(22 nd ). In 2014, BASS held an Elite Series event in downtown Philadelphia which didn’t produce big weights, but it produced a large, enthusiastic and engaged crowd, unlike any I’ve seen at another Elite event.
Of course a
Classic and a
regular season
Elite Series event
are two different
animals, with
different measures of
success, and requiring
different levels of
facilities.
Maybe the
naysayers are right, and we should keep the Classic confined to a rotating list of mid- sized cities, but I think that’s a terrible case of small thinking. The same people who argue that we shouldn’t take a calculated risk
SUMMER 2017
on a new venue are typically the same people who complain that sales aren’t growing or that tournament winnings have remained flat. If we’re intent on finding some way to prime the pump, we have to be able to see past our biases, or at least look at them semi- objectively.
21