(by Amy Donaldson and Chuck Gates desnews.com 10-4-06)
Chuck: It feels good to be alive. I'm considering donating a slice of my DNA to science as evidence of reincarnation because one Saturday not that long ago I'm sure I died of boredom from watching a ReALly awful soccer match against FC Dallas.
So I won't be attending Saturday's home finale against the Houston Dynamo, which astonishingly is still only the next-to-the-last game of Real Salt Lake's season-that-never-ends. Barring hideously bad luck — like qualifying for the Major Soccer League playoffs — Real won't bring closure to its 36-game odyssey launched waaay back on April 2 until Oct. 15 at Chivas USA. By comparison, baboons give birth faster; Major League Baseball played its entire 162-game schedule with time to spare.
Lest you think I'm too harsh on the worldly cousin of American-style football, you should know this wasn't my only near-death experience this season at the corner of Rice and Eccles. I also attended a "thriller" against the Colorado Vapids, which ended scoreless after regulation before RSL eventually lost in overtime.
Like 90-minutes of regulation tedium wasn't enough?
Now soccer baron Dave Checketts, impersonating Ronaldo on a breakaway, has skillfully maneuvered through a cadre of Wasatch Front politicians and is on the brink of securing a big wad of taxpayer cash and prizes to build a state-of-the-art soccer crib in that soccer hotbed of Sandy. This for a team few care about in a sport most are indifferent to.
Isn't that what we built the E Center for?
I give Baron Checketts credit for skillfully playing Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan and Utah House Speaker Greg Curtis, who represents Sandy. Both apparently want an edifice to sufficiently memorialize their greatness as political deal-makers. And Checketts must have copies of receipts of Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon filling up a 38-foot-long Itasca using a county credit card, or something. How else can you explain one of the greatest political flip-flops of a Democrat since John Kerry?
Amy: Dude, where is your vision? Having this soccer stadium will benefit the community in more ways than Checketts can count his money. Have you forgotten the fight over light rail? The Gateway? There are far worse ways to spend our tax dollars than investing in something that will benefit us socially and economically. Businesses get all kinds of tax breaks because of the benefits to surrounding communities. The arts also get substantial financial taxpayer support, and every time I go to a play or concert I'm grateful for it.
You call them manipulators; others call them visionaries.
Chuck: Dudette, "visionary" for that crew means watching out for themselves. You're actually buying into the economic multiplier shell game that gets trotted out to justify fleecing the public in the name of progress and economic development? Do the math. Calculating all the multiplied money supposedly generated by Utah sports — Jazz, Utes, Cougars, Grizzlies, Raptors, Aggies, Bees, Wildcats and even the 2002 Winter Olympics — the state's GDP ought to be about the same as Japan, give or take a few yen.
"We The Public" are already on the hook for a lot of things they use infrequently, or not at all — TRAX, commuter rail, the ballet, museums, the symphony, Hogle Zoo and ugly exhibits of modern art.
I know I'm supposed to feel better about this stadium deal because they're using alphabet tax dollars (TRTs). Transient Room Tax is political code-speak for gouging tourists and conventioneers to pay for grandiose and unneeded projects. Funny, I don't recall anyone seeking the American Legion's input on this when they were conventioneering here recently.
Amy: You sound a little like those short-sighted people who don't want to pay for public schools because they don't have children attending. A community benefits by offering opportunities to its population.
Last year the high school state championships were played on a field 12 yards too narrow because no suitable soccer field exists. RSL officials have promised UHSAA officials that state tournaments would have a home in their new stadium. Part of the deal includes an elite soccer academy that will draw visitors and benefit future home-grown future soccer stars.
More than 45,000 athletes under age 18 play soccer in Utah. That's the most soccer players per capita in the nation, according to RSL officials. Soccer is fourth in popