A few years back, when the Chicago Bears decided to turn Soldier Field into that monstrosity of a UFO that it currently is, they came up with an interesting plan. It was pretty simple. Let's get Illinois taxpayers to pay for the majority of the $587 million upgrades to the stadium, and we'll throw in only about $100 million.
As you can immediately tell, that's an enormous taxpayer ripoff, and a very sweet deal for the NFL.
Yet somehow, the plan worked it's way through Illinois's state government and was approved.
Naturally, there were immediately people pissed off to no end that the Illinois government had done this, primarily because they, as taxpayers, had absolutely no say in the matter.
Interestingly, a similar move was tried in New York. Mayor Bloomberg was proposing the building of a $1.2 billion stadium that would be used by the Jets and Giants (who no doubt had a hand in this proposal) and could be used as the Olympic Stadium in 2012 (New York was one of the final three cities competing for the 2012 Olympic Games back in 2006, which it lost). the New York stadium was also to be funded primarily by taxpayers.
Luckily, some savvy politicians in upstate New York told Bloomberg he could go to hell and that they'd never let what happened in Illinois happen in New York.
It seemed after the New York episode that politicians had learned from the Chicago Bears screw job and wouldn't let something like that ever happen again. But we all know, there are a lot of stupid people in this country.
The newest stadium deal to piss off an entire state is thanks to the Indianapolis Colts. The brand new Lucas Oil Stadium is being financed with $612 million of state bonds. The team will contribute about $100 million. It's the identical thing that was done for the Chicago Bears, except this time it's slightly more expensive for taxpayers during a horrendously crappy economy.
Sounds fantastic. So what do people think of this lovely plan?
``The deal is the biggest taxpayer ripoff in NFL history,'' Gary Welsh, an Indianapolis attorney and former Republican lobbyist, wrote on his Advance Indiana blog on Aug. 9.
Ok then, anyone else?
"The Colts want to have the most up-to-date stadium, but paying for it with taxes was wrong,'' said Howard Dorsey, who lost his job directing a truck- driving training program.
And how about we hear from an expert.
Publicly financed professional football arenas can fail as economic development engines because "they're basically always closed'' except for about 10 games a year, said Allen Sanderson, a University of Chicago economist who has studied taxpayer- supported stadium projects for two decades.
This could go on and on. Many Indiana residents are going to get more and more pissed over time. Indiana's government is saying the stadium will generate more jobs - primarily through an adjacent convention center - but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that most of those jobs won't be sustainable. Again, how many times will the stadium be open during the year? Not enough for most people to be working a full-time job.
Now while I could go off on stupid politicians here, the real culprit is the NFL. After all, what's better than having stadiums paid for primarily by unsuspecting taxpayers?
At the end of the day, the NFL is not about the love of the game or any of that crap that all those idiotic commercials hit you with. It's about money, plain and simple. And the NFL is rolling in it. But don't think that a league that wealthy won't try and do its best to screw people over in order to keep themselves well into the black.
That's what the league did through the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts. After all, having two highly profitable teams only drop a combined $200 million on their stadiums is much better than having them drop a billion plus combined on their stadiums.
This is also the reason why the NFL is so tight with gauranteed contracts, despite the high rate of injury in the sport. They want to save every day damn penny they can. So if you sign a guy to an incentive-laden contract worth upwards of $10 million in a year, and he blows out his knee in Week 3, you only have to pay him $3 million.
In many ways, considering how short the average NFL career is (3 years), this is a true disservice to players. But we could also get into even greater NFL disservices, like how the league treats its retired players.
I do enjoy the NFL a great deal, but it's also important to know that the league doesn't really have your best interest as a fan at heart at all. All they have their interest on is your wallet. And they're not afraid to screw you over to get to it.
Indiana touts "Peyton Manning" bonds as fans boo Colts' deal [Bloomberg]
more
