Tuesday, July 24, 2007
News The good news about the Vick meltdown
Posted by John F. Sugg on Tue, Jul 24, 2007 at 9:52 PM
Let's celebrate the conflagration at the Atlanta Falcons training camp that was ignited by Michael Vick's alleged (but pretty damn certain) animal cruelty. A toast to the good fortune of all Georgians. The quarterback's thug culture may save us $1 billion, maybe even double that, at least for a while.
Here's how every man, woman and tyke in Georgia may keep $100 or $200, thanks to Vick's horrible pastime of torturing dogs. I wouldn't bank the money yet, however. Football teams are tenacious in their greed.
When Arthur Blank purchased the Falcons in 2001, there was a gap of logic between the purchase price of $545 million and the team's estimated annual profits of about $5 million. No way was Blank going to wait more than a century to recoup his investment.
The solution, as with all of the other NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL teams, was to demand a new stadium. The financing of such deals is sweet -- for the owners. The community pays, and the team pockets. In Tampa, for example, court documents showed that the Buccaneers' Raymond James Stadium will soak up a net profit for the team of more than $1 billion in public funds over the term of the lease.
But Georgians, as with most sane Americans, weren't likely to bite at the idea of paying for a new pleasure palace for a billionaire's football team. So, aided by the oh-so-pitiful Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the team denied it wanted a new stadium. I exposed that fiction at the time. The AJC could have tried a bit of truth-telling just by calling the battalion of stadium consultants for whom a team purchase is like pouring blood into a tank of sharks.
As I reported, Blank's game plan was to build excitement in the Falcons, sell out games at the Georgia Dome and then, when everybody was swooning over how great it was to have a football team that won games, hit the rubes with a billion dollar bill for a new stadium.
The AJC, dutiful as ever in its subservience, started softening up Atlanta about a year ago. From the early propaganda that Blank didn't have plans for a new stadium, we began hearing that the Falcons need a new gridiron to "remain competitive." Of course, the only competition that means anything to team owners is who can extort the most public dollars from a community.
Examples: On Feb. 16, the AJC gave this fluff job to the Falcons: "to remain competitive the team will need a new stadium." On March 11, the newspaper cheerfully proclaimed:"With Falcons owner Arthur Blank envisioning a new stadium for sometime between 2015 and 2020."
Those dates reflect, more or less, when the bonds are paid off at the Georgia Dome and when the Falcons' lease expires at the state-owned stadium. That's not really an obstacle. More than a few deals have included taxpayers paying off existing leases when a team pouts that it has to have a new stadium NOW. It's like paying for your old house at the same time you're paying for a new home -- except that while you pay, someone else is living in the swank new digs.
The threat is that the Falcons will move unless they get everything they want. Blank's spokeswoman last year told me the owner's "preference" is to remain in Atlanta -- meaning, he'll use the club of a threatened relocation.
Meanwhile, a key to building a rapturous fan base has been Vick. Blank has repeatedly ignored the low-life antics of the quarterback in order to maintain the momentum leading up to the "gotta have a new stadium" announcement. Unfortunately, no one can ignore the federal indictment against the guy to whom Blank handed a $130 million contract.
Blank's dilemma is how to smooth things with the gazillions of animal lovers and the gazillions more who detest the awful brutality Vick symbolizes. The new palpable anti-Vick sentiment is something that creates continents of common ground. Radio host Neal Boortz, for example, is switching his fan allegiance to the Jacksonville Jaguars -- and John Sugg is going to trek down to Miami for one of the Dolphins' early games.
And if the fan anger swells into a storm of protest, Blank will have to rebuild community support for the team among people he has angered by his inability to discipline the criminal activities of his players. That's unlikely to completely derail the plans for a new stadium -- but it could stall them.
For Georgians who are tired of seeing officials provide socialism for the rich, that's good news.
Comments (3)
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Why is it considered rational that a stadium built in 1992 is already "outdated," anyway? This is not the Superdome in NOLA, built in 1975. They have a legitimate argument.
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I agree with Sugg. Tax breaks for new busineses are one thing, subsidies for a sports team are an entirely different animal. If blank wants to move the Falcons, let him. Another team will be in the Dome before the Falcons moving trucks pull out of the driveway. Or we will just go to UGA and Tech games, their more fun anyway and the girls at the game are prettier.
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