I haven’t written a lot about the Vikings stadium controversy. \u00a0Partly it’s because I have little to say other than “build what you want, but don’t use any taxpayer money”. Partly it’s because I’m too busy saying “Go Bears”.<\/p>\n
And partly because Mr. Dilettante has it covered.<\/p>\n
His series on the ongoing Arden Hills shakedown – up to seventeen parts and counting – touched on the visit to Minnesota by the NFL brass who, in an example of the worst optics I’ve seen in this sort of a situatiion since the CEOs of GM and Chrysler flew to Washington in corporate jets to talk with Congress, pulled up to the site of the shakedown talks in a limo.<\/p>\n
And he commented on the remarks by the NFL’s spokesman, former Goldman-Sachs employee Roger Grubman:<\/p>\n
And in case you were thinking that the Los Angeles option isn’t real, Grubman offered this bon mot:<\/p>\n
“To me, if I were a Minnesotan, any alternative other than Minnesota would be equally as bad,” he said.<\/p>\n
Got the message? That Grubman is crazy, man. You don’t know what he’ll do. He’ll move the team to Wichita if that’s what it takes. He’s nuts and he’s serious. He’ll take your team away in the blink of a gimlet eye. You better pony up, rubes valued citizens of Minnesota.<\/p>\n
So the question is out there. Do we build Zygi World in Arden Hills on the old ammo dump site? Or does the NFL drop the bomb? As much as we’ve all tried to pretend otherwise, I suspect we all knew this moment was coming. The NFL and the Wilfs are going to give Minnesota one chance to answer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of\u00a0course, Jacksonville has worse financials and is a market that, unlike Minnesota, has almost no NFL tradition and doesn’t have a fifty-year record of selling out games even during turkey seasons like this one. \u00a0Rationally, they are a much better candidate to move to LA.<\/p>\n
But the NFL, and our DFL governor, don’t want you to think rationally about this. They want you bouncing between hazy purple and gold nostalgia on the one hand, and Grubman’s little leash-yank on the other.<\/p>\n