Dolphins owner’s lips keep moving, nothing factual comes out

Speaking of Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins owner chimed in on his own stadium demands yesterday, insisting again that Miami will never get another Super Bowl without a renovated stadium, and expressing it in a novel way:

“I do know without a renovated or modernized stadium, Miami is not going to get Super Bowls. And I don’t want us to become another San Diego where people love going to San Diego. They didn’t do anything to the stadium, and they haven’t had a Super Bowl there in what, 15 or 20 years even though they love the experience there.”

Where to begin? The last Super Bowl in San Diego was actually in 2003, which isn’t all that long a time when you’re cycling among a dozen or more cities: The only city to have hosted more than one Super Bowl since 2003 is … oh, look, Miami.

And then there’s the odd notion that even though people love going to San Diego, it’s hurt that city to be bereft of a Super Bowl for ten whole years because … okay, not because it hurts San Diego’s image as a tourist destination, because Ross just said that people still love to go there. So his threat, such as it is, seems to boil down to: If you don’t give me $200 million to renovate my stadium, Miami will just be another beautiful warm-weather city that tourists flock to in the winter for all the other attractions, but not for one week every five or ten years to see a football game.

Ross then added, “We’re the only team in the country that doesn’t have any public dollars with our stadium,” which ignores the Carolina Panthers‘ privately built stadium, for starters. I thought it was going to be hard to top Ross’ claim that putting $200 million into a stadium, half of which would come from the NFL, would be the biggest private commitment in the history of professional sports, but he’s certainly giving it the old college try.

Other Recent Posts:

Share this post:

7 comments on “Dolphins owner’s lips keep moving, nothing factual comes out

  1. Speaking of the substitution effect…

    I’ll offer hard evidence – though only one case, it’s true, but we all know that sports owners make single occurrence cases for massive wealth transfers all the time – that not having a superbowl since 2003 has helped San Diego’s economy.

    In 2011, 7 of us went to San Diego.
    We didn’t go to the superbowl, obviously, as it wasn’t in San Diego, and has never been held in November (yet). We did go while the Green Bay Packers (then SB champs, though you wouldn’t know it these days) were in town to play the Chargers… so perhaps the NFL counted us as ‘their’ economic impact anyway.

    Instead, we went to the Zoo and did a bunch of other things. Beyond the fact that we had the traditional San Diego cloud cover, and the pretty traditional San Diego rain coming down from said clouds, it was a great day to be a tourist in San Diego. A good number of the other discretionary spenders that day seemed to be out at the stadium, so we wandered around San Diego (to the extent you can wander around San Diego… California itself being some way from a pedestrian paradise), spent hours at the zoo, enjoyed restaurants and other haunts… just generally had a great day. There were still lots of people enjoying “non-NFL” pursuits, but my guess would be the zoo and other establishments were less crowded than they would otherwise have been.

    And not one bit of our spending had anything to do with the NFL… whether it was “counted” or not. So, shockingly, it seems there are other reasons for people to go to San Diego than to watch a lousy Chargers team play in an aging stadium (at least some of which could be addressed through not postponing maintenance in the hopes someone will build you a new stadium for free, more or less).

    Somebody tell Steve Ross that. It might change his life. But probably not in the way he’s hoping…

  2. We don’t do Super Bowls in San Diego any more. We’re on record on that one. And ditto for L.A. We don’t do Super Bowls unless your town comes across with the stadium cash, capiche?

    Not that we really want a stadium in L.A. It’s the biggest fishhook in the history of the world, dear citizens.

  3. PS: I though the biggest private commitment in the history of sports was Alphonso Soriano’s boat anchor contract? ARoid? Hampton? Ok, ok, so there are lots…

    Even deals like Pavano you have to find remarkable… it wasn’t the biggest deal in history – far from it – but how many actual games did he pitch in for his, what, $18m?

  4. San Diego doesn’t need the NFL and the Chargers know they wont get the 66.7% yes vote for public funding. They are trying everything possible to do something without a vote, thank god Brown took away the RDA money scam.

    Our biggest worry is a plan pushed through without a vote that our heavily republican judiciary will approve. San Diego republicans have a long history of stealing from the poor/middle class and giving to the rich.

  5. Oh yes those dastardly Republicans are STEALING! Lock up those heartless bastards! Better yet, execute them! We can be Cuba, yet!

    I will admit that, even though I believe that Super Bowls give a nice boost to the local economy, Miami has some leverage here. It simply is the best place for a Super Bowl. The NFL would be cutting off its nose to spite its face if it took Miami out of the Super Bowl rotation just because the government refused to help with a stadium renovation.

Comments are closed.