THE DIRT SHEET, MAY 19

And then there were fewer. The long rumored demise of the the Amarillo Gorillas has finally come to pass. The news was posted on the team’s website today. For some reason though, owner Randy Sanders’ press conference is being held on Friday.

In another development, the City of Amarillo will announce on Thursday that a team in the North American Hockey League (Junior A) will begin play next season. This comes after Sanders said a month ago that his team would remain in the CHL. It’s not clear if Semi-Conductor Sanders will be involved with the NAHL team.

Selfishly, I’ll be happy not to have anymore overnights at the Big Texan. But that’s small potatoes in the larger picture.

For one thing, Amarillo is the last of the original six WPHL franchises (extra points if you can name the other five without looking it up).

More importantly Amarillo has always been looked at as a key waypoint as far as travel goes throughout the circuit.  Its location made for a perfect stop for both the northern and southern teams (For example road trips could be built with stops in Odessa, Amarillo and then on to Tulsa or Wichita).

For now it seems Odessa will have more trips to the Dallas area on its plate which adds about an extra three hours or so round trip for the Jacks.

Personally, I commend Randy for keeping the Austin IceBats afloat and then taking over Amarillo when he did. That said, I also think Sanders is the perfect example of someone who thought that running a successful business would translate into running a successful minor league sports franchise. The two don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

I certainly don’t know the economics of the Gorillas and it could be Sanders was simply trying to hold on till the end of the season, bur it was painfully obvious that the Gorillas tried to cut every expense corner they could. A glaring example of that was the fact that last season they had one guy serving the dual roles of trainer/equipment manager. ONE GUY! If you’re unwilling to pay someone to properly take care of your players, what does that say about how you go about spending to market your team? By most accounts, the marketing/promotional efforts for the team were virtually non-existent the last two seasons.