Germany always has a cycling scene, but there's a bit of fluctuation based on German successes. After years of getting behind T-Mobile, Zabel and Ullrich, they've been very behind the sport; after too many doping scandals and their heroes retiring, their interest has waned somewhat with no big German GC riders stepping up to follow in their footsteps. Other riders who show promise are immediately given the 'next Jan' treatment, often unreasonably and unrealistically. When they fail to deliver, the team loses faith, the fans lose interest, and the sport loses out. I get the feeling Milram see themselves as something of a placeholder for German cycling, willing to be there but also kind of hoping somebody will set up a new T-Mobile type German team soon and they can hop across and take advantage of a better situation. The likes of Wegmann and Gerdemann are talented riders but there isn't really the support in the lineup nor the faith of the team owners in them to challenge as much and as often as they could, and perhaps should (the fact that Wegmann has lost a lot of the last 18 months to injury has also been a big problem for Milram). You just need to look at how ecstatic Wegmann was at the win in the Frankfurt May Day Race and how the team reacted to see how much that one meant to them - as Germany's biggest one-day race (and arguably its' biggest race outright at present) that could be the difference between the team surviving and dying.
Think of the Germans' interest in cycling as being not too dissimilar to that in America - you may see the same thing happen soon, if Armstrong, Hincapie, Leipheimer and Horner all retire close together, doping scandals rock them, and there's no immediate successor in sight (this has already happened to some extent with the likes of Tommy D), the public may well become jaded and not so interested in the sport, and any American rider showing promise will be hyped beyond reason in an attempt to return public focus to the sport. The sport will never die outright in America just as it will never die outright in Germany, but all that the situation would create is disappointments until a new team starts up (NetApp are hoping to build themselves up in that manner) who the public can get behind and have faith in (as opposed to Milram, who are constant underdogs) or a new superstar who can compete for high profile events (the Germans have the advantage here since their population know much more of the cycling calendar than the average American citizen) hits the scene. Even so, the amount of scandals that have hit the sport recently - and German-speaking Europe has been particularly hard-hit, with Gerolsteiner and T-Mobile, with Schumacher, Pfannberger, Kohl, and so on - have made sponsors unwilling to come forward.
I think there is a good chance that Milram will fold at the end of this season. Should that happen, I would expect that some of the better riders - Rohregger, Gerdemann, Terpstra, Wegmann - will find themselves a reasonable ride. They won't be contenders or team leaders, but they'll probably find themselves a position in the ProTour or at a high profile ProConti team. The 'lesser riders' will probably wind up on Continental German teams; I would not be surprised to see the majority wind up on Team NetApp as part of their bid to improve their visibility and step up through the levels, the same way as Bessons Chaussures-Sojasun put in the money to take on most of Crédit Agricole's offcuts, and that attracted a new sponsor and brought them up a level one year later. I would be somewhat upset about the loss of top-level German cycling if Milram folded, but at the same time NetApp are a lot more progressive and ambitious.
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