NFL Merry-Go-Round: Relocation Roundelay

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

On 9/26/2019 at 2:30 PM, Red Comet said:

Again, European (or any expansion outside North America, really), is unfeasible without a major breakthrough in transportation technology.

 

It's not unfeasible.  The proof of that assertion is that they are doing it now.  There is no fundamental difference in terms of logistics between playing four games in London and playing eight games in London.

 

 

21 hours ago, Gothamite said:

You’d be asking California and Seattle-based players to get used to playing at odd times.  That’s bound to create a competitive advantage.  

 

Again: they are doing that currently.  West Coast teams have so far played seven games in London, and they have won six of those games.  This season, two of the four London games will involve a West Coast team.  This is not a problem.  And, when those teams have to fly home, they get a bye week to recover. 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

9 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

As bad as they seem to want a London team, I'm surprised the NFL itself isn't investing money into rocket research or matter dematerialization/rematerialization.  They could patent the technology and make money off of both ends.

I'd argue that they don't want a London team, they want a location to leverage against other locations for new stadia. This is especially the case now that LA is no longer an option.

 

I think a bigger factor working against a London team is that, currently, every London game is a special event, with a nice variety of teams cycling through.  But, if there were a team based in London, it might have a bad year. Or it might have a surly coach who gets annoyed with answering the (possibly less sophisticated) questions of English reporters each week. This kind of thing could easily dampen the rising enthusiasm for the NFL in London and the rest of Britain.

For this reason, as much as I would love to see the NFL put a team in London, I don't think they'll do it for quite some time.  While the NFL's popularity is growing rapidly in Britain, the league won't want to overestimate this and risk damaging the whole project.

[dfwabel]

3 hours ago, Red Comet said:

So if an NFL team wants a new stadium, they might actually have to pony up some money themselves? The absolute horror.

Don't be so sure.

 

Louisiana will give the Saints nearly anything they want to keep them and Super Bowls, thus they're paying 66% of the $450M renovation. But D@mn, they are likely getting rid of those carpeted, claustrophobic ramps too.

Bengals lease ends after 2026 season, but has two, 5-year extensions on it.

 

Then, there's still Buffalo dealing with Eric County and the state and that team outside The District.

[Red Comet]

1 hour ago, dfwabel said:

Don't be so sure.

 

Louisiana will give the Saints nearly anything they want to keep them and Super Bowls, thus they're paying 66% of the $450M renovation. But D@mn, they are likely getting rid of those carpeted, claustrophobic ramps too.

Bengals lease ends after 2026 season, but has two, 5-year extensions on it.

 

Then, there's still Buffalo dealing with Eric County and the state and that team outside The District.

 

Eh, renovating an existing stadium with the team contributing substantially is fine. Its a lot less wasteful than a new stadium.

[IceCap]

Toronto's not happening. BMO is too small. The Rogers Centre is still too small, and they've installed real grass. Making baseball to football transitions even harder than they used to be.

The only way Toronto works is if there's a new stadium and NO ONE in Toronto has any appetite for a publicly financed stadium. BMO was the last hurrah.

 

That's before you even get into the failure the International Series was from a box office perspective.

[The_Admiral]

It's still plastic grass at the SkyDome, it just looks more realistic than the old stuff and has a full dirt infield. I wonder how many years the place has left in it, though. Ten? It won't make it to 50.

[bosrs1]

10 minutes ago, the admiral said:

It's still plastic grass at the SkyDome, it just looks more realistic than the old stuff and has a full dirt infield. I wonder how many years the place has left in it, though. Ten? It won't make it to 50.

 

Why not? It’s a retractable roof, it’s in good shape, and frankly for its size it’s not a bad place to see a game.

[The_Admiral]

After Atlanta and Arlington I'm not going to bet on a ballpark lasting 40 years

[GDAWG]

38 minutes ago, the admiral said:

After Atlanta and Arlington I'm not going to bet on a ballpark lasting 40 years

 

Both are likely to be outliers because I believe the former Turner Field is now the football stadium for Georgia State.  Globe Life Park itself is turning into a football stadium for the XFL Dallas Renegades. 

[dfwabel]

52 minutes ago, the admiral said:

After Atlanta and Arlington I'm not going to bet on a ballpark lasting 40 years

San Francisco will last due to location and mass transit alone. Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T/Oracle will turn 20 on April 11, 2020.  Plus the Giants own it outright and started development adjacent to it, Mission Rock.

 

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

52 minutes ago, the admiral said:

After Atlanta and Arlington I'm not going to bet on a ballpark lasting 40 years

 

CenturyLink opened in 2002, and is nearing 20 years. What once was new now feels kind of old, and given that Paul Allen's sister isn't Paul Allen, I don't know how confident I feel about the Seahawks' long-term future here.

 

For fun, earlier today I looked up the age of NBA arenas. The oldest is, unsurprisingly, Madison Square Garden. It opened in its current state in 1968. The next-oldest is, shockingly to me, Target Center in 1990. Miami Arena lasted from 1988 to 1999, which seems kind of terrible; how did that escape all of us?

[dfwabel]

14 hours ago, DG_Now said:

 

CenturyLink opened in 2002, and is nearing 20 years. What once was new now feels kind of old, and given that Paul Allen's sister isn't Paul Allen, I don't know how confident I feel about the Seahawks' long-term future here.

 

For fun, earlier today I looked up the age of NBA arenas. The oldest is, unsurprisingly, Madison Square Garden. It opened in its current state in 1968. The next-oldest is, shockingly to me, Target Center in 1990. Miami Arena lasted from 1988 to 1999, which seems kind of terrible; how did that escape all of us?

