It is hard to imagine better owners of a professional sports team than the late Paul Allen and his sister, Jody. The siblings turned the Seahawks into Super Bowl winners, built a great, open-air stadium in the heart of Seattle and remained decent human beings.
Now that the team is up for sale, though, it is easy to imagine the next owners not being nearly as generous or attuned to the city. Paul Allen had a lot of heart; plenty of billionaires seem to be missing that organ.
The first infuriating indication that things will take a turn for the worse is that sports commentators are musing about the possibility — if not the likelihood — that any group of gazillionaires purchasing the Seahawks will, in short order, decide they need to replace Lumen Field with a new stadium that enhances their ability to become even more ridiculously wealthy.
This prospect may sound insane to anyone who does not quite understand the avaricious nature of the National Football League. After all, the current stadium still seems relatively new, it is spectacularly located and it has been the site of many glorious milestones in the history of both the Seahawks and the Sounders. Nevertheless, most NFL owners always want more.
The selling price of the team is going to be somewhere between $6 billion and $10 billion, so the buyers will be looking for ways to justify their splurge. One of those ways is to get a new stadium that can siphon off even more gobs of dollars than the old one.
If this kind of money madness is inevitable, one thing local residents should make clear early on — like now — is that we are not going to pay for a new playground for millionaire players and billionaire owners.
Let the new stewards of the Seahawks go erect a more lucrative fun house in Bellevue or Redmond or even Snoqualmie Pass (the 49ers stadium in Santa Clara is nearly as far outside San Francisco as the pass is distant from Seattle). It’s a stupid idea, but go ahead.
Just don’t assume taxpayers will pay for it. Seattle already has a great stadium.
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