We’ll get to last night’s Superdome Super Bowl blackout fiasco in a bit, but first, the two major stadium-related bombshells that dropped this weekend. Numero uno:

It’s been fun to joke about the long, tortured Phoenix Coyotes sale saga, and how prospective owner Greg Jamison was clearly never going to be able to buy the team because it’s cursed — so cursed that he couldn’t even find $170 million for a team that comes with $200 million in subsidies. But, seriously, eventually the Coyotes would have to be sold, right?

No, not never ever ever:

Greg Jamison confirmed last night that he was going to miss the city of Glendale’s midnight deadline to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and receive a $308 million arena deal from the municipality.

Fox Sports Arizona first reported official confirmation from Jamison that he could not close the sale. That came after confidence in the bid coming to fruition faded Wednesday and Thursday.

Jamison’s official statement included a promise that “our journey to purchase the Coyotes will continue,” but it’s hard to see where the hell else it will take him, given that he was given nine months to find the cash to buy the team — which, and this can’t be repeated enough, was going to be getting a city subsidy worth more than the entire purchase price — and all he could come up with was to ask for more time.

He’s almost certainly not going to get additional help from the city of Glendale: Four of the seven city councilmembers who voted for last year’s deal to prop up the team with massive operating subsidies have since left office, and new mayor Jerry Weiers made a point of telling the Coyotes in his acceptance speech that “Glendale is not your cash register.” It’s always possible another bidder will emerge — another one always does, though half the time it seems to be just Jerry Reinsdorf kicking the tires yet again — but at the moment it looks like the current deal has blowed up real good.

That’s probably a good thing for Glendale, which will save itself $13 million a year in operating losses on the Coyotes, and might even be able to stop laying off so many city workers. For the dwindling number of Coyotes fans, though, it’s less good news, since this pretty much confirms that there’s no subsidy deal lucrative enough to make it affordable to keep the Coyotes in Arizona, short of turning over the keys to the Phoenix mint. (Wait, the Phoenix Mint doesn’t actually mint money? Scratch that one, too, then.) There’s already speculation that the Coyotes could become the new Quebec Nordiques; Seattle is another possibility, though that likely wouldn’t happen until Chris Hansen secured an NBA franchise first, which isn’t exactly moving swiftly right now. Markham — described excellently in the Seattle Times article linked above as “Toronto’s version of Bellevue” — would have to be considered a major longshot, given that the city’s arena deal still isn’t finalized, and that the NHL would have to either sell the Coyotes for next to nothing or agree to pay off the Maple Leafs for impinging on their territory, neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon.

If this is the ending for the Coyotes, it’s not a happy one for anyone: not for Winnipeg Jets fans who saw their team trucked south and had to wait 15 years for a new one; or for Phoenix area hockey fans who’ve been put through years of uncertainty and now face the likely loss of their team; or for Glendale taxpayers, who’ve been throwing good money after bad to support the team after building it an arena that will never pay off its costs; and above all not for NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who has vowed never to give up on his plan to make hockey bloom in the Arizona desert, but may finally be forced to acknowledge that it was a failure from the start. I’d call it the biggest ownership disaster in NHL history, but that’s a pretty high bar to clear.

The Glendale city council voted 4-2 last night to approve a new 20-year lease deal with the Phoenix Coyotes, finally moving ahead with — wait, what’s that, you say? Didn’t the council just vote on this back in June? No, that was the old new lease deal; this is the new new lease deal, which is pretty much just like the old new lease deal except that Glendale will save about $4 million on the $224 million in operating subsidies that it will give the Coyotes in exchange for them continuing to be the Coyotes.

The big news here is that as it’s still 2012, incoming Coyotes owner Greg Jamison now doesn’t have to worry about dealing with new mayor Jerry “Glendale is not your cash register” Meiers, who’d made noise about undoing the whole deal. (Though interestingly, outgoing mayor Elaine Scruggs cast one of two votes last night against the lease deal.) Now all Jamison has to worry about is coming up with the money to actually buy the team — something that continues to elude him despite the fact that he’d only have to spend $170 million, and would be getting more than $200 million in operating subsidies.

