3/1/04 100 acres and $120 million

There's a lot of interesting stuff in that article. Mayor begins to talk about needing a SSS, Alamodome would only be a temporary solution. The San Antonio Spurs might be one of the interested investors. Some other good things too.

 

Re: Re: 3/1/04 100 acres and $120 million

San Antonio has moved upa few notches on the Chance-O-Meter. Realizing the stupidity of the Alamo Dome is a big plus. Meanwhile, Cleveland is sinking faster than an elevator with the cables cut.

 

Re: Re: Re: 3/1/04 100 acres and $120 million

I did not think the article about Summit County's project was THAT hopeless...

 

They seem to be very motivated. I know people in San Antonio, who don't normally follow soccer, and several of them have mentioned getting a soocer team. They seem excited. SA has no other 'big 5' sports team other than the Spurs. It also doesn't offer too much local competition for the entertainment dollar as most options are touristy in nature. [The Alamo, The Riverwalk, Seaworld, Fiesta Texas]

I heard a rumor that it was completely done in - no chance whatsoever.

 

Just be honest and tell us that it was Bergin who said that. Then the next day there's a report in teh Cleveland paper talkinga bout city officials meeting to discuss the feasability of financing. christ.

 

Weah to Metros

 

Well then, you just be honest and tell us that your motivation for posting this is a hatred of Chris Bergin that transcends all logic and reason. Hell, he never said anything but what that poster did, that he heard a rumor, and that was on his message board, not the news site. Get over it, already!

Anyway, that San Antonio stuff is very encouraging, especially the part about the mayor understanding that the AlamoDome is just a temporary solution. The biggest fear there for me was always that they just wanted a tenant for the Dome, and didn't care much what it was. The fact that they have come right out and said otherwise is a tremendously good sign.

 

Call it just waiting to pounce. Im vigilant like that. I happend to be scanning his boards for the first time in a while. Read that last night and today we see an article that mentions nothing about the deal being 'dead.' I just found it typical. If it's something Bergin said, say it's something Bergin said, instead of the ubiquitous 'rumor.'

On topic though, our Cleveland boy is really pushing hard for a pretty huge complex, and good for him. However, the voters or officials of greater Cleveland have got to be lookign at this thing saying, they've built or are going to build stadiums for far less than this. Why do you need so much?

 

In the message board section, Bergin stated that MLS Cleveland is dead, and that he had followed up on it.

But, it's very possible that the confusion lies in the different municipalities in the Cleveland area being sought to host the team. Cleveland itself is likely dead, but Cleveland area(Summit CO) is very much alive.

 

I have to say that I'm impressed with the San Antonio mayor and his group. They asked what was needed to get a team and were told--a SSS and an ownership group. So that's what they're trying to put together. This is unlike certain other potential ownership groups who seem to always want to change the rules and weasel around the issues. My guess is that having Kroenke buy the Rapids is going to add a lot of credibility for the Spurs group. And I think a San Antonio team in their own stadium is going to do pretty well. Good stuff.

 

Cleveland is defintely closing in on the 60 day window that Wolstein gave for them. Whether it's dead or not is another question, but it's definitely in critical condition at this point.

 

Dude, what do you want him to say? "With no disrespect to Chris Bergin, the report that Cleveland is out of the running has not yet been substantiated. Apropos of nothing, there was a report in the paper the next day about finances."

You can't expect us to take Bergin as rumor AND abstain from pointing out when things are indeed just that, can you?

 

A team in San Antonio would be great. I am not to wild about them playing in a dome to begin with, but if that means they have a SSS after two years, I can live with it. What the league should do is award them the team as soon as possible so the SSS would be ready that much sooner. If the team was awarded by mid summer, I would think they could get the SSS ready for the 2006 season.

 

Jessica Simpson will sooner figure out what "Chicken of the Sea" is before Cleveland gets an expansion franchise.

The Magpie

 

For the sake of the beautiful game, I hope that we don't get another MLS team in Texas, where the weather is way too hot for much of the MLS season. I say this despite the fact that I live in Austin, which is only an hour away from San Antonio.

 

Hold on one cotton-pickin' minute. . .

