Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Will Owners Let Chargers Leave Bankrupt City?
San Diego has a bang-up football team and a banged-up balance sheet. And that presents a dilemma: will National Football League owners permit the Chargers, potential Super Bowl contestants, to leave a city the year it may be forced into bankruptcy? The team can flirt with other cities in January and elope after the 2008 season, but it probably won't woo any metro area publicly while this year's playoff turnstiles are spinning. A move could create a public relations disaster: the nation may see that pro football is not a game but an extortion racket by which money of poor taxpayers is distributed to billionaire team owners.
Art Modell, who owned two different pro football teams, once put it this way: league owners are "32 fat-cat Republicans who act like complete socialists." It is an apt description: the owners are consumed by greed, but through such arrangements as the draft, easy schedules for weaker teams, and player salary caps, they make sure that have-nots eventually become haves. Karl Marx would have loved it. Because of revenue sharing, every team will have its days in the limelight.
The trick is coming up with a good team at the time you're squeezing your home city for several hundred million dollars for a new stadium. The Chargers thought they had timed it right, but then the City was forced to reveal that it had been covering up more than a billion dollars of pension deficits. Now the city is falling apart.
The last election may have been sobering to pro sports owner/mendicants. In turning thumbs down on a plea by its pro basketball team, Seattle voted 3 to 1 for a measure that prohibits sports welfare unless taxpayers get a return on their investment. By the same margin, Sacramento voters rejected a bid for a new basketball arena that would have required a sales tax hike. Overwhelmingly, Pasadena voters said they didn't want to invite the National Football League in to help rehabilitate the Rose Bowl. Could pro football owners fear an Age of Enlightenment?
I asked five of the most prominent sports economists whether the league, concerned about deserting a bankrupt city, might turn down the Chargers' bid for relocation. I asked if the Chargers' claim that it needed a new stadium to remain competitive made any sense, particularly since they have done so well the last few seasons playing in a stadium they fallaciously consider out of date. And I asked if the Chargers might end up in the Los Angeles metro area, particularly Orange County, which I still think will be their new home.
They shot down the notion that November 7's election results portend a new realization by the public that it is getting screwed. "There is creeping enlightenment, but not a sea change," says Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College. "The level of resistance" to a Charger departure "might be higher than in the past."
That's too optimistic, say others. "There have always been a number of places that have refused to cave in, but in the end, there are always more places that will," says Ronald D. Utt of the Heritage Foundation. Yes, there were minor victories Election Day, but this year baseball's Washington Nationals "got the first 100 percent government-financed stadium."
"From time to time I think we really have become more rational, but then weird things happen," says Robert A. Baade of Lake Forest College.
And even if rationality were creeping into public discourse, there is little evidence the National Football League would be attuned to it. "The NFL is about making as much money as it can for owners," says Dennis Coates of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. "They wouldn't have a problem moving a team if it would make more money for the owners. The league doesn't have a terribly strong sense of loyalty to cities."
"Nothing will deter the NFL from putting its teams where it will make the most money," says Rodney D. Fort of Washington State University, author of the text Sports Economics.
"If the NFL thought it could move the Chargers without too much in the way of negative publicity, the NFL would allow this. It is a bottom-line business," says Baade. Because of the emotional impact of Katrina, the league might want to keep the Saints in New Orleans "for at least a period of time to give the impression that the NFL is not a heartless entity."
The Chargers claim they need a new stadium so they can field a better team. Is that poppycock? In a word, yes, say the economists, mainly because of the share-the-wealth socialism. In all sports, "half the time they get better, half the time they don't" after wangling a new facility, says Fort. It's less likely to happen in share-the-wealth football, even though some revenues, such as from luxury boxes, do not have to be shared with other owners. By and large, new stadiums make football owners richer but don't make teams better. Teams such as the Chargers, Green Bay Packers, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Chicago Bears, and Oakland Raiders have had both stellar and smelly years in old facilities, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and St. Louis Rams have had both good and bad years in new stadiums.
So are the Chargers headed out of town -- particularly to the juicy L.A. metro area? If the team goes deep into the playoffs or to the Super Bowl, "San Diego might have a change of heart," says Zimbalist. Mayor Sanders might not be able to resist entreaties from his business backers and could give away the entire Qualcomm site.
