By TIM DAHLBERG
AP Sports Columnist

Published: Thursday, November 13, 2008
Updated: Thursday, November 13, 2008 10:44 AM CST

Jerry Jones is looking for a loan, the Yankees are looking for some well-heeled renters and NASCAR might be looking at a future once thought unimaginable.

Across the pond, they’re looking at an Olympics that won’t be quite as grand as the British first envisioned.

The thinking has always been that big-time sports were relatively isolated from outside troubles, no matter how bad. Baseball, after all, survived the Depression, and even a world war didn’t stop people from going to the ballpark.

But there are growing signs the global financial meltdown will have an impact on the games you watch and the teams you cheer.

Nobody’s suggesting the NFL will stop filling stadiums this year or that major league teams won’t whip themselves into a buyer’s frenzy when the free agent market opens for real Friday. They will, though the Yankees might need a government bailout after spending the annual budget of a small country to sign pitcher CC Sabathia.

And it’s not all that bad for the ordinary fan. For the first time in 14 years the Red Sox decided against raising ticket prices, and some teams actually have cut some prices for next season.

Still, you have to wonder what’s going on when a multimillionaire such as Jones is going from bank to bank to find $350 million, as reported by Sports Business Journal, to complete the massive ode to himself he’s building in Arlington, Texas.

You have to wonder about how the Yankees can’t rent some of their $600,000 suites in their new stadium, and how, just a few months removed from the spectacle of the Beijing Games, plans for the 2012 Olympics in London are being scaled back.

And how about the good ol’ boys of NASCAR facing a future without Chevys and Fords? Not out of the realm of possibility, especially if Chevys and Fords are no longer being made.

It wasn’t that long ago that NASCAR was the hottest sport around, sponsors were begging to get on board for the ride, and the only limit to the future was the number of Sundays in the year on which to run races.

But the auto industry is in crisis, and the very companies that helped build NASCAR are teetering on the brink of collapse. NASCAR is trying to rein in expenses by running cheaper cars and considering cutting back on testing. But in a sign that sponsors are becoming increasingly scarce, Teresa Earnhardt and Chip Ganassi announced Wednesday they will combine their racing teams next season.

It’s all relative, of course, because the auto manufacturing business is a lot more critical to the nation’s well-being than NASCAR, though some Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans might not agree. And as much as we love baseball and football, how well your fantasy team does isn’t so important when you’ve just lost your job and have a mortgage you can’t pay.

But sports provides entertainment and an escape, something that becomes even more important in dire times. If past history is followed, people will give up going to games during tough times about the same time they give up alcohol.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be a rearranging of the landscape and a gradual return to more sober times. There almost has to be, because the boom times everywhere else already have gone bust.

Again, it’s not all bad. Riding the go-go times of recent years, sports grew way too big and costly, and a correction is probably way overdue.

The Yankees never needed the billion-dollar stadium that opens next season in the Bronx, except to make the Steinbrenner heirs even more wealthy. The Mets could have kept playing at Shea, which was perfectly serviceable for a baseball team except it didn’t have enough luxury suites.

Jones didn’t need his edifice in Texas, and fans of the Giants and Jets weren’t clamoring for a new stadium at the Meadowlands. They’re getting it because team owners figured out a way to fleece them for not just the tickets but the rights to buy them in the first place.

Perhaps now we can look to a future where the Red Sox won’t be able to raise ticket prices every year just because enough well-to-do fans have the money to keep filling up Fenway Park.

Perhaps now the outlandish idea of $2,500 seats at Yankee games actually will seem outlandish.

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlbergap.org