Wow, there's so much to comment on here.

First, would anyone like to name the number of times Arne "DFL-lite" Carlson has been asked to speak at ANY Republican State conventions in the last 10 years? The number is zero. Doesn't that say something?

Next, Carlson has been (and continues to be) a jock sniffer. He loves Gopher sports and doesn't give a damn if he takes a few hundred million bucks out of the public coffers to do it. Remember him kindly, as you sit in traffic....but at least HE'LL be comfortable in a new luxury box at the new Gopher's stadium. To hell with the working people...gimme my stadium.

Lastly, would ONE person show me ONE study that shows moving a stadium less than a mile onto campus does ANYTHING to improve the situation? That's right, kids....the stadium is LESS THAN ONE MILE FROM CAMPUS! ONE MILE! NOT ACROSS TOWN....NOT IN BLAINE OR BLOOMINGTON....ONE MILE AWAY, ACROSS THE RIVER....YOU KNOW....THAT THING THAT HAS WATER IN IT!

One more post script: Arne the "Republican" endorsed a DFL candidate last year for the State House: Backdoor Becky Otto. I call her that because she won a special election (by cheating, as proven by the suit she LOST) but was drilled by Matt Dean last year. Thanks again, Arne! You're a big help!

Arne has been the only Republican candidate I have voted against-ever.

For the amount of money that new stadiums for the Gophers, Twins and Vikings would cost, we could give $50,000 each to 25,000 people (or groups of people) as seed money to start businesses and still have money left over. Even if 75% of those businesses failed, it would create more net jobs than all of those stadiums combined.

Sell it to the tourists, Arne. I'm not buying.

I of course am a Michigan alum and I can't help laughing at this quandry. The Michigan football program funds practically the entire athletic program at Michigan. The big house (a huge but cheap open air concrete and steel bleachers stadium) packs in over 100,000 every Saturday in the Fall. This is even when it rains and when the Woverines are having one of their sucky seasons.

I've met rabid gopher football fans who are every bit as rabid as Michigan fans. What the U needs to do is build a cheapo bleacher stadium and put it right on campus. They could easily pay for it with fundraising. Make football Saturdays the only thing going on on Campus. That's the way to give a boost to the program and save the Taxpayers from having to pay for yet another stadium.

Mitch, your characterization of Arne wanting to tax everything that moves is unfair. He wants to tax a lot of things that don't move too.

The Dome is an easy walk from Campus. I used to do it all the time. As much as I loved the old "Horseshoe" on campus when I was a kid, they never could have drawn 100,000 people like in Ann Arbor.

This issue is a four part question. 1) Should the state tax citizens to fund an educational institution such as the University? 2)Is the athletic department critical to maximizing the educational quality delivered by the University of Minnesota? 3)Is a thriving football program critical to maximizing the performance of the athletic department?4) Is a new taxpayer-funded stadium a cost-effective way to maximize the odds of the football program generating the revenues that are seen at Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio State, etc.?

I'd answer "yes" to question one. I'd answer "maybe" to question two. I'd answer "yes" to question three. I'd answer "I need to run the numbers" to question four.

A non-lavish stadium partially built with taxpayer funds MIGHT throw off enough revenue to be a cost effective way to perpetually fund the athletic department (or more), IF the football team can be effectively marketed in an NFL city, with an NFL team that garners very large support. The Twin Cities' population has grown quite a bit since the Vikings supplanted the Gophers 40 years ago, in terms of football fan support, so it certainly is possible that the Gophers football program, if competently managed, could use an on-campus outdoor stadium, to increase current revenue suffciently to make the cost of new stadium worthwhile.

Nobody should underestimate, however, the difficulty of the task, or the advantage a college program enjoys when it doesn't have to compete for football fans in the same city as a popular NFL team. It seems to me, however, that if Wisconsin can have a very profitable college football team, and a very profitable professional football team, even factoring capital costs, it is within the realm of possibility. Having had some dealings with the University of Minnesota, however, and concluding that it was one of the worst-run bureaucracies I'd ever encountered, I would have some doubts about whether it would happen, although it has been many years since I was up-close with the morass known as the University of Minnesota.

As Will Allen mentioned, the Gophers face strong competition in the Vikings.

It's hard to think of a pack-em-in college program that plays in the same city as an NFL team.

Miami (Hurricanes, Dolphins)
SF Bay (Cal-Berkeley/Stanford; 49ers/Raiders)
Pittsburgh (for a few years, Pitt Panthers; Steelers)
Phoenix (Sun Devils, Cardinals; though I wouldn't call either a top-tier progam)
LA (USC/UCLA and the occasional NFL team)

On the other hand, in college football we have:

Auburn (you've got to drive a while to get to the Falcons or Aints)
Colorado (Boulder isn't that far from Denver, but it's not next door)
Florida/Florida State (until recently, far away from the NFL)
Michigan (at the edge of the Lion's metro area)
Nebraska (in the middle of nowhere)
Northwestern (ok, small stadium, but when they had a few good seasons in the mid-1990s, they were eclipsed by the Chicago "Bad News" Bears.)
Notre Dame (like Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere.)
Ohio State (Browns and Bengels play 1-3 hours away)
Penn State (fallen on hard times lately, but talk about an isolated campus!)
Tennessee (for a long time, in a state without the NFL; today, the Titans are still a good drive away)
Texas (Dallas is, what, a four hour drive?)
Texas A&M (Where is College Station, anway?)
Wisconsin (Packers are in the same state, but that's about it as far as proximity goes.)