Assuming Jamison can pull that off, though, Glendale will finally be able to breathe easy about the Coyotes staying put, and get down to the business of laying off $20 million worth of city employees over the next five years (according to the estimates of interim city manager Horatio Skeete) in order to afford the annual payments to the team. And then more later, presumably, once the backloaded lease payments in the new deal kick in. Is it too late for Glendale to instead find a sockpuppet to buy the team on its behalf? At least they’d save $30 million…

The promised revisions that the city of Glendale was demanding to the Phoenix Coyotes‘ new lease have been partly revealed, and … prospective team owner Greg Jamison will get less city subsidies in the first five years of the lease, and in exchange get higher payments in the last 15 years. Yeah, that’s it. If you had your money on “Glendale tells Jamison he can have $224 million in subsidies when Arizona freezes over,” you lose.

At least, probably you lose, as the official re-revised deal isn’t public yet. And Glendale councillor Phil Lieberman, when asked what he expects to be in the new lease, told the Globe and Mail: “I have no idea. The city is so screwed up nobody knows what’s going on.”

Jamison’s purchase of the Coyotes, meanwhile, is still being held up, not because of the lease talks, but because, according to the Globe and Mail, it depends on “Jamison and his partners raising additional money, somewhere between $20-million and $40-million, to cover the annual losses of the Coyotes.”

If you’re wondering how on earth everyone got themselves into a situation where an NHL team playing in an arena it got for free is depending eight-figure annual public subsidies and still projected to lose money, the Arizona Republic’s Lisa Halverstadt has the whole, sad story. Highlight:

The sports debt, coupled with a voter initiative on the November ballot to repeal a city sales-tax hike, has some worried the city could be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. But city administrators and experts say that is less likely than painful budget cuts. Among those unveiled this week: shuttering libraries, laying off nearly a quarter of city staff and even eliminating a decades-old holiday festival that draws thousands from across the Valley.

Political upheaval has accompanied the budget strife. The mayor and two City Council members, who for years touted the sports and entertainment vision, are not seeking re-election. The city manager who was the architect of that plan retired in June.

“We were once called visionaries,” said Glendale Councilman Manny Martinez. “Now we’re being called other things which I won’t name.”

Could it be? Could it actually be? The Phoenix Coyotes might actually be … sold?

A source confirmed to ESPN.com Tuesday evening that suitor Greg Jamison, the former president and CEO of the San Jose Sharks, has finally arranged financing that would allow him to purchase the team from the National Hockey League for $170 million, and that any issues with the lease agreement between the City of Glendale and Jamison’s investors for Jobing.com Arena, where the Coyotes play, are expected to be resolved by the end of September.

It’s hard to believe it, but after years of bankruptcy court and failed sales and other shenanigans, it looks like the Coyotes (and the city of Glendale) might finally be able to put behind them all the toying with Jerry Reinsdorf and Ice Edge and—

But the Phoenix Business Journal has learned from multiple sources that partners from Ice Edge Holdings LLC could be part of the Jamison investment group.

Oh. Well, anyway, it sounds as if whoever the investors are, at least Jamison and the city of Glendale have resolved their differences over the $200 million lease subsidy agreed to back in June—wait, what’s that?

Prospective Phoenix Coyotes’ buyer Greg Jamison isn’t too keen on changing a 20-year, $300 million arena already approved but not finalized by the city of Glendale.

And any material changes to that arena deal by Glendale will require a new City Council vote, according to officials familiar with issue. That means if the city tries to rework the payment timetable, amounts and structure, it will likely require a fresh vote from the Glendale council.

You know what? I’m going back to sleep. Wake me when somebody’s actually signing contracts.

The Glendale city council was happy to approve more than $200 million worth of subsidies for the Phoenix Coyotes back in June, when it looked like they’d have a sales-tax hike to help pay for it; now that the sales tax could be overturned in a November referendum, though, they’re apparently having second thoughts:

Glendale spokeswoman Julie Frisoni said the council has instructed city staff to come up with some new arena options.

Those options could be presented to Jamison tonight.

Glendale could look to pay Jamison less money to run Jobing.com Arena, change the annual payment structure or looking for more revenue in the deal.

