The founders of ProjectFranchise.org are five college buddies from the University of Miami (The U) who all once thought they would be pro athletes someday.  Now as we approach the back end of our mid-twenties and can no longer get through a wiffle ball game without knee replacements, we’ve realized that playing pro ball is even less likely than that supermodel threesome on the moon we had our hearts set on.(web page coming soon)

At the same time, each of us has continued to loyally support our favorite teams, even as ownership raised ticket prices, gouged the regular fans and ran the teams into the ground.  For years we would just sit around and complain that regular fans like ourselves could do a better job.  We took a few cracks the lottery, vowing to purchase a team with the winnings but after countless disappointments we came up with plan B; Project Franchise.

Joe had the idea first, really as a stall tactic as he was in his final semester of law school and dreaded the idea of actually becoming a lawyer. His roommate Chris would have to be the workhorse of the operation, being that he was the only one with any knowledge of website building. Grant and Aaron were brought in for no particular reason, and Adam was brought along because he’s good with “graphics and stuff”.

So the concept is simple, get a bunch of money together and let the people decide on how they want their team run. This country is a democracy where we trade taxation for representation, so why should our sports teams be run by dictators who tend to forget about the fans paying their salaries.  While we can’t easily divide up actual ownership (mostly because we don’t know how much we will make and from how many different people) we are selling the rights to vote on the team.

Every $5 you donate will buy you a vote as a member of the group GM of the team – if you want more votes put in more money. Those who donate the most will be given the highest voting powers (see donation page for details), but everyone will still always have a say in the stuff that they really care about.

All votes will first begin with open nominations, so for mascots Joe may nominate the Spotted Tigers and Aaron the Duckbill Platypus, and then everyone would get a vote (or as many votes as they own) on what they wanted to call the team. Whatever vote wins after a normal amount of open voting time and at least 50% of vote holders voting will become the new team mascot.