So there you have it. Part of the Gopher's problem is the competition for entertainment dollars and enthusiaism for the Vikings.

Well, given the combined populations of Green Bay, Madison, and Milwaukee, compared to the population of say, the Rochester-Twin Cities-St. Cloud region, I think it's doable for the Minnesota football program to generate Badger- like revenue, and thus make an investment of, say, 100-125 million worthwhile, in terms of return on capital. The key would be, of course, a head coach who could use a new on-campus outdoor stadium as an effective recruiting tool to attract top-flight collegian players.

While I oppose any subsidy for professional teams (although, if I were still a Minnesota resident, I'd support a county's power to tax as their elected representatives see fit), if one agrees that an athletic department is an integral part of maximizing a University's educational services (and I'm not sure if I do), then I think a good case can be made for such a use of tax dollars, despite it not being a sure thing, in terms of return on capital.

The currrent stadium guarantees that Minnesota will be at a substantial recruiting disadvantage well into the future, which means the football program, and thus the athletic department, will have it's revenues essentially stuck where they are now, despite increasing demands to provide more opportunities to more students. This doesn't even take into account (since I don't know how large the phenomena is, if it exists at all) how schools like Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Penn State and others, leverage widespread interest in their football programs to attract private contributions to their schools for other purposes. There isn't an obvious answer to these questions, but on the face of it, if one accepts the importance of an athletic department to the University of Minnesota, one cannot assert with any certainty that public expenditures for such a stadium is a boondoggle.

I lived near Madison at the time Chancelor Shalala brough in Pat Richter and Barry Alvarez. One thing that they did, that I have yet to see the UM do is to field a WINNING TEAM!!!! In order to field a winning team we need to get a nationally known coach that can get access to the top recruits (I'm sorry Gopher fans, but you don't have that here). Alvarez brought a respectability to the program that excited the alumni and the students and football fans across Wisconsin. Any stadium upgrades that Camp Randall got came AFTER Coach Alvarez won the Big Ten Title. Until the UM can generate that kind of excitement, they are not going to get a stadium.

Cindy, as bad off as the Badger program was in those days, Alvarez still did not have a dim mausoleum with which to recruit athletes. I attended games at Camp Randall in the bad times, and even when the place is not close to filled, it still has some attraction on a sunny Saturday afternoon. This will never be said about the Metrodome, one of the worst facilities ever built. Next time you are in the joint, observe how many people around you are yawning, even during an exciting game; the air quality is so bad people have to fight to stay awake. It would take an extreme stroke of luck to attract a great coach to Minnesota.

If Minnesota doesn't want to be in the athletics business, dissolve the athletics department. If it wants to be in that business, then run the numbers as to ho much capital investment is needed to maximize profits in the football program, which is the rainmaker for the whole thing.

That is true, you can't body pass people over the top rail of the Dome, which you will recall did happen at one particularily bad game at Camp Randall. I've been to college games at both facilities and honestly I can't say one is worse than the other. You have to remember that we live in Minnesota and it can snow here from October to May!

Excite the alumni with a decent program and you will get your stadium.

Yes, Cindy, but it is top athletes which excite the alumni, and it is going to be darn near impossible to get enough top athletes who are willing to play in the Metrodome.

Sports is an entertainment business, whether it be college or purely professional. In an entertainment business, one has to incur the costs necessary to attract top talent. Mega-budgets don't rule Hollywood because the movie executives are stupid and don't know how to make money, but rather because a well-strategized mega-budget movie actually is often less risky than a movie with a smaller budget. I am not saying that the taxpayers of Minnesota should pay for a stadium. I am saying that if the taxpayers want their land-grant college to have an athletics department, operating out of the Metrodome is not going to maximize revenue. If the numbers work, waiting several years to build a better facility simply is not as economical as building one now.

Mitch,

I met "Captain Ed" (Edward Morrissey) at a dinner meeting last night (11/25/05) and he told me you and your blog readers might be interested in our TwinDomes stadia proposal.

It's the privately fundable solution to MN's stadium conundrum.

You can visit our website at www.TwinDomes.com

The "Pink Rhinoceros" is our way of poking fun at all the "preposterous" Vikings and Twins stadium plans that have been proposed over the past 8 years.

We decided Red McCombs wasn't serious about building a new stadium in MN in 2002, so we've been laying low with our proposal since then.

We're hoping Zygi Wilf is serious about building a world class sports destination center in MN.

Tony Spadafora

Thanks!!! furniture Very nice site.I enjoy being here.