Our stadium is my number one gripe so ordinarily I'd post in the early stages of a thread. TheWalrus more or less took care of that, with a fantastic summary.
But I can't allow so many posters to pretend the location is anything but a disaster. Huizenga had the same tortured idea, treating it more like a business and pleased with the lazy notion of a centralized location.
We've been a compromise franchise for 25 years, a Calder suburb, and it's got to be hysterical from the standpoint of an opposing team. Fly to either airport then drive toward the Everglades. Now that's intimidating. The biggest problem is not to laugh. I particularly loved the recent post asserting the final stage of the drive is beautiful. I come around the bend from the west. My lasting influence is a landfill. I open my nostrils on exit.
Unfortunately Joe Robbie only had one reference point in the early going, instead of a contrast of the spicy Orange Bowl and a prior flop in a remote cement wasteland. He took the Orange Bowl influence for granted and apparently we're destined to pay for his multi purpose mistake for a half century.
The Heat were rewarded with a title not long after relocating to the waterfront in the heart of a great city. The Panthers chose cheap land with nary a nearby structure taller than a shed, and missed the playoffs for a decade. As TheWalrus pointed out, I don't think it's purely a coincidence. Monumental gaffes shouldn't be rewarded.
Our results are best served with a frenzied site in Miami proper, the city in itself creating an antagonistic atmosphere that naturally spills over into the stands. I realize it sounds like fluff, but then again I didn't understand why college basketball home/neutral sites played so differently than true home court until I started traveling every summer and visited many of them. Early season college basketball tournaments often feature big name teams not playing in their own building, but in a different venue in the same city or area. Once I moved to Las Vegas I was miffed when wise guy bettors insisted on taking those numbers down. Instead of -12 in the campus building the same team would be -10 perhaps 20 miles away. The bettors took it even lower. And more often than not they'd collect. It still holds up today.
We've volunteered as a home/neutral NFL franchise for a quarter century, with predictable results. I hope it's cured within my lifetime.
