It’s never over till it’s over in stadium campaigns — cf. last year’s Minnesota Vikings stadium scramble — but with one week left to go in the Florida legislative session, things are not looking good for the Miami Dolphins renovation bill. Miami-Dade state representatives are trying to stall the bill in the house, and have succeeded in getting that body not to move until the state senate does first (the Miami CBS affiliate called the house bill “essentially dead”); and the senate postponed debate on the stadium bill again on Friday, with the chief sponsor left to insist, “No, we’re not panicking yet.”
Dolphins CEO Mike Dee appeared to be panicking just a little, though, leading a stadium tour for reporters just so he could point out how OH MY GOD IT’S 26 YEARS OLD:
Dee led reporters and camera crew through a tour of the stadium Friday to show where the renovation dollars would go. And in pointing out the aging state of the stadium, he made the point that fans shouldn’t count on Sun Life being acceptable to a future Dolphins owner once Ross’ tenure ends.
“Somebody is going to walk in here and say, ‘This place can’t be preserved,’ ’’ Dee said. “It is better dead than alive.”
Or in layman’s terms: My guy doesn’t want to see anything happen to your precious football team, but if some other guy comes in here, hoo boy, you don’t want to see what’ll happen then.
Meanwhile, Miami-Dade residents get to start voting on the stadium plan today, even though the whole election might get called off by Friday if there’s no bill passed by the legislature. Though at least getting to vote on measures that don’t count would be a welcome change from the usual state of affairs in Florida.
At this time I think any new attempt to do something for the Dolphins, Rays or any Florida team when it comes to public spending (Except perhaps infrastructure such as roads (that benefits everyone in the area)), will simply go down in flames because of the Marlins fiasco. Does it mean that it will not happen in the future? No it does not. But I see those teams having to wait a very long time for it (Basically looking at 2020 at the earliest for completion of what they want).
I don’t know how the Dolphins deal will play out, but I just have a feeling that something will happen in Tampa this year. I doubt local politicians will be deterred by what happened with the Marlins deal. And next year’s massive increase in national TV revenue should have the Rays owners thinking “maybe we should try to get something, anything done before we’ve got another $40M in revenue every year and people start wondering why we’ve got our hands out”.
Miami Dolphins havent been a viable Football team in years they just play hard enough to loose. I say let them go somewhere else if they can find someone willing to spend a lot of money on losers
DEM DOLPHIN OWNERS ARE RICH AND HOSEING YALL BIG TIME DONT GIVE THEM ANYTHING THEY GOT MORE MONEY THAN YALL AND WILL CRY ALL THE WAY TO DE BANK DONT REWARD DEM FOR PLAY BAD
Dem Dolphins and dat heat they expensive all million aires want you to help wake up des people selfish and greedy dem should be helping us poor peoples not taking from us later jack