Sports

Reigning champion Lynx looks like team to beat – Chicago Sun

By VIN A. CHERWOO

May 18, 2012 7:14PM

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Article source: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/basketball/12606332-419/reigning-champion-lynxlooks-like-team-to-beat.html

Big Ten Baseball Tournament Moving to Twin Cities in 2013, Omaha in 2014

PARK RIDGE, Ill. (WLFI) – The Big Ten Conference announced on Friday the sites for its 2013 and 2014 baseball tournaments. The 2013 Big Ten Baseball Tournament will be held at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Target Field is the home of Major League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins, marking the first time that the event will be held at a Major League Baseball facility. The 2014 tournament will be held at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb., the site of the NCAA Division I Men’s College World Series.

The Big Ten Baseball Tournament has been played as a neutral-site event in Columbus, Ohio, since 2009. The event was held at Huntington Park, the home of the Triple-A Columbus Clippers, in 2009 and 2011 and will be played at that ballpark May 23-26, 2012. The tournament was held at Ohio State’s Bill Davis Stadium in 2010. Prior to 2009, the Big Ten Baseball Tournament was played at the site of the regular-season champion or the champion from a pre-selected division, with the exception of 1993 and 1994, when it was held in Battle Creek, Mich.

Five different teams have won the Big Ten Tournament in the event’s 31 years. Minnesota leads all Big Ten teams with nine tournament titles, Michigan and Ohio State each have eight, Illinois has four, and Indiana has two.

The 2013 tournament will be the seventh played in Minneapolis, as Minnesota hosted the event in 1984, 1986, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004. The 2014 tournament will be the Big Ten’s first in Omaha and the state of Nebraska.

Tickets for the 2012 Big Ten Baseball Tournament at Huntington Park in Columbus, Ohio, are on sale now. Visit www.bigten.org for more information.

About Target Field

Target Field, one of America’s most urban ballparks, is located in the historic Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis. In 2011, the Sports Business Journal and Sports Business Daily named Target Field the Sports Facility of the Year.

In 2010, ESPN The Magazine ranked Target Field as the best stadium experience in all professional sports in North America. Designed by POPULOUS with Mortenson Construction serving as construction manager, the 39,500 seat ballpark was completed in 2010. For more information on Target Field, visit www.twinsbaseball.com/targetfield.

Article source: http://www.wlfi.com/dpp/sports/big-ten-baseball-tournament-moving-to-twin-cities-in-2013-omaha-in-2014

Met. Sports Facilities Commission Looks to Stadium’s Future

Posted at: 05/17/2012 12:25 PM

Updated at: 05/17/2012 2:52 PM

By: Naomi Pescovitz

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In their first meeting since the Vikings stadium bill was signed into law, the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission is looking to the future.

During their meeting Thursday morning, Chair Ted Mondale recognized the next and final hurdle, a vote from the Minneapolis City Council.

“We still have seven,” Mondale said, referring City Council votes. “But we can’t lose one.”

“Never count your chickens till they hatch,” he said.

The Commission voted to begin the process of searching for a consultant to be an “owner’s representative” for the new Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority during design and construction.

Representative Ryan Winkler, (DFL) Golden Valley, also presented his idea to pay for the state’s portion of the new stadium, which is a part of the stadium bill.

He suggested that premium seats be raffled to the public. The funds raised would be used to pay for part of the state’s tab.

“My idea would be that they would be 50 yard line seats, lower deck, so that people would really have a dream of getting great seats for a long time to come and I think that would motivate people to put some money down and try to win,” Winkler said.

No price for the raffle tickets has been set.

“It has to be a share of what you are going to win. So if you are going to win prime seats for every game for for 30 years, it’s going to be more expensive, if it’s for one season maybe it’s cheaper. It all depends on what the fan interest is and that has to be determined,” Winkler said.

The Minneapolis City Council vote is scheduled for next week. It goes before a committee next Thursday and a formal vote next Friday.

