Respect Your Roots: The Story Of #SaveTheCrew

we are the group for me there is no bigger story in the history of mls than the save the crew movement it was the classic tale about the people the little guys taking on the establishment a story about a fan base that refused to lay down and see their team leave tuesday october 16 2017. this grant wall tweet and story on sports illustrated was the start of it all i remember thinking oh yeah right like there's no way mls is gonna allow this to happen i mean this is the first mls club what kind of precedent would that send if they just allowed an owner to just pick up and move i mean one of the stars on the mls logo literally stands for community for club for country for community i mean come on mls you might as well just photoshop that star out of your logo if you are seriously okay with uprooting one of the clubs just because the owner wants to okay now i hear what you're saying but wait what about the dynamo yeah remember after the o5 season the san jose earthquakes picked up and moved to houston now listen i feel for the fans of san jose especially because the new earthquakes haven't exactly reached the levels of the old earthquakes but it was under different circumstances i mean san jose didn't even have their own stadium back then and they did ultimately get their team back in 08. i know 06 and 07 must have been awful for them but the plan was always to return to san jose but a lot has changed since the 10 years since the quakes returned now everyone is vying for an mlst and if columbus moves mls ain't coming back um you said the way that you guys heard about it how did you find out uh by reading news accounts and other uh uh things you know so the crew has never uh given you guys like a direct we need x y and z if we're gonna stay in columbus it sounds to me like you're saying that they're they haven't been as um direct with with what they're looking for am i characterizing that correctly or i think that'd probably be a fair characterization okay the fact that none of the city officials had any idea that this move was in the works before the grant wall tweet leads me to believe that anthony precourt had absolutely no intention of ever working with the city of columbus to try to make this work his mind was made up he was moving to austin so the fans got to work they met and decided real quickly that this was not the time for morning this was the time for fighting for what's theirs and they were not gonna let just some californian with an obsession with the city of austin steal the crew the hashtag save the crew was started and it quickly gained steam as fans from other teams started to show their support even changing the colors of their team's badge to black and gold to match the crew a rally was planned on sunday following the announcement on tuesday which had to be moved to city hall because of the amount of people that were showing up that's pretty impressive actually considering they probably had to get a permit to hold the rally and getting the word out rounding the troops that's not an easy task it's not the fact that a hashtag was started or that they held a rally i mean hashtags are started every day it was the sheer number of people that showed up this wasn't just a small group of guys who didn't have work that day no it seemed like the whole city was behind this movement city officials include it and something that's underrated in all of this is how they showed up these rallies could have very easily turned ugly fast i can think of a few fan bases in this league where that could have happened but it didn't here because the movement was always focused on keeping the crew in columbus and not on trying to kill pre-court or burn down mls the next move was bring save the crew to the national stage and it just so happens the timing lined up for the perfect opportunity espn college game day the pre-game show for college football that is seen by millions of viewers every week and it was heading to columbus for ohio state versus penn state the save the crew team met at campus at 4 30 a.m to get into position and when the cameras turned on there they were gold and black saved the crew banners in virtually every shot on tv in fact there was just about as much gold and black that day as there was scarlet and gray for a lot of people non-soccer fans and soccer fans alike this was the first time they had heard of save the crew and the number of times save the crew was googled exploded and now it was more than just a hashtag just three days after their appearance on espn college game day on halloween night the columbus crew hosted nycfc in the first leg of the eastern conference semifinals the save the crew flags were flying and the stadium was packed but oddly enough the announced attendance was listed at just over 14 000. now i've heard of fudging the attendance numbers to make it seem like more people were there than not there but the opposite that seems kind of weird i mean you will see games with half the amount of people in the lower bowls and mls will announce it at 15 000. this is a 20 000 seat stadium which was nearly filled to the brim no visible seats on tv and yet they expect us to believe that only 14 000 attended that's the first sign to me that something fishy was going on oh listen i love mls it's my favorite league in the world and i will defend it and don garber more than i probably should but i'm not going to pretend like they can't do any wrong it's an imperfect league and i'm not gonna turn a blind eye this whole situation with the columbus crew and austin was messed up the columbus crew spanked nycfc four to one with some help from sean johnson the next home playoff game was the first leg of the eastern conference finals against toronto fc the crew ultimately ended up falling short of mls cup in this series but this was the game of their famous respect your roots tifo which is still one of the best tifos in league history no one knew how long this saga would last and even if it was possible but save the crew never