How is it Friday again already? Is there more than one Friday per week now? Is it always Friday? Discuss in comments.
- When the owners of the NWSL’s Kansas City Current agreed to build a $117 million soccer stadium mostly with private money in 2022, it was seen as a rare win for keeping public costs low. But as we should know by now, we can’t have nice things, so just two years after the Current stadium opened, K.C. Mayor Quinton Lucas (previously this week seen stumping for tax money for a Royals stadium) is proposing spending $235 million plus additional TIF property tax breaks to expand it from 11,500 to 18,000 seats, finish a mixed-use district around it, and add a parking garage. Lucas defended the deal as “less than what we see in almost any men’s sports economic development deal — not just in the country but in our own region,” and you have to admire the chutzpah of citing your own lavish subsidy plan for the local men’s team as justification for lavishing money on a women’s team as well, this may have to replace Leo Rosten’s original definition.
- The Tampa city council, moonlighting as the Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency, voted yesterday to put off a vote on funding for a Rays stadium until August, and possibly further, as a state ballot measure on property taxes in November could upend the local budget picture. Officials also said they don’t have enough information on how the stadium financials would work, with CRA member Charlie Miranda asking: “How can I vote on something that I don’t know what’s going to happen? That’s the fact of it. Plain and simple.”
- Meanwhile, a local Tampa attorney has called for four members of the CRA board to resign or be removed on the grounds that they own property in Ybor City that could gain in value if the Rays built a stadium there instead of at Hillsborough College. Not according to Bradlee Kilgore’s latest research, keep up with the literature, man!
- The owners of the Forest City Cleveland men’s soccer and Cleveland Astra women’s soccer teams want a cut of the cigarette and alcohol taxes that already aren’t enough to fund maintenance and upgrade of the city’s other sports teams, because of course they do.
- The city council in Modesto, California has backed out of a plan to build a USL soccer stadium after it turned out there was a $43 million funding gap. Now Modesto will never be on the map like Boise and Chattanooga!
- The Canadian Football League could be looking at building a $350 million stadium for a potential expansion team in Québec City, claims a guy. (Who’ll pay for it: TBD, but less likely to be public dollars than in the U.S., maybe.) The CFL’s past expansion attempts haven’t exactly gone smoothly, but you’ve got to root for a franchise that could have the name L’Attaque de Québec.
- $1.45 billion to renovate a college football stadium, sure, why not.
- The AI slop is getting weird, man.
If the board members owning land near the stadium should resign because it could increase the value of their land (it won’t), then the board members owning land away from the proposed stadium should resign because they will miss out. Now you’ve got no board.
Finally a clear road to anarchist utopia!
It’s probably an effect of me getting older but every week seems to fly by faster than the last. It feels like I was just reading last week’s round up too.
Below is a link to a write up related to the proportional theory of time. Basically 1 year is proportionally less of your life every year, which may cause us to perceive each year as going by quicker. 1 year for someone who is 5 is 20% of their life. 1 year for someone who is 10 is 10% of their life, etc.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/07/why-time-flies-as-we-get-older/
Another fun one related to time is looking at an analog clock in school. The second hand really does appear to take longer to move when you first look because of saccadic eye movement and perception. When you move your eyes, you don’t see anything during the movement. When they stop moving it causes what you are looking at to be frozen for a brief period of time. I’m not doing a good job of explaining but it is a real phenomenon. See articles below:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982202007078
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11713528/
Alright my apologies for turning this into a philosophy session.
Here’s an article in “fortune” about stadia which should come as no surprise to the regulars here
American taxpayers have spent $33 billion on sports stadiums. They got fewer seats—and higher prices
https://fortune.com/2026/06/11/american-taxpayers-spent-33-billion-sports-stadiums-fewer-seats-higher-prices/
UF grad here. The notion that The Swamp is “the most iconic venue in college athletics” makes even me laugh.
https://floridagators.com/sports/2026/6/10/ben-hill-griffin-stadium-renovation-frequently-asked-questions
$1.45 billion to just add a bunch of luxury boxes over the existing stadium — which seemingly will be unchanged, if the renderings are anything to go by — feels like a crazy gambit even by college athletics standards, and perhaps even more so by Florida standards (the state, not the university).
UF is such a funny “blue blood” program. Irrelevant and bad for most of their history. Great under Spurrier, then kinda bad, great under Meyer, then serious under performers since.
How many other blue bloods were bad for 75% of their existence?
UF (and more so FSU and Miami) aren’t so much blue bloods as they’re “new” bloods. Those programs really only started picking up when the first generation of kids who grew up in Florida with air conditioning — the single greatest contributing factor in the explosive growths here and in other Sun Belt states — grew old enough to start playing college football… and also, especially in the cases of FSU and Miami, when they really started to integrate their teams.
At any rate, the changes to college football/athletics post-covid have mostly diluted the allure of “blue bloods.” Certain programs will have naturally high floors (Ohio State being the most obvious example), but the ceiling has become higher for a much higher number of programs (Indiana football being an even more obvious example).
My first post plagiarized by AI! I feel like a Real Writer, now…
https://www.twinkietown.com/minnesota-twins-game-information/53815/game-65-royals-at-twins
“Le Stade”de L’Attaque de Québec would include 9 CFL regular season date and maybe some exhibition games with the potential for a playoff game or two. The upper range may include 12-13 total games leaving 352 available dates for scheduling the proposed 25K seat open air venue at an estimated cost of $350 CA.
Concerts and cirque acrobatique could fill the bulk of programming – hey I hear Angine de Poitrine is pretty hot right now! Lest we forget the harsh winters of Quebec City at least three more dates could host super league motorcycle pole vaulting on ice events during Carinival.
So if they sell out every game at $50 a ticket, they can cover their stadium costs so long as their payroll isn’t more than … hang on … negative $12 million a year.
Wholly transformative for L’Attaque de Québec. The pay-to-play model need not only be relegated to the domain of beer leagues. Vive la révolution!