Article source: http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S2622155.shtml?cat=10728

Delany: National title game likely to be bid on

CHICAGO —

How about a national championship game in Detroit? Or Minneapolis? What about Boston or New York?

With college football headed toward a playoff, Big Ten administrators this week came out in favor of staging those games in bowls, a step that would keep the conference’s longstanding ties to the Rose Bowl.

But league officials said they could see the title game being played in cities other than the usual suspects in California, Florida and Louisiana, though they did not offer any specific suggestions.

“I think the championship game in any scenario is going to be independently bid, not part of the bowl situation,” Commissioner Jim Delany said Wednesday after wrapping up two days of meetings. “If you looked at the options that we brought back to our conferences – one is inside the bowl, one is outside the bowl – in either case, I think the information indicated that the championship game would be bid out.”

A playoff, likely to include four teams, is expected as soon as the 2014 season, replacing the current No.1 vs. No. 2 BCS championship matchup that has rotated among the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta and Rose Bowl sites.

Michigan athletic director David Brandon said the title game “is going to be huge” wherever it is played, but there are more immediate issues at hand, mainly determining the championship field. Options include taking the top four teams in a poll, the four highest-ranked conference champions or some combination of both, and none is a cure for the current controversies.

If anything, they could be magnified.

Picking the two teams for the national championship game is already complicated. Adding more spots to the mix probably won’t make it easier.

“We have a system that’s been pretty good at determining the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams,” Brandon said. “If you go back in history there’s been a high correlation between the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams of one of them becoming the national champion. Our ability to know who truly deserves to be No. 3 and No. 4 and No. 5 and No. 6 is far less accurate.”

Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said part of the problem is transparency – or a lack of – with the current rankings system. He wants more clarity.

“I personally think there should be a committee, and it should be transparent so all the coaches and the public know the criteria, where the most weight is put and why decisions are made,” Alvarez said. “And someone stands up much like the basketball committee and tells the public why. Tell coaches why, so coaches know going in what the criteria are, what is going to be weighted, if it influences your scheduling. Is it margin of victory? Does that weigh in? Strength of schedule – does that weigh in? Home or away?”

Brandon said he is “very concerned” about the possibility of teams playing up to 15 games in a season – 12 on the schedule, plus the Big Ten championship, a bowl and the national title game, for example. But he said he is fine with the four-team format. If that sounds like an about-face for someone who had come out against a playoff system, well, he doesn’t quite see it that way.

“I don’t view this four-team concept that’s currently being discussed as a true playoff,” he said. “That’s where maybe my past comments have been confused. When I think playoff, I think eight teams, 16 teams, something that takes a large number of teams, where you truly try to identify who is the ultimate champion.”

He added: “I think it’s the only practical model now in terms of balancing all the various interests, including length of season, numbers of games played.”

Alvarez said there has been “a lot of discussion” about condensing the bowl schedule from Christmas to New Year’s Day as much as possible, with schools out of session and more people in general taking vacations. He also said he thinks the playoff games would be played during that window, followed by the title game.

Delany thinks the bowl schedule could be condensed if a rule requiring teams to go at least 7-5 to be eligible is passed.

“I don’t know what the effect will be if 7-5 gets passed,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be easier to do. There will be fewer bowl-eligible teams and as a result, fewer bowls.”

Notes: Delany insisted the Big Ten is not looking to expand again, although he did acknowledge that “the plates underneath conference alignment are still hot (around the country).” … The commissioner said details are still being worked out on a Big Ten-Pac-12 scheduling partnership. … The Big Ten is looking into an affiliation with the Pinstripe Bowl. “I think New York City is the financial, sports capital of the world,” Delany said. “It’s a global city, like Chicago. We’ll have conversations with them.”