folded it said that each weekend they'd meet up at a local brewery to calculate their next move and it's not like there was any vacation time in any of this it was pretty much non-stop unpaid work beginning to end even during the mls offseason and the amount of stuff they were able to accomplish was pretty amazing but now shortly after the start of the 2018 season ohio attorney general mike dewine stepped in and sued pre-court sports ventures and mls over the art model law what's the art model law well for that we have to go back to 1995. cleveland browns apparently set to skip town at the end of the year and move to baltimore we'll detail that for you in a moment the browns are indeed coming to baltimore in the middle of the 95 season cleveland browns owner art model shocked the nfl world by announcing the cleveland browns one of the oldest and most storied franchises in the nfl would be moving to baltimore cleveland didn't handle it so well can't say i blame them as a result this led to a new law ohio revised code section 9.67 better known as the art model law it says owners whose teams use tax supported facilities and accept financial assistance from the state are prohibited from moving to another city unless they give at least six months notice and give individuals who live in the area an opportunity to purchase the team now here's the thing this is the first actual test of the art model law because nobody in ohio has tried to move a team since the browns precor and mls argued that it was unconstitutional because it blocks the ability for businesses to engage in commerce in other states i think that reasoning is kind of bogus but i am absolutely not a law expert but even if the case didn't stand a real chance it did at the bare minimum delay the process of moving because if you know anything about the court system in this country it basically takes forever and a half to resolve anything so precor and mls couldn't move anything until this was settled during the 2018 mls season the columbus crew had the lowest attendance in the league which admittedly was a bit deflating on the one hand i completely get it it's like why would you give one more penny to this owner who is trying to [ __ ] over your city and your club on the other hand the low attendance numbers just gave more ammo to those in favor of the move you heard a lot of things like oh well if the fans wanted the crew to stay in columbus they wouldn't be staying home there were also stories of weird ticketing issues at the gate which made the stadium look more empty at kickoff and also stories of the bathrooms not being properly stocked i can't confirm any of this because i wasn't there but i can confirm this picture which shows the condiment table wasn't properly stocked so yeah a lot of people think save the crew was just a hashtag and people whining on twitter and ted is so far from the truth because while it was a collective effort from all of the crew fans there was a dedicated group who worked day and night on this cause and remember like they're not getting paid for this this is basically volunteer work they're doing all of this on top of their normal day jobs so they covered the city in banners and billboards they managed to get over 300 small and local businesses to help support the cause considering that one of the reasons to justify the move was that precor wasn't able to get any local businesses to sponsor the crew the lie detector test determined that was a lie [Music] but along with just gathering support save the crew also did a ton for the community they volunteered they held free soccer clinics they even purchased season tickets and distributed them to different community groups it wasn't just about saving their favorite soccer team it was also about proving a point that soccer can bring people together in the most beautiful way now one of the most frustrating aspects about this whole saga was how quiet mls was mls soccer.com had no problem reporting on austin fc and their stadium search but were completely silent on this incredible grassroots movement and don't tell me it's because it wasn't team related if mls can report on a guy wearing a horse mask in new england they could have said something about save the crew but they didn't why because save the crew was a pr nightmare for mls the fact that the majority of supporters of every other team were showing their support for columbus and were against the move was a bad look for mls and the fact that you started to see save the crew pop up in england and get support from others around the world was a bad look for mls the heat was turning up on don garber and now i feel like he was starting to rethink if this was even worth it in the end oh and don't forget about the community kit the official jersey of save the crew which was strategically priced cheaper than other mls kits for sale other really creative mls kits i've always loved this hoop design you know it's columbus because of the colors but the yellow and black hoops were so distinctive that you knew it was for save the crew and the best part is none of the money raised for that went to pre-court they also had a badge which i don't really understand the purpose of that to be honest but it did look nice i found out while researching this that they actually lost money with these jerseys because the production cost was so high but i still think those jerseys had a positive impact because they continue to raise awareness on the cause now please columbus can you actually make these jerseys for real i mean not only is it a sick design but it would be the perfect tribute to save the crew in august save the crew also designed their own concept stadium and not just the look of it but like everything about it the location the amenities the public transport like they really went all out okay so what's the point of this well the point is to show that this was made by regular people pre-court never even attempted something close to this ambitious in columbus and it shows that under the right leadership you could