Miami Arena was...

1-Based on a 15-year old design as it and Orlando Arena were based off of The (Houston) Summit, which opened in 1975.  The Palace of Auburn Hills came along the same year and changed the game for both indoor and outdoor venues. Bradley Center also opened around that time and its floorplan was radically different from The Summit. Charlotte Coliseum 2 saw the same fate, but was a much larger capacity but like only 5 suites.

2-It basically sat in Overtown, the low income, predominantly Black part of the city.

3-Miami and Orlando built facilities off the same blueprints and opened six months apart, but Miami Arena was built at a cost of 50% less than Orlando ($53M to $102M!

[The_Admiral]

I didn't know that about the O-Rena and the Summit. Have we talked at length here about arenas being carbon copies before? Whatever we're calling the Palladium this year is pretty much a bare-bones Palace of Auburn Hills, and Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum is essentially the same building as the old Met Center.

 

I always figured the old Miami Arena was kind of a rush job to begin with. Not quite an Arco Arena I situation, but certainly not as built to last as the Palace of Auburn Hills was (which still didn't last).

[rams80]

6 hours ago, GDAWG said:

 

Any chance that's a market that nobody has even considered?  I don't think anyone even thought that Jacksonville, Nashville, Charlotte or Las Vegas would be NFL cities 30 years ago.  A city that isn't London, Toronto, San Antonio, San Diego, St. Louis?

 

 

Jacksonville was filling up the Gator Bowl for the Jacksonville Bulls 30 years ago.

[The_Admiral]

Oh yeah, and Bud Adams flirted with moving the Oilers to Jacksonville in the '80s, so they were probably on the league's radar. Still, I think they expanded into Jacksonville expecting the metropolitan area to grow a lot more than it ended up growing -- everyone can't move to every Sun Belt town, I guess.

[dfwabel]

11 hours ago, the admiral said:

I didn't know that about the O-Rena and the Summit. Have we talked at length here about arenas being carbon copies before? Whatever we're calling the Palladium this year is pretty much a bare-bones Palace of Auburn Hills, and Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum is essentially the same building as the old Met Center.

 

I always figured the old Miami Arena was kind of a rush job to begin with. Not quite an Arco Arena I situation, but certainly not as built to last as the Palace of Auburn Hills was (which still didn't last).

We did a few years ago, maybe even longer, but I won't use the Search feature. 

When I went to see a Rockets game in 2001, as soon as I walked in midway through the 1st quarter, I thought to myself, "This is Orlando Arena and the Pink Palace". 

Four years after O-rena opened, the city sued the architect, Houston-based Lloyd, Jones, and Philpott. 

From the story:

Quote

Partners of Lloyd, Jones, Fillpot, hired by the city to design the arena in November 1986, have been designing sports facilities since the 1960s. Among their projects are the Houston Astrodome and the Miami Arena.

 

Yea, Ottawa is a Rossetti building, like The Palace.

[LMU]

18 hours ago, the admiral said:

After Atlanta and Arlington I'm not going to bet on a ballpark lasting 40 years

 

18 hours ago, GDAWG said:

 

Both are likely to be outliers because I believe the former Turner Field is now the football stadium for Georgia State.  Globe Life Park itself is turning into a football stadium for the XFL Dallas Renegades. 

I'd put Atlanta as the outlier because it was built on the cheap as Centennial Olympic Stadium and retrofitted back into a ballpark.  I don't think longevity was the primary concern with that project.

 

Arlington is more of a case of a perfectly fine ballpark being jettisoned due to poor forethought (which they should have figured out with shadeless Arlington Stadium), lack of decent roof technology at the time, and a populace all too eager to keep shoveling tax dollars into a furnace.

[GDAWG]

9 minutes ago, LMU said:

 

I'd put Atlanta as the outlier because it was built on the cheap as Centennial Olympic Stadium and retrofitted back into a ballpark.  I don't think longevity was the primary concern with that project.

 

Arlington is more of a case of a perfectly fine ballpark being jettisoned due to poor forethought (which they should have figured out with shadeless Arlington Stadium), lack of decent roof technology at the time, and a populace all too eager to keep shoveling tax dollars into a furnace.

 

I have friends who have been to Globe Life Field and after one game they never went back.

[dfwabel]

1 hour ago, LMU said:

 

I'd put Atlanta as the outlier because it was built on the cheap as Centennial Olympic Stadium and retrofitted back into a ballpark.  I don't think longevity was the primary concern with that project.

 

Arlington is more of a case of a perfectly fine ballpark being jettisoned due to poor forethought (which they should have figured out with shadeless Arlington Stadium), lack of decent roof technology at the time, and a populace all too eager to keep shoveling tax dollars into a furnace.

Note*-To be somewhat fair, Globe Life Park (nee The Ballpark in Arlington) was built so the city of Arlington purposely hamstrung themselves in terms of how to use any city taxes levied avoided them having a true system of public transportation.  They cannot level a full cent sales tax to become part of DART with the new Rangers stadium being built and needed to be paid for.  And while Arlington accepts Rideshares like Uber and Lyft, they also have added  Via, a shared ride service, but would prefer high speed rail to light rail, like DART.

 

*-If deemed too "Political", then remove.

[Burmy]

At least if UTA Mavericks football ever comes back and joins the Sun Belt like their other teams, they've got a perfect stadium solution.

[neo_prankster]

Once the Raiders get settled in Vegas...

 

Maybe the Niners sneak into Oakland if things can't be sorted out in Santa Clara?