Article source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/2018223453_apbigtenmeeting.html

Minnesota governor signs $975 million bill for new Vikings stadium

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Gov. Mark Dayton today signed off on a hard-fought agreement to build the Minnesota Vikings a $975 million stadium at the downtown Minneapolis site of the team’s current home, the Metrodome.

Dayton, who championed the deal, signed the bill to mostly cheers, whistles and chants of ‘Skol Vikings,” the team’s fight song, during a Capitol ceremony attended by team owners Zygi and Mark Wilf, business and labor leaders, construction workers and fans of the purple and gold.

“This is what makes Minnesota special,” Dayton said before signing the bill, noting that Minneapolis-St. Paul is the smallest of a dozen metropolitan areas with teams from all four major sports leagues.

There was strong opposition to the deal by some taxpayers and elected officials, who argued that the public shouldn’t have to shoulder most of the costs of paying for a new stadium for a privately-owned and profitable sports team. About a dozen opponents voiced their displeasure on Monday, briefly delaying the proceedings by heckling the governor and waving signs with messages such as,

“Let the rich pay for the stadium.” After Dayton put pen to paper, one protester shouted “Shame on you! Shame on you!

The Vikings hope to move into their new home by 2016, and will sign a 30-year lease to play there. The team will pay just under half the cost of the $975 million construction project, with the state and city of Minneapolis paying the rest.

State lawmakers approved the bill last week out of concern that the team might leave Minnesota unless it got a new stadium. The stadium legislation appeared to have died in a committee until NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell flew to St. Paul in late April to stress the importance the league placed on getting a deal done.

The business and labor contingent attended the ceremony in a nod to the thousands of construction jobs Dayton touted as he pushed for the stadium.

Workers in hardhats and some Vikings fans were there too, but not in the numbers they showed in the days leading up to the bill’s passage by the Legislature.

Dayton’s signature isn’t the last formality for the stadium. The Minneapolis City Council must give final approval to its share of the cost, with a vote expected later this month. The city is redirecting an existing hospital tax to pay its share, while the state will cover its own through taxes on new electronic versions of pulltabs, a low-tech paper game sold by charitable organizations in bars and restaurants.

The Wilfs have already begun mulling the stadium design. Zygi Wilf’s fondness for outdoor football is well known, and in an interview with The Associated Press last week he appeared to be leaning toward a retractable roof that could restore a wintry element to Vikings games that was lost when the team left old Metropolitan Stadium for the Metrodome in 1982. The team would have to pay the cost of such a roof, and it’s not clear how much that would be.

The Wilfs said they wanted a plaza with plenty of open space for fans to gather.

“We promise that we will work together to build a first-class facility, one that we can all be proud of for generations,” Mark Wilf said at the signing. The Vikings pursued a new stadium for more than a decade, but had little leverage until their Metrodome lease expired in February after the season ended. The Wilfs never threatened to move the team, but the Vikings were frequently mentioned as a potential fit for the Los Angeles market, which does not have an NFL franchise.

Article source: http://www.freep.com/article/20120514/SPORTS01/120514088/Minnesota-governor-signs-975-million-bill-for-new-Vikings-stadium?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CSports%7Cs

Photos: Minnesota Lynx win exhibition game against Chicago Sky

Posted May 15, 2012

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The world-champion Minnesota Lynx defeated the Chicago Sky 82-61 Tuesday in a final tuneup game before they open their 2012 regular season on Sunday.

Article source: http://photos.twincities.com/2012/05/photos-minnesota-lynx-win-exhibition-game-against-chicago-sky/21426/

Vikings shield books in $975M Minn. stadium deal

“We now have the largest public commitment in the state’s history in an agreement with the Vikings, and we have an unprecedented lack of disclosure,’’ said Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, R-Lakeville, who voted against the stadium bill. “I just think that sunshine in government is good, and in exchange for nearly half a billion dollars in public commitment, there should be some sunshine on the other side of the ledger.’’

