Heh, okay. Well...
If we just want to argue whether expansion teams should suck for several years or if we should set them up to at least be decent (somewhere around .500) right away, put me down for setting them up to be decent. When leagues charged comparatively very little for teams to join, I think it was more defensible to argue that they should suffer for years, but when you're charging several hundreds of millions of dollars to join the league (and when the NFL, NBA, or MLB next expand, probably billions), I think it's only right to set them up to be decent.
I'm not really a hockey fan anymore, but being Canadian I obviously know a lot of hockey fans and more specifically, Canuck fans. And Canuck fans, along with the fans of the other Pacific teams, probably had the most to lose with the NHL expanding to Vegas and Seattle because that decreased their chances of their team making them playoffs. But did I even once hear any Canucks fans I know grumble about the Knights or Kraken being good? If they did, I don't recall. And my FIL and BILs are also screaming at the tv as loud as they can hockey fans so you'd think if anyone might complain about it, they would.
No, I like to think most people realize there's no point in making a new fanbase suffer just because that's how it's always been done. Let's welcome others to our hobbies, not make them suffer. Just put yourself in the shoes of those expansion team fans. How would you feel if your city finally got a team in the sport you loved and they ended up being terrible for years? That happened to me with the Grizzlies and it was not an enjoyable experience. And I think it really hurt them in trying to build up a fanbase in general. Thankfully, I grew up a Sonics fan so I had them to fall back on until... well, IYKYK.
Nah, let expansions teams be decent. Give them a real chance, not a token chance.
Well, I wouldn't be the one doing it, the owners would be. And if this was a real hypothetical, yeah, I wouldn't encourage a team to move. I'd have sympathy for White Sox fans. I'd try to fix whatever the problem was, likely try to get new owners. But if I thought I gave it a real shot at fixing the problem and still couldn't fix it, I also wouldn't stop the new owners from moving the team either. Like if that's what happens with the Rays, I've just had enough.
Besides, how many fans really want to watch that team if they continue to play as badly as these recent White Sox? At some point it'd be like putting them out of their misery, no? I looked and I have to hand it to them,
their attendance numbers aren't as bad as I expected. Maybe a few more years like this and they'll be more like the A's and Rays numbers though.