There's a frickin' SEA WORLD in San Antonio???????

Isn't San Antonio about 4 hours from the ocean by PLANE????????

Dude, if San Antonio, (which is a great city, don't get me wrong) can have a Sea World in the middle of the goddamn desert, then they can hack an MLS squad. . .

 

No, but happily, those aren't the only two choices. Beau, I think you misunderstand. I was just reacting to the "How dare you! You heard that from BERGIN! CONFESS!" Inquisition-esque tone of the question, and the reply that had more to do with the anti-Bergin crusade than it did with the actual topic. Sort of like your post....

Yes, it's just a rumor, he never said any different. Chris didn't even report it on his news site, just posted a short blurb on the message board, but that was apparently enough to bring out such an obviously irrational response.

Are you guys now saying that Bergin, alone among every message-board poster on Earth, can't even post rumors (on a message board on HIS OWN WEBSITE!)without getting roasted? Again, give it a rest, already.

 

I didn't have a problem with him posting the rumor, though I wasn't suprised when I saw something later contracting it. But that's fine a rumor is a rumor is a rumor. However, part of what that whole epic thread was about was how people reacte on here to what Bergin said. People are great for pretending that they posses some underlying truth or are tapped into a pipeline of information, when really all they're doing is parroting what Bergin said. That's all the comment was about.

 

Well, it was relatively innocuous of itself, except that "I heard a rumor that...." isn't what I would call parroting anything, nor is it about possessing "underlying truth" or giving more credence to a rumor than warranted. Had that same post contained a rumor gleaned from somewhere other than www.ussocceruk.com (and, we really aren't 100% sure it is, now are we?), your zeal to discredit its source would have been much less. "I heard a rumor" became about Bergin and not about the rumor.

In fact, what the original poster did was nothing other than what I assumed that you advocate about Bergin, and that is to treat everything he says as rumor. That's exactly what the poster here did, and nothing else.

 

If you REALLY want irony here, there's also a Sea World in Summit County, Ohio.

(Well OK, Six Flags bought it last year and moved Shamu out but it WAS a Sea World)

Nobody ever explained why Shamu was slumming it in the rust belt. They had to fly the damned whale south every October.

As for the "rumor" discussion, I have no intention of getting into a "Bergin makes it up" discussion.

HOWEVER, being a resident of Summit COunty Ohio, I can say with absolutel assurance that the Cleveland bid is dead, dead, dead. CBurg is laying off Policemen and Firemen due to being broke, and even the Mayor, who is a paid-for hack in addition to being monumentally stupid, isn't nuts enough to tell the good burghers of the Cuyahoga that, although their house may burn down because they can't afford to man the firehouses, they can console themselves with a beautiful $120 million soccer stadium.

As for Summit County, they're making nice noises because they don't want to offend Mr Wolstein if there's some chance he might bring some bags of his money down, but the best way I can think of for a politician to commit professional suicide around here would be to propose financing Bart's Palace to "create" a bunch of minimum wage jobs.

Forget it.

 

Heck, there's a pretty big aquarium in Denver. Except it was just bought by a chain of seafood restaurants. (Make of that what you will.) Is this guy advocating that we move all the soccer teams out of Mexico and Central America since it's too hot?

 

It doesn't really add anything to the discussion of whether San Antonio would be a good MLS city or not, but I'd like to point out that it's only about a two-hour (depending on whether or not you get pulled over for speeding) drive on I-37 to Corpus Christi.

San Antonio might be a pretty good candidate. The city still has a bit of an inferiority complex vis-a-vis bigger, or more established cities, and community pride could boost turnout if MLS is really viewed as being Major League. I spent a good part of 1996 there and I think San Antonians are less jaded and exhibit more community boosterism than most folks in other cities.

It's not really a soccer town but I think people could support MLS. Playing in the AlamoDome is not even such a bad idea if they can curtain it off to make crowds look respectable and if they can get a decent non-gridiron artificial surface. Those are big ifs, but it's better to play in a climate-controlled environment than in 100 degree heat.

At the very least, it's encouraging to hear the Mayor's enthusiasm.