The law creates a new Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority —with members to be appointed by Dayton and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak — to vet the team’s ability to fulfill its financial commitment to build, operate and repair the stadium over 30 years. The authority can demand audited financial statements and other financial information if the team breaches its agreement, but it must keep that information confidential.

That means the public won’t be entitled to find out how much the team makes on stadium naming rights or parking or how much team owners Zygi and Mark Wilf put in themselves. The list of companies that bid to build the stadium will be kept confidential until the winner is selected.

Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, said the privacy shield for the Vikings is a “sweeping overgeneralized reference’’ that shouldn’t have passed.

“If you follow it by the letter of the law, they do not have to disclose a single iota of information in the relationship between the public money sources and the private sector,’’ said Limmer, who voted against the bill after arguing on the floor that privacy issues should have been examined in the judiciary committee he heads.

The Democratic governor and other stadium supporters said the authority’s oversight of the team’s finances provides protection for the public.

“The authority should have the right to make sure that they have the financial wherewithal, but where their financing comes from really is, you know, their business,’’ Dayton said after signing the bill.

Article source: http://www.boston.com/sports/football/articles/2012/05/14/gov_dayton_signs_975m_vikings_stadium_bill/

Injuries can leave you weak in the knees

MINNEAPOLIS — No golfer likes it when a shot lands in a sand trap, but Jeff Robinson used to get particularly distraught when it happened. Having struggled with sore knees for two decades, just navigating the small descent into a bunker was excruciating.

“I couldn’t go downhill without pain,” he said. “By the end of the round, my knees would be totally inflamed.”

The 63-year-old Minneapolis real estate agent still lands in the occasional sand trap, but it no longer bothers him — at least not on a physical level. After trying everything from arthroscopic surgery to cortisone shots to lubricant injections, he finally opted to have both knees replaced, the left one in December 2007 and the right one three months later. His knee replacements “worked out so well that now I’m encouraging everyone who has problems to do it as soon as the problems start to impede their ability to do things normally,” he said.

The knee is one of the body’s most complex joints. It’s also one of its most used joints. That combination increases the odds of something going wrong. The possibilities are extensive, from meniscal tears to ACL strains, from muscle contusions to bone fractures, from bursitis to arthritis.

“It’s basically three joints in one,” said Dr. Richard Kyle, chair of orthopedic surgery at Hennepin County (Minn.) Medical Center. The knee has to flex, extend and rotate. “It’s a complex joint with a complex ligament structure to support it.”

Knees get a lot of attention in the sports pages, where injuries have sidelined such stars as Vikings running back Adrian Peterson and Timberwolves guard Ricky Rubio. But it’s not just pro athletes who battle knee problems. Recreational athletes are laid up by bum knees, too, an occurrence becoming more common as baby boomers continue to be physically active much later in life than previous generations.

“It’s become the No. 1 soft-tissue sports injury,” Kyle said. “The sheer number of recreational athletes — the weekend warriors — has a lot to do with that volume. The baby boomers are remaining incredibly active.”

Gender equality also is a factor, he said. It used to be just men who complained about the stereotypical “old sports injury.” With the explosive growth in girls’ athletics, that’s no longer the case.

“A generation ago, you didn’t have girls playing hockey or girls playing rugby,” Kyle said. “Now they’re involved in all sports.”

Some people who face chronic problems grumble that knees are the weak link in the chain. Doctors disagree. “The knee is actually very strong,” said Dr. Ed Laskowski, co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s Sports Medicine Center. “It can handle most physical extremes. We’re all playing sports at a higher level than we used to. We’re bigger, faster and stronger. All things considered, it’s a very strong and stable joint.”

But that strength and stability can disappear in a painful flash if we abuse it, a situation covering everything from taking a nasty fall when skiing, to using improper form while running, to overuse issues, including the strain of obesity. The good news is that all of those things are preventable, at least to an extent.

“Prevention is a huge, huge, huge part of what we do,” Kyle said.

Gender equality also is a factor, he said.