make something incredible but speaking of stadiums anthony precourt was awfully busy in austin trying to secure his location at mccalla place insert leslie poole the devil in the eyes of austin fans jesus christ in the eyes of columbus fans i have never once watched a live stream town hall meeting before and i doubt i'll ever do it again but i was glued to my computer screen on the edge of my seat it was surreal watching this and having twitter up on another tab because i mean a lot of it was political lingo it was hard to understand but then you had people cleared up online and then the amount of people debating this and arguing about it it's something that i had never experienced online in mls i knew this was one of the final hurdles like if you get a stadium secured and you find a way to pay for it in a way that doesn't piss off every person you're in and it would have been a walk in the park if not for leslie poole poole drilled psv as she stated later it wasn't that she was opposed to a soccer team in austin she just hated the contract she thought the tax money should be used in a better way and she was also opposed to taking a team from another city what poole and the others who oppose the current deal wanted was four things one requiring psv to pay rent at the market price as in tax exempt two require psv to fully fund a new train station to and from the station yeah that's probably gonna cost more than what he had in mind for this project three adding on to the train station establish a solid transportation and traffic plan and four enforce heavy financial penalties if the team were to relocate again those penalties being he would have to return the land reimburse the city for all remediation costs and rent starting at 1.9 million dollars and increasing by 2 percent each year following yeah she wasn't playing around ultimately pre-court sports ventures won the vote seven to four in favor of building a stadium in makala place when anthony precourt went to shake leslie poole's hand we got this interaction you've been very committed to the project i hope that you are a good and faithful partner today in ways that you were not in columbus you are on you're on the record now for promises that you must fulfill i will fulfill them i promise you that i hope i hope everybody catches that anthony precourt promises to fulfill his promises that's right it's kind of funny the way she's standing above him like a mother and making him promise to be a good boy this time i mean you could tell that she just doesn't really like this guy now if i'm gonna be honest i thought it was over i thought mls was moving the crew to austin and it made me sick to my stomach nothing against austin or their fans this is an amazing opportunity but for columbus to lose their team i wasn't even sure if i wanted to continue following this league it just left such a bad taste in my mouth but save the crew kept fighting they started a season ticket pledge and quickly gained over 10 000 new pledges which just further proves that columbus had the support they just needed the right people in charge they kept printing out signs they kept painting murals they kept releasing videos and they kept raising money and then october rolled around and we were approaching one year since the original grant wall tour pre-court had stated his intentions of playing in austin as early as 2019 they would just have to find a temporary stadium until then columbus fans were kind of in the dark not knowing what their future really held was this the last season was 2019 2020 going to be the last season [Music] october 12 2018 cleveland browns owner jimmy haslam as well as his wife d haslem and pete edwards the former team doctor of the crew announced their intention to purchase the columbus crew and after that everything just kind of happened really fast in december a judge denied the request of precord and mls to dismiss the lawsuit by the city of columbus and the state of ohio to keep their team in columbus and then plans were revealed to revamp matt prey stadium into a community sports park and then they reveal plans to open up a new stadium downtown and then on december 28th the lawsuit was officially dismissed then on january 1st 2019 ownership of the columbus crew officially transferred to the haslam family and pete edwards the columbus crew were officially saved now as great as the haslam family and pete edwards are i guarantee you this was not just out of the kindness of their hearts they saw for the past year the amount of dedication and support from the fans and the city this was a business opportunity a very promising one a fan base who fought tooth and nail to keep their team that won't ever get relegated because none of that here it's a potential gold mine if they play it right and so far i'd say they're playing it right hiring tim bes pachenko from toronto as team president fantastic move getting kayla porter great hire and the stadium looks incredible in 2019 the attendance was up despite the team not playing particularly well and in 2020 well the pandemic made it really hard to gauge fan support but bez and porter built a really really good team and it all culminated with an mls cup in 2020 a 3-0 shellacking of defending mls cup champions seattle sounders tale going from possibly losing your team to another city to winning mls cup if it's not for the fans if it's not for the save the crew movement not only to the crew not have another mls cup they don't even have a team it is the greatest victory by any mls team saving the crew was bigger than any single mls cup it was bigger than any single signing and yes that does include david beckham it was bigger than anything because it was the definitive victory for the fans i know i'm missing a lot with this and i apologize about that i tried my best to tell this epic story and i hope you enjoyed it thank you for watching and i'll see you next time you

Channel: DannyTRadio

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Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021