Bengals, county exploring new stadium because current one lacks drink rails

One fun-but-impossible game to play with pro sports is “Which team owner who just got a new stadium seemingly yesterday will ask for another even newer one next?” It’s impossible because these days, pretty much any team with a stadium over (or even under) 20 years old is fair game for complaining it needs a new one; and it’s fun because … okay, maybe my idea of “fun” has become twisted over the years, but it beats sitting and bemoaning what this reality is that we find ourselves in.

All of which is to say: If you had the Cincinnati Bengals and their 23-year-old stadium in your pool, you’re a winner!

“Within five, six years, you will have been eclipsed by every other NFL stadium and the fans are not going to enjoy the experience,” said Tom Gabelman, project counsel for Hamilton County…

Building a new stadium isn’t completely out of the question for the commissioners either. They asked Tuesday for the master plan to include options for a new stadium as well as for renovations to the current stadium so the county can see the costs for both options.

Okay, that’s actually Hamilton County exploring the replacement of Hamilton County’s stadium. What do Bengals execs have to say?

“I think we have a great stadium. Our stadium has been a great asset to the area and we think if we can keep it up to a certain level it can serve us well for a while longer,” [Bengals executive vice president Katie] Blackburn said. “[A new stadium is] a big project. And more power to Tennessee and New York for going that direction, but we feel our stadium has been a great asset and can be useful for a while.”

“A while longer” is not exactly a long-term commitment, especially since it would likely take several years to figure out how to pay for a new stadium (current estimates are ummm, we’ll get back to you) and then build it. But it is interesting to see government officials being the ones to push for a build-new option, while the team owners say they can muddle through with the old stadium but if you really want to get us a new one…

It’s always possible, too, that any new-stadium talk is just an exercise in anchoring, to make hundreds of millions of dollars in renovations sound cheap by comparison. When architectural firm Gensler Sports, which will be coming up with the new-stadium plans, priced out renovations last year, it came up with a price tag of $493 million over the next 20 years, which is rather a lot for a stadium that only cost $455 million to build to begin with. Gensler didn’t provide much in the way of details of what needs almost half a billion dollars in work, but some of the proposed upgrades included new seating sections with no seating and additional drink rails, because apparently fans of the future can only “enjoy the experience” if they can have a place to put their beers but not their butts.

Left unstated in this latest missive was not just why massive renovations and/or replacement of the stadium is necessary for the county to care about, but who would pay for it. For that matter, isn’t this usually the time when elected officials start saying stadium upgrades are required in order to get the team to extend its lease? How long would the Bengals owners be expected to promise to stay under a new lease, and would this one include that same infamous holographic replay system clause? Asking Gabelman isn’t likely to get far since he’s not even a real government official, just an expensive lawyer-for-hire, so we’ll have to wait for Gensler’s full master plan to drop in December and see if it answers even some of these questions.