You can even take steps to reduce falling. Balance and movement exercise like tai chi can help prevent falls, especially as we age. Muscle fatigue and poor conditioning also can play a role in knee injuries.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve had skiers tell me that they were hurt on what was going to be their last run of the day,” Laskowski said. “It’s muscle fatigue. At the end of a weeklong ski vacation, the muscles surrounding the knee can tire, and this can increase your injury risk.”

Conditioning is a key element in knee health, doctors insist. “If you want to play a sport in which you have to jump, cut and pivot and change directions fast, that’s fine,” Laskowski said. “But first make sure the tissues (in your knees) are prepared for that.”

He highlighted four areas of focus: flexibility, strength, aerobic condition and stability/balance. “You should prepare for the specific demands and movement patterns of the sport you’re going to do,” he said.

Bad form is another knee killer, especially for distance runners. Sometimes the problem can be solved with orthotic inserts or different shoes. Sports medicine therapists also can analyze your gait and alignment and recommend specific exercises to help reduce the risk of overuse injuries.

“Technique is one of the keys” to avoiding wear-and-tear injuries, Laskowksi said. “You want the mechanics of the movement to be as good as they can be.”

Another cause of overuse injuries is insufficient rest. Jogging 10 miles every day might impress the folks in your running club, but if you could ask your knees, they’d probably have a different opinion.

“Cross-training is one of the best ways to avoid knee injuries,” Kyle said. “Muscles will regenerate; cartilage will not. You have to give cartilage a chance to rest. Instead of running every day, bike or swim. And whatever you do, do it in moderation. Give the tissues time to heal.”

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

Some knee problems are unavoidable. Sports injuries are a case in point, something Howard Liszt knows well. The journalism professor at the University of Minnesota was a 20-year-old second baseman when he went to turn what should have been a routine double play. But when he stepped on the bag, his spikes got caught and his right knee twisted.

“I recovered at first, but it set off a whole series of injuries until it got to the point it was bone-on-bone,” the 65-year-old said. Five years ago, he decided to have the knee replaced “because there was nothing else that could be done.”

Robinson and Liszt are typical knee patients in that their doctors tried other approaches before surgery. Some injuries — a torn ACL, for instance — leave doctors no choice but to operate, but for other problems, it’s the remedy of last resort. “Before we operate, we try to do everything we can to treat them,” Kyle said.

Robinson and Liszt also are typical in that they resumed their full activities once they healed. The notion that a repaired knee has to be babied for the rest of one’s life is long gone, doctors said. On the contrary; factor in the lack of pain that was restricting movement before, and the activity level increases for most people.

“It’s great,” Liszt said. “I’m playing tennis again, and I don’t have any pain when I move. I’m clearly much more active.”

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Article source: http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/HEALTH-KNEE-INJURIES_7994543/HEALTH-KNEE-INJURIES_7994543/

Sports owners are the new royalty

There was a video on the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s website that may have summed up what sports is all about these days in the United States and globally. A man dressed in a purple Minnesota Vikings football shirt with the number 4 on the front and back and with the name Favre above the number on the back of the shirt is bowing down to Vikings owner Zygi Wilf after Wilf and his ownership group worked out a deal with Minnesota lawmakers for a new Minneapolis football stadium.

Wilf became an emperor worthy of being a recipient of grateful fans genuflecting before him. He got funding for a stadium and the franchise will remain in the Twin-Cities market. The bowing before a head of state, rather a sports team, should come as no surprise. Televised sports events seemingly now have cameras trained on sports owners and their presence seems to reign over the sports crowd like a Caesar in the Roman Coliseum. The very well-heeled owners are bigger than life to those television cameras and sports fans.

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Commissioners also are celebrated and derided as well.

