It's March 1st, which means my least favorite two months of the year are completed. It's dark, cold, often snowy or wet, and there isn't even the holidays to break up the monotony of January and February. Mind you, on March 1st it's still dark, cold and wet, but there's more hope in the air.
Here in Cleveland, Jimmy Haslam, owner of the Cleveland Browns, is pushing for a new Stadium. One with a retractable roof.
Football stadiums are expensive. The most recent stadiums have been around $2 billion- but SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles has over a $5 billion price tag. That's over $5,000,000,000.00 And while that is in California instead of Ohio, a new stadium is going to be pricey.
Now, if Haslam, who is supposedly worth about 4.8 billion wants to pay for it himself, more power to him. But I haven't heard that. And Haslam is busy purchasing a stake in the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks. He has priorities.
So he will likely 'ask' the city of Cleveland to foot the bill. Now, Cleveland has already lost one NFL team because the owner wanted a new stadium. So the people of Cleveland will get flashbacks that if the city doesn't pony up, the team will leave.
But First Energy Stadium is only 24 years old (aren't sports stadiums and fields supposed to last for decades?), and the NFL only has 8-9 home games a year. Cleveland can find a lot of better uses to spend more billions of dollars to help the city.
This is a horrible idea- and if Haslam wants to flee, I'll be glad to hold the door open for him.
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