A deal outside of the city, such as in Chula Vista or National City, might work, says Fort. The Oakland A's are angling to move to Fremont and the 49ers to Santa Clara, he notes. Of course, public financing is a stumbling block in San Diego County cities. And two logical alternatives would seem to be out of the question: the nabobs who want cities to subsidize the Chargers aren't likely to put their own money in, and big owner egos would prevent the team from staying at Qualcomm, an excellent facility.
L.A.? Coates says the league may want it for extortion purposes. "It is nice to have a big-market option to use as part of a threat," he says. The league does not want to add an expansion team until 2010, says Fort. At that point, 32 owners could split the $600 million L.A. expansion fee -- "a nice bonus," he says.
Baade was hired several years ago to assess the economic impact of L.A.'s Staples Center, an indoor facility. It's slight. "L.A. understands that pro sports are not a pot of gold," says Baade. He doubts that L.A. governments would offer a subsidy, and Fort doesn't think the National Football League would put up much money, even as badly as it wants a team in the rich L.A. television market. However, late last week the National Football League said it would lend $300 million to the Jets and Giants to underwrite construction of their new, privately financed joint stadium in the Meadowlands.
Los Angeles is competing for the 2016 summer Olympics. It might construct a new facility or renovate the Coliseum and then "use it for a stadium for the NFL, without it being called a subsidy for the NFL," says Baade. However, "in the absence of a subsidy, I don't know a team that would be willing to make the move." Maybe some of the Hollywood billionaires would jump in. Orange County might put public money in; Anaheim's mayor Curt Pringle is a close friend of Chargers owner Alex Spanos. "But I find it hard to believe Orange County is in a position to give much of a subsidy." The league is reportedly willing to pay $50 million for land next to Angel Stadium, but now a developer is offering $150 million for rights to the property, and some key councilmembers say the team owners have taken too long to decide. Pringle, however, is picking holes in the developer's bid.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Will Owners Let Chargers Leave Bankrupt City?
Will Owners Let Chargers Leave Bankrupt City?
San Diego has a bang-up football team and a banged-up balance sheet. And that presents a dilemma: will National Football League owners permit the Chargers, potential Super Bowl contestants, to leave a city the year it may be forced into bankruptcy? The team can flirt with other cities in January and elope after the 2008 season, but it probably won't woo any metro area publicly while this year's playoff turnstiles are spinning. A move could create a public relations disaster: the nation may see that pro football is not a game but an extortion racket by which money of poor taxpayers is distributed to billionaire team owners.
Art Modell, who owned two different pro football teams, once put it this way: league owners are "32 fat-cat Republicans who act like complete socialists." It is an apt description: the owners are consumed by greed, but through such arrangements as the draft, easy schedules for weaker teams, and player salary caps, they make sure that have-nots eventually become haves. Karl Marx would have loved it. Because of revenue sharing, every team will have its days in the limelight.
The trick is coming up with a good team at the time you're squeezing your home city for several hundred million dollars for a new stadium. The Chargers thought they had timed it right, but then the City was forced to reveal that it had been covering up more than a billion dollars of pension deficits. Now the city is falling apart.
The last election may have been sobering to pro sports owner/mendicants. In turning thumbs down on a plea by its pro basketball team, Seattle voted 3 to 1 for a measure that prohibits sports welfare unless taxpayers get a return on their investment. By the same margin, Sacramento voters rejected a bid for a new basketball arena that would have required a sales tax hike. Overwhelmingly, Pasadena voters said they didn't want to invite the National Football League in to help rehabilitate the Rose Bowl. Could pro football owners fear an Age of Enlightenment?
I asked five of the most prominent sports economists whether the league, concerned about deserting a bankrupt city, might turn down the Chargers' bid for relocation. I asked if the Chargers' claim that it needed a new stadium to remain competitive made any sense, particularly since they have done so well the last few seasons playing in a stadium they fallaciously consider out of date. And I asked if the Chargers might end up in the Los Angeles metro area, particularly Orange County, which I still think will be their new home.