The National Football League’s Roger Goodell, who is a political lobbyist, rode into the state capital St. Paul with a message to get the funding for a stadium in place or else. One Vikings fan had a different view of Goodell though. Larry Spooner was so awe struck witnessing Goodell walking into Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton’s office that he told a reporter from the Minneapolis Star Tribune that ““it was kind of like seeing God walk by – not really – but God’s assistant.”

Vikings fans found support for the new stadium cause in a most unlikely place. Time Warner’s moribund Time Magazine which seemingly is on life support because of lack of subscriptions came up with a list of the 10 worst athletic facilities that sports owners have to endure. Wilf’s home field in Minneapolis was rated the worst by the dying magazine.

Time also provided support for Charles Wang in his effort to get a new arena for his National Hockey League’s New York islanders by saying the Nassau Coliseum is the second worst venue in the United States in sports despite having the best sight lines of any building that houses a major league franchise. Number three was St. Petersburg’s baseball park which houses the Tampa Bay Rays. Rays ownership would like to get a new Tampa Bay area facility. Time’s fourth worst stadium was in San Diego which is home to the Spanos family’s NFL Chargers. The Spanos family has been looking for a new facility since 2000. The Oakland Coliseum landed at number 5 and guess what is happening in Oakland/ Major League Baseball’s Oakland A’s ownership would like to move into a new facility, preferably in San Jose, MLB cannot figure out what to do with the request and has had a committee study the move and the possible implications for the nearby San Francisco Giants for three years. The stadium’s other tenant, the Oakland Raiders NFL franchise, is a free agent after the 2013 season.

Time’s number six will not be a sports problem much longer. San Francisco’s Candlestick Park will be abandoned by the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers franchise as soon as Santa Clara’s spanking new football facility is opened in 2014 or 2015. That stadium will cost more than a billion dollars most of that coming from Santa Clara residents. Number seven is St. Louis’ football facility. It seems Time was working hand in hand with disgruntled owners in identifying the worst facilities as the NFL’s St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke, a Wal-Mart heir, is looking for mega improvements on the public dime with his lease ending in three years. The rest of the top ten are entrenched baseball stadium. The historic Fenway Park in Boston is in at number 8, the Chicago White Sox facility comes in at number 9 and 50 year old Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles rounds out the top 10.

Perhaps it is not so surprising though that Time Warner’s product, Time Magazine, pointed out how bad these facilities are for owners and fans. Time Warner’s TNT is partners with the National Basketball Association and another Time Warner Company, TBS, carries Major League Baseball games.

Sports fans seemingly worship the ground where sports owners tread these days. That is as long as the owners are loyal to them and bring them the sports drug they so crave despite the annual hike in the cost of sports tickets and cable TV pricing. If an owner threatens to take his sports business elsewhere, the addicted fans start screaming about the owner and throw whatever vial they have stood up at the owner through talk radio and man in the street quotes in newspapers.

Wilf and Goodell are good guys in Minneapolis. But owners and commissioners are bad guys if a team moves.

The Vikings-Minnesota football stadium deal took a better part of a decade. Former Vikings owner Billy Joe (Red) McCombs failed in his attempted to get a fully loaded stadium complete with luxury boxes, club seats, wide concourses loaded with restaurants and concession stands and an outdoor plaza where all kind of wares could be sold. Wilf looked like he too was fighting a losing battle until Roger Goodell struck the fear of something in Minnesota lawmakers and made them see the light.

Within two weeks, Wilf had public funding for his new digs.

The stadium cost seems to be about a billion dollars with Vikings ownership kicking in $477 million. Minnesota taxpayers have about a $350 million bill coming their way in stadium construction and debt costs while city of Minneapolis residents are on the hook for $150 million. Next up for Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota is taking care of the National Basketball Association’s Minnesota Timberwolves and T-Wolves owner Glen Taylor who wants improvements at his facility which is now in a third decade of operation.

Minnesota in the past decade has built a new baseball stadium, a new college football venue and now a Vikings stadium.

