Atlanta WNBA franchise was born. All Robinson had to do was hatch a plan. But that was nothing new for him. As a real-estate entrepreneur, he has headed various projects spanning the globe, the most notable being his primary role in the development of the Shanghai Centre, a $200 million, multi-use facility in downtown Shanghai completed in 1990. The WNBA? Bring it on.

His first move was to appoint Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders to co-lead a committee—which includes notables like state Rep. Stacey Abrams and Bob Hope, former Braves Public Relations director—to launch a grass-roots campaign aimed at both the city’s top corporations and most devout sports fans. From the corporations, the committee is seeking sponsorship. From the fans, it’s asking for season ticket pledges (their goal is to sell 8,000 of them). The idea is that solid cooperation from both ends will lure potential owners to bid.
So far, so good: According to Borders, the drive has produced 1,000 season-ticket pledges, with numerous corporate sponsors, to boot.

“We have received a lot of positive support and feedback,” she says. “When I give presentations, usually the first question I get is ‘Why don’t you already have a team?’”

Any potential owners? As Robinson puts it, the committee is currently in negotiations with “significant players in the community” to find a fit. Due to signed confidentiality agreements, he can’t say who exactly, but he’s confident that, within the next 60 days, a prospective owner will be announced, as well as a franchise agreement with the league office.
WNBA president Orender is on the same page.

“Since I’ve been in this position, I’ve had many markets call to inquire what it would take to own a team and things of that nature but, actually, if you could do it by the books, what this [Atlanta] committee in particular has done is demonstrate how public and private sectors can work together to bring something positive to the city,” Orender says. “The committee in Atlanta has exceptional passion and sense of direction—they’re doing outstanding. We have every confidence that there will be a qualified owner.”

And then it’s on to the nitty-gritty: Once the owner is named, a team name, uniform and logo will be designed. It has already been determined that any potential Atlanta franchise will play the majority of its games at Phillips Arena, with a couple of games to be held at Gwinnett Arena.

But will it work?

With an ambitious committee making bold strides, and the league president’s firm backing, the job should get done. But then what? Is it going to work?

In the mid-’90s, there were two organizations, the American Basketball League and the WNBA, in a race to launch America’s first women’s professional basketball league. The ABL got off the ground first in ’96; its Atlanta franchise was called the Glory. A year later, the WNBA launched, and with the financial backing of the NBA, was able to run the independently-funded ABL off the courts after just two seasons, with the Glory folding after just one.

In short, the Atlanta experiment failed then, so why will it work now?

Be patient, says Borders.

“This is a business, and it will take time to get things going, even though we want to be successful out of the gate,” she says. “It takes time to build.”

The league does have time. With the backing of the NBA, the WNBA has been able to exist for more than a decade despite operating at a loss every year. And yet, according to Orender, the league is targeting profitability as early as this season.

All of which discounts what is perhaps the main benefit to bringing a WNBA franchise to the city: female athletes. With powerhouse conferences in the Southeast like the ACC and SEC dominating the national scene, there is currently no city close to home where these conference’s stars can shine. Take former UGA phenom Teresa Edwards. After leading the Bulldogs to two Final Four appearances in the early ’80s, Edwards’ only choice was to play internationally and compete in the Olympics, where she won four gold medals.

“When I finished college, I found myself getting on a plane and going overseas,” Edwards tells The Sunday Paper. “Once you have had the experience with living among foreigners ... you experience what it’s like to live in such isolation so far away from your family and to pack your life in a bag just to make a living doing something you enjoy so much. It’s hard. All I did was dream, ‘If I could just do this at home, how lovely it would be to be able to share this with my family.’”

Edwards, now an assistant with the Minnesota Lynx, is closely monitoring the campaign and says she’d love to come home to the franchise and work with it in any capacity—as a coach or a player (though she warns that, at 42, she’s not “the same kid anymore!”).

Moreover, with Atlanta being an expansion franchise, we could snag that coveted No. 1 pick. End result? Imagine University of Tennessee powerhouse Candace Parker—who will most likely enter the 2008 draft, Atlanta’s first year—playing at Philips. Couldn’t she generate at least as much interest as the cellar-dwelling Hawks? (For the record, Orender would not confirm that an expansion team would automatically get the first pick. Chicago, the last expansion team, drafted sixth overall in their first draft.)

But the burning question remains: Will the team be any good? The other question: Will the fans care either way? Remember, Atlanta fans have a reputation to uphold, and it’s not a good one.
“We’re not like Chicago and the Cubs, where they love to watch a losing team,” Robinson says. “This is an area that is thirsting for a winner, and I think we get a bad rap because people don’t think we are supportive. I think if you put a winning team out there, I think Atlantans will support whatever it is.”