Is there some kind of Florida statute that any Marlins stadium deal needs to have a funding gap? With the team’s focus now shifting from a downtown location to the site of the Orange Bowl – which hosts its final college football game on Saturday – all eyes have been on using $50 million in city and county money already approved for renovating the Orange Bowl to inside close the $30 million Marlins funding shortfall that’s been in place as long as anybody alive can remember. Instead, on Tuesday MLB president Bob DuPuy declared at the baseball owners’ meetings that the Marlins should be allowed to put in less of their own money for a stadium at the Orange Bowl site:
“The last thing you want to do is build a brand-new ballpark down there and have the team fail. Everybody recognizes that. The level of contribution the team makes has to be commensurate with what they believe they’re going to be able to generate from a new ballpark and be viable.”
(Note to readers: “Viable” is a technical sports management term meaning “as profitable as humanly possible.”)
This is the first instance I can remember of a team or league responding to a stadium proposal by immediately reducing the amount of private money they were offering. Maybe somebody needs some haggling lessons.
A correction — Saturday’s game was the University of Miami’s final game at the Orange Bowl, not the final game at the place. Florida International University, which is playing its 2008 home schedule at the Orange Bowl while its on-campus stadium is being built, has home games over each of the next three weeks, so the actual Orange Bowl finale will take place Dec. 1.