Since the 1950s, the public has sprung for a multipurpose stadium for baseball and football in Bloomington, an indoor arena in Bloomington, two indoor facilities in St. Paul, the Metrodome, a new Twins stadium for baseball, the college football stadium, the Vikings facility and a takeover of the privately built Minneapolis arena in 1995.

State government and sports in Minnesota are tied at the hip.

Now that Goodell is done with Minnesota lawmakers, it is onto the next battles.

Oakland, Buffalo, San Diego and St. Louis have stadium issues. Goodell’s father used to be a Congressman from western New York and took over Robert F. Kennedy’s Senate seat after Kennedy was killed in June 1968 when campaigning for the presidency. Goodell does not necessarily want to see western New York’s football team, the Buffalo Bills, leave the area. But he is only the commissioner and has to report to his bosses, the owners.

Bills owner Ralph Wilson will keep the team in western New York through 2013 and maybe beyond that if he is still alive. The 93-year-old Wilson has instructed his family to sell the team after his demise. But the team and Erie County are discussing the possibility of renovating the four decades old facility.

Rams owner Kroenke and St. Louis officials are sparring over renovations at the city’s domed facility but it is still very early in the process.

The Spanos fight for a new facility began with Alex Spanos telling this reporter in the lobby of The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida that he was disappointed that his team didn’t get a new stadium while Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres ownership did get a publicly financed facility. A dozen years later, the Spanos family seems to be in the same spot. Rumors of moves to Anaheim and Los Angeles have not come to pass.

The Oakland Raiders ownership has two more seasons on the lease to use the Oakland Coliseum. Apparently there is no real good deal available in Los Angeles where two groups have announced plans to build a new stadium. At least neither plan has gained any traction in Raiders ownership’s thoughts for a future stadium. The city of Oakland is in a bind. The city is broke, Lewis Wolff’s Oakland A’s franchise is struggling financially although Major League Baseball’s revenue sharing probably eases the crunch but he wants out of Oakland, the Raiders lease is up and the Golden State Warriors ownership would rather be the San Francisco Warriors in 2018 than play in Oakland.

Major League Baseball has two teams looking for new facilities. Wang and the Islanders arena solution whether it is in Nassau County, Brooklyn or Queens is still a work in progress. The National Hockey League still owns the Phoenix Coyotes franchise withe the city of Glendale underwriting losses. The Columbus Blue Jackets want improvements in the city arena in terms of financing so the team can get more revenue. The National Basketball Association could not persuade the Sacramento Kings ownership to take the city’s offer for a new arena but did sell the New Orleans Hornets to New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson who will get more public subsidies to keep the franchise afloat. The Milwaukee Bucks ownership is looking for a better arena and that is happening in Minneapolis with Glen Taylor and his team as well.

The new venues need well-heeled customers, not fans. The owners want people who are willing to spend money not look for discounted tickets Art Modell left a fan base of 80,000 ticket buyers in Cleveland in 1995 because his Browns played in a bad stadium that lacked all sorts of money making tools and took a sweetheart offer from Baltimore. Fans don’t really matter much. The guy in the Favre jersey bowing to Zygi Wilf and the one who thought Goodell was a deity are being played for fools. But don’t tell them that. It’s about the team or at least that’s what they think. Truth is, it is about an owner getting the best deal for his business on the public dime.

That is how the real game is played.

Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy’s 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on “The Politics of Sports Business.” His book, “The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition” is available at bickley.com and Amazon and featured on Google books

Article source: http://www.examiner.com/article/sports-owners-are-the-new-royalty

