An Arena Deal For Seattle?

Happy Tuesday Cougar Fans!

Well forgive me being a bit late to the ball on this, but I did just get back on the radar after a long weekend in Arizona with the boys. The two of us who shared a departing flight out of Seattle both came down with awesome colds on Saturday morning, so I am going to make this a pretty short post, as I need to suck down some more Mucinex, Powerade, and catch some sleep!

So click the Jump if you want to talk arena deals.

There isn’t a whole lot of new Cougar news out there.

We lost at home to UCLA for like the 19th time in a row, nothing new to see there…..

Another report says that LB CJ Mizell was arrested over the weekend for 4th Degree Assault. This is something we were all tipped off on, but chose not to make to much fuss over the ordeal. The last time we reported something breaking, the writer took a bit of heat as a rumor monger, from the likes of Cougfan, The Spokesmen Review, and their respective message boards. Since then, we’ve tried to refrain from being the first on the scene, so that it doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass.

That being said, we’ve all seen our fair share of 4th degree assault charges for our football and baseball teams over the years, and they generally don’t hold up once they go to trial.  That said, knowing Coach Leach has a very short leash for players screwing up off the field as has been detailed extensively in his book?  Let’s just say it will be interesting to see how he handles this, a news-making incident with a talented, potential starter for 2012.  Christian Caple posted some of the details last night on the situation, a few hours after the initial report.

Now, moving on to what I really want to talk about.

I was just thumbing through yesterday’s Seattle Times Sports Page and came across this fantastic piece from Mr Steve Kelley.

After a moronic local businessman decided his investment wasn’t making enough money four or five years ago, he decided to sell said team it an out of town buyer.  After the buyer began to relocate the team and all of our local and state politicians sat with their thumbs up their you-know-what, the Puget Sound lost 41 years of professional basketball history and our only championship (sorry Storm, ya don’t county).

Now it looks as though local politicans and business leaders have seen what the loss has done to the region, and some negotiations have gone down behind the scenes to build a new state-of-the-art arena down by Safeco Field.

If you’re reading this site, you’re obviously a sports fan, but I am curious. What do you think of a privately funded arena that would use some local tax dollars to build?  It sounds as though the recently expired hotel, taxi cab and restaurant taxes may come back and a flat-fee would be added onto each ticket as well, which would represent “the public money.”  But the arena would be largely funded by private dollars, yet these things always come with some sort of public contribution?

While the NBA really doesn’t do much for me anymore (not sure I’ve seen more than five minutes of any game since the Supes left town), I would be excited about some other prospects. The first of which would be an arena that doesn’t actually suck to see a concert.  Seriously, if you’ve been to a concert at the Key Arena and you thought it sounded good, I recommend you contact my my client, Ray, for a free consultation.  And there is a reason many of the top acts don’t perform in that place!

Not only would better sounding concerts make me a happy guy, but we would likely be in-line to lure an NHL team to the Pacific Northwest. Now Huddy would be able to watch his Capitols (or Habs or something like that) lose in-person on a regular basis.  The Phoenix Coyotes have been rumored in recent months to be a candidate for relocation, and Seattle has worked it’s way to the top of that short list.

Anyways, I am all for this. What do you think about the use of some public funds to partially finance a multi-purpose arena?

Time for another shot of Mucinex, have a great day.