The council can do this, it turns out, because neither they nor Jamison ever signed the new lease deal that was approved in June. On Monday, according to the Arizona Republic, the council directed city administrators not to sign anything until Jamison completes his purchase of the team, and “amendments” to the deal are worked out

It’s still pretty unlikely that the council will blow up the whole deal and start over, as good an idea as that might be; one amendment reportedly being considered is to pro-rate payments to the number of games played at the arena, given that the NHL looks like it’s going to take a season off every eight or so to lock out its players. Still, for a franchise that seems to operate under Murphy’s Law, it’s never a good idea to bet heavily against things falling apart, one way or another.

Another week, another court ruling throwing the Phoenix Coyotes situation into disarray: On Friday, it was the Arizona Court of Appeals ruling that Glendale residents should be allowed to vote in November on a referendum to overturn a sales tax increase that was approved in June. The sales tax hike, in turn, is to be used to help pay the Coyotes’ new owner Greg Jamison more than $200 million so that he can buy the team for $170 million. So, no sales tax hike, and Glendale needs to find another source of $200 million, which if it were so easy, it wouldn’t need the sales tax hike.

Anyway, Glendale has now appealed the appeals court ruling, and the NHL has extended the Coyotes’ current lease for another month, so it looks like all this is going to mean is more delays to the longest-running franchise sale in the history of the planet. At least Jamison now says he has enough investors in place to come up with the purchase price, but given the history of this deal, it’s hard to be sure of anything.

I am so sorry! Here you all have been, waiting on tenterhooks to find out what happened with Glendale’s deal to give $200-million-plus in subsidies to the new buyer of the Phoenix Coyotes, a deal that was set to expire last night at midnight! And instead, I have been mucking around with a new site design. What, what was the denouement, you cry?

The arena agreement with the City of Glendale and the NHL which expires on July 31, will be extended for another 31 days.

— John Shannon (@JSportsnet) July 31, 2012

Well, okay then. Denouement postponed.

The problem, apparently, is that Greg Jamison, the intended beneficiary of all this public generosity, is still $20 million short of the $170 million purchase price that the NHL has set for the league-owned team. (Yes, that’s $170 million for a team that comes with $200 million in subsidies. No, I never get tired of noting that.) And with the NHL unwilling to lower its price, the waiting game continues.

The two big questions here, obviously, are: If Jamison’s having a hard time finding investors for a bargain-basement purchase that comes with enough public cash to finance the purchase by itself, can he possibly make the Coyotes into a viable business once he has them? And why is the NHL so set on keeping the team in Phoenix, when it could presumably get a lot more cash for its asset (not to mention TV viewers for its product) in, say, Quebec? Does Gary Bettman really not know how to declare victory and retreat?

It’s all very odd, and leaves poor Glendale in position of trying to throw public money at a team that the NHL simultaneously refuses either to abandon or to take a loss on in order to keep it in place. I’m sure there are Coyotes fans out there who would be rightfully upset to lose their team if it moved, but this is starting to feel like an abusive relationship that all involved would be better off by dissolving.

Hey, remember how those guys trying to get a referendum on the ballot to oppose the Phoenix Coyotes subsidy deal promised lawsuits if their petitions were rejected for being filed too late? Turns out the petitions were rejected, but sorry, no lawsuits:

Organizers behind an effort to overturn Glendale’s Phoenix Coyotes deal say their battle is over largely because the Goldwater Institute won’t provide legal backing…

Goldwater officials said that although they wanted to give Glendale voters a chance to weigh in on the 20-year, $324 million Coyotes lease, they did not promise a lawsuit.

“We were trying our best to help our allies figure out the rules, but we weren’t going to make an open-ended commitment to go to court if it turned out the city turned down the petitions,” said Clint Bolick, the group’s vice president for litigation.

So now the possible legal challenges to the Coyotes deal appear to be down to charging that giving public money to a private entity violates the “gift clause” of the Arizona state constitution, though that won’t happen until the team sale gets finalized, if it happens at all. Which means prospective owner Greg Jamison can go back to the important task of digging around for $170 million to buy a team that comes with a $200 million subsidy. Has he considered Kickstarter?