Column: Vikings get sweetheart stadium deal

Whoa, that was a close one./ppLeave it to some penny pinching Minnesotans to make a couple of billionaires sweat it out. If Zygi and Mark Wilf had known it was going to be this hard to get a new stadium built in Minneapolis, they might have gone looking for some other taxpayer-funded trough to guzzle at./ppThey’re going to get their new stadium, though, and what a place it should be. A billion-dollar palace downtown, smack on the same spot the Vikings play today, and loaded with the kind of amenities that make owning an NFL team so much fun./ppThe best part of it is they’ll get it for next to nothing./ppSure, $477 million seems like a lot of money, even for billionaires. By the time the Wilfs get done selling stadium naming rights and the dreaded personal seat licenses, though, they may not even need the $200 million loan the NFL has promised to help get it done./ppNo wonder team executives were jubilant this week when Minnesota lawmakers voted to approve the deal, even though they added $50 million to the team’s share of the cost to keep angry taxpayers from attacking the state capitol with pitchforks./pp”Let’s build it!” vice president Lester Bagley shouted, hugging another team executive as Vikings fans in the gallery above the state Senate chamber broke out in a rendition of the “Skol Vikings!” fight song./ppIt was a classic shakedown, the kind the NFL is particularly good at. After years of thinly veiled threats about the Vikings possibly moving to Los Angeles if they didn’t get a proper new stadium, Commissioner Roger Goodell put the hammer down last month with a visit to state legislators that jumpstarted what had been a stalled debate over how much taxpayers should cough up for the team./ppThe final tally was some $500 million, funded partly by a scheme to boost gambling revenues across the state. The new stadium will be built on the site of the Metrodome, just a few blocks away from Target Field, which opened in 2010 with taxpayers picking up $350 million of the original $480 million price tag./ppYou might think Minnesotans are just rubes who got conned into spending nearly a billion dollars on stadiums, but they’re hardly alone. Wealthy owners have been stealing from taxpayers ever since they figured out that communities with major sports teams would pay good money for the right to keep them./ppThe pitch is that it’s good for the town, good for the local economy. What it mainly does, though, is make owners even richer with streams of new revenues from luxury box sales and premium seating charges they could only dream of in their old digs. That’s particularly true for the Vikings, who were ranked 28th out of 32 teams in valuation by Forbes last year at $796 million./ppThe Wilfs didn’t have to look far to see what a new stadium can do. The Indianapolis Colts, who were ranked 24th among NFL teams by Forbes in 2005 are now 11th, thanks to a $720 million stadium they paid only $100 million for. The team’s value has increased from $715 million to $1.057 billion in that period alone./ppIndianapolis did get a Super Bowl out of the deal, small consolation for residents who pay taxes for Lucas Oil Stadium every time they buy something. And Minneapolis will likely get one, too, because that’s how the NFL rewards cities that play ball./ppIndeed, they’re already talking Super Bowl in San Francisco, even though the new stadium for the 49ers is being built 40 miles away in Santa Clara. Money trumps geography, and the residents of Santa Clara agreed to contribute $114 million for a new stadium and sign off on an $850 million bank loan even though the city is so financially strapped that it had to borrow $6 million from the 49ers to do site preparation work./ppThe worst stadium deal ever, though, may be in St. Louis, where they built a sparkling new dome in 1995 to lure the Rams from Los Angeles. The city, county and state together spend $24 million a year on debt for the stadium, but the Rams have a sweetheart lease that allows the team to leave if the dome isn’t among the top 25 percent of NFL stadiums./ppIt isn’t, of course, and that means taxpayers will be digging even deeper to keep the Rams. The team has already rejected a plan that would include $60 million in public money for a new scoreboard, more club seating and better lighting, and there’s no doubt the final tab will be much more./ppCompared to the dome in St. Louis, the Metrodome – which opened in 1982 – is an aged relic, the last stadium built in the multipurpose use era. Still, it wasn’t a bad place to play football, and they did spend $20 million on a new roof for it last year after the old one collapsed in a snowstorm./ppBut the new stadium will have suites – and lots of them. It will have premium seating, and every amenity possible to separate fans from their money./ppThe Wilfs will do well on their investment, no doubt. They should thank the good citizens of Minnesota for picking up the tab.

Article source: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/12/3607711/column-vikings-get-sweetheart.html