There has been a centralised discussion on deprecating "future" templates. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Centralized_discussion/Deprecating_%2...
The templates were compared to the "spoiler" templates. Not to drag all that up again, but I found the comparison interesting. The same basic point seemed to be made there, though, that such templates patronised our readers, who can be expected to realise that the article they are reading is about a future event (and if they can't, then that is more likely to be due to bad writing in the article, than the reader's comprehension skills).
Carcharoth