40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty-Six: From a 1990 portal, Sportstime Pizza to Rich O’s BBQ to NABC

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40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty-Six: From a 1990 portal, Sportstime Pizza to Rich O’s BBQ to NABC
Current view of New Albany’s north side, where pastures became a tax base.

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty-Five: The end of the beginning (1989-1990).

An anecdote to kick off this installment, as relayed by the Irish musician Sean Cannon (The Dubliners, The Dublin Legends).

“In the Irish love triangle there are three parties involved: A man, and a woman – and drink, and so the girl gives an ultimatum to her boyfriend: It’s either the drink, or me. He chooses the drink. But afterwards, he relents. They get married and live happily ever after … the three of them.” 

Earlier in this series we saw that Sportstime Pizza came into existence during the summer of 1987 when a budding entrepreneur named Richard “Rich” O’Connell took over the management of a moribund Noble Roman’s pizzeria franchise located off Grant Line Road on New Albany’s about-to-explode north side, and got to work.

In 1990 I turned 30. As the New Year dawned, I was poised to join the Sportstime Pizza family, both personally and professionally. At the time, it seemed a logical symbiosis; considered in retrospect, the phrase “be careful what you wish for” springs quickly to mind. The 1990s made me and broke me, all at once, but regrets?

Okay, I have a few, but then again, too few to mention. The challenge is remembering enough of it to tell the story properly.

The Sportstime Pizza saga begins in the early 1980s, when a well-heeled local property-owning troika commenced the conversion of hitherto green pastures, which adjoined the main road on the outskirts of town, into those purely stereotypical American car-oriented strip malls, eventually to include larger entities: Kroger, Applebee’s and Wal-Mart.

Less than a mile away to the north across the I-265 interchange was (and remains) Indiana University Southeast, the satellite campus where I received my philosophy degree in 1982. Then as now, New Albany’s main industrial park is situated exactly between these poles.

In short, the acreage was ripe for plucking, and commercial development proceeded apace. The developers intended their Noble Roman’s to be the restaurant anchor at one of their first strip malls, and they bought the franchise in spite of having neither the interest nor any real aptitude to operate it.

Predictably, it foundered. O’Connell correctly surmised that the simple act of hands-on, on-site presence would be a significant corrective to the steady downward slide.