November 03, 2006

Giants, Jets: No NFL cash, no stadium

Apparently there is a point where they'll punt. The New York Giants and Jets intend to bail on their plans for a new $1.2 billion stadium if the NFL doesn't provide them with $300 million from its G-3 loan program, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. The NFL typically provides up to $150 million per team from the fund, but hasn't yet ruled on whether the Giants and Jets would be allowed to pool their G-3 money for a single stadium.

Writes the Star-Ledger's Matt Futterman: "The Giants and Jets have spent months studying how to finance their planned $1.2 billion stadium with or without the money from the NFL, but they have privately concluded the project will be too expensive and risky without the league's support" - in part because of rising labor and construction material costs that could end up adding as much as half a billion dollars to the initial $800 million estimate just over a year ago.

This latest ultimatum puts the NFL over a barrel: While the league wants the New Jersey stadium built, there's also growing pressure from teams that haven't received G-3 money to stop subsidizing their competitors with league revenues. (The G-3 program was first put in place in 1999, primarily to get NFL teams to stop relocating from big markets to small ones in search of lucrative stadium deals that helped the teams but hurt the league's national media marketability.) "The facts and figures seem to show that maybe there's been a disparate effect - that the beneficiaries are the teams seeking the G-3 and the players, while the others, in this case 30 or 31 teams, are penalized - not intentionally - by a major increase in the player aspect of it without proper credit given," Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt told Futterman.

Hunt added that the league might seek concessions from the players' union in order to help fund the New Jersey project. NFLPA officials were apparently not available to laugh and laugh and laugh for the record.