NWSL to Columbus

Yeah my tongue was firmly in my cheek with the orange comment.

But seriously if there's no blue I'll be upset. For Columbus, forever.

 

Emma Sears and Rose Lavelle to Columbus in 2028

 

Believe I mentioned that Dr Pete operated on both Emma and her sister’s knees ; ) . He knows the family and has been working that angle for months. Her parents and family may or may not have been in the suite with him for a match or two ; ) .

 

NWSL common sense > MLS common sense

Kudos to NWSL.

This gives the Columbus franchise a better foundation to build a foothold in the market. Much better.

 

Can't read behind the paywall

 

I wasn’t dealing with NWSL, but I can tell you what I know. A lot of it I’ve mentioned here previously over the last 10 months or so. The Dispatch is publishing an interview with Ginther in the coming days.

1. Ginther wanted NWSL before ownership did and he was lobbying for it. Ownership just started to pursue it in late summer of last year.

2. Jimmy was Jimmy and bargained, but there were certain criteria that NWSL required. They (NWSL) wanted 3 things, separate training facilities with good freeway access to downtown etc, a lot of cash, and the team needed to be ready to play starting in the 2028 season. NWSL also pushed a public private partnership because it indicated city support.

3. After the details were ironed out, Ginther’s planning department started analyzing potential sites. They’re the ones that came up with McCoy Park. A brownfield site could not have been made ready in time for the 2028 timeline.

4. Ownership did not know of the plans to renovate the park nor were they aware that Ginther hadn’t informed the city council.

 

As I’ve said previously, I’m not a fan of taking the park and I think the amount of money asked of the city/county was too high. I’m not calling the shots though.

The flip side is had the park not been used, we wouldn’t be getting an NWSL team. They would’ve given the bid to someone else because we couldn’t meet their timeline or criteria. The future NWSL bids will need to be more expensive too and I don’t think ownership would want to go any higher.

 

Jordan Laird, just like Bill Bush before them, appears to have an axe to grind.

 

After an interview with Hardin, the Rooster is vaguely starting to admit he may have gone off half cocked. In the interview, Hardin is trying to walk it back as well and repeatedly says that the renovation of the park wouldn’t have happened. The damage has already been done by both of them though, their self promotion has consequences.

 

Again, losing the park is horrible and ownership should be donating a lot more than 3 million to the replacement.

 

Is there any way we can get the "journalists" in this town to stop implying and/or saying that the $25 million from each public entity is the sum total of the cost of the NWSL to Columbus effort? They're making it sound like the City and County are footing the entire bill for this franchise and that The Ownership Group isn't contributing anything.

Related: I don't know what the civic $50M is earmarked for, but if I were a betting man I'd bet that almost none of that money is used inside the walls at either SMG Field or the new training facility. It's most likely all going to infrastructure improvements.

This is exactly how it went with the construction of OHPC and SMG Field, but the journalists in the town don't know they history.

 

Yeah, at least southbound, McCoy has terrible highway access. The loss of the Greenlawn exit totally screwed up my quick access to Thurn's (RIP).

 

I understand that people are dumb. But you have to be exceptionally thick to imagine that an NWSL franchise could share the Crew's training facility Hey, can they share the same locker room in the stadium, too?

 

Not to mention the obvious complexities involved in men's and women's teams sharing space.

I once had a boss during a period when we had an office space crunch where I work. He suggested that two of my staff share an office. It was a bad idea on multiple levels. One of which - that he was clueless about - was that one was male, the other female, and she'd just returned from maternity leave was using a breast pump several times a day. I had to spell it out to him before he understood.

You either own the space or you don't. If NWSL is coming to Columbus, they deserve and require their own space.

 

I'm fairly confident the journalists know exactly what happened. But they have a narrative to push, so you won't be getting the truth from them. People need to come to terms with the fact that journalists don't report facts, they tell a story.

 

Well, Arace was a columnist at the Dispatch, not a reporter. He was paid to present opinion. Informed, professional, thoughtful opinion, perhaps, but opinion, nonetheless.

One can say that reports are storytellers. Maybe so. But they're also sometimes just not great at being serious journalists. They're lazy, or not well trained, underpaid, or under pressure to meet deadlines and generate tons of content and traffic. Sure.

On the other hand, I read Columbus Business First everyday. It's good journalism; stories based on facts, research and expertise.

 

Not every journalist - especially at the local level - has an agenda. Not ever journalist - especially at the local level - needs to have an agenda.

 

They are humans with emotions and opinions. It takes a very special type of person to be able to completely set those aside and robotically report facts in a completely neutral manner. And even if a journalist is able to do that, you then have to deal with the editors and then management of the outlet who most certainly have agendas.