They shot down the notion that November 7's election results portend a new realization by the public that it is getting screwed. "There is creeping enlightenment, but not a sea change," says Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College. "The level of resistance" to a Charger departure "might be higher than in the past."
That's too optimistic, say others. "There have always been a number of places that have refused to cave in, but in the end, there are always more places that will," says Ronald D. Utt of the Heritage Foundation. Yes, there were minor victories Election Day, but this year baseball's Washington Nationals "got the first 100 percent government-financed stadium."
"From time to time I think we really have become more rational, but then weird things happen," says Robert A. Baade of Lake Forest College.
And even if rationality were creeping into public discourse, there is little evidence the National Football League would be attuned to it. "The NFL is about making as much money as it can for owners," says Dennis Coates of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. "They wouldn't have a problem moving a team if it would make more money for the owners. The league doesn't have a terribly strong sense of loyalty to cities."
"Nothing will deter the NFL from putting its teams where it will make the most money," says Rodney D. Fort of Washington State University, author of the text Sports Economics.
"If the NFL thought it could move the Chargers without too much in the way of negative publicity, the NFL would allow this. It is a bottom-line business," says Baade. Because of the emotional impact of Katrina, the league might want to keep the Saints in New Orleans "for at least a period of time to give the impression that the NFL is not a heartless entity."
The Chargers claim they need a new stadium so they can field a better team. Is that poppycock? In a word, yes, say the economists, mainly because of the share-the-wealth socialism. In all sports, "half the time they get better, half the time they don't" after wangling a new facility, says Fort. It's less likely to happen in share-the-wealth football, even though some revenues, such as from luxury boxes, do not have to be shared with other owners. By and large, new stadiums make football owners richer but don't make teams better. Teams such as the Chargers, Green Bay Packers, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Chicago Bears, and Oakland Raiders have had both stellar and smelly years in old facilities, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and St. Louis Rams have had both good and bad years in new stadiums.
So are the Chargers headed out of town -- particularly to the juicy L.A. metro area? If the team goes deep into the playoffs or to the Super Bowl, "San Diego might have a change of heart," says Zimbalist. Mayor Sanders might not be able to resist entreaties from his business backers and could give away the entire Qualcomm site.
A deal outside of the city, such as in Chula Vista or National City, might work, says Fort. The Oakland A's are angling to move to Fremont and the 49ers to Santa Clara, he notes. Of course, public financing is a stumbling block in San Diego County cities. And two logical alternatives would seem to be out of the question: the nabobs who want cities to subsidize the Chargers aren't likely to put their own money in, and big owner egos would prevent the team from staying at Qualcomm, an excellent facility.
L.A.? Coates says the league may want it for extortion purposes. "It is nice to have a big-market option to use as part of a threat," he says. The league does not want to add an expansion team until 2010, says Fort. At that point, 32 owners could split the $600 million L.A. expansion fee -- "a nice bonus," he says.
Baade was hired several years ago to assess the economic impact of L.A.'s Staples Center, an indoor facility. It's slight. "L.A. understands that pro sports are not a pot of gold," says Baade. He doubts that L.A. governments would offer a subsidy, and Fort doesn't think the National Football League would put up much money, even as badly as it wants a team in the rich L.A. television market. However, late last week the National Football League said it would lend $300 million to the Jets and Giants to underwrite construction of their new, privately financed joint stadium in the Meadowlands.
Los Angeles is competing for the 2016 summer Olympics. It might construct a new facility or renovate the Coliseum and then "use it for a stadium for the NFL, without it being called a subsidy for the NFL," says Baade. However, "in the absence of a subsidy, I don't know a team that would be willing to make the move." Maybe some of the Hollywood billionaires would jump in. Orange County might put public money in; Anaheim's mayor Curt Pringle is a close friend of Chargers owner Alex Spanos. "But I find it hard to believe Orange County is in a position to give much of a subsidy." The league is reportedly willing to pay $50 million for land next to Angel Stadium, but now a developer is offering $150 million for rights to the property, and some key councilmembers say the team owners have taken too long to decide. Pringle, however, is picking holes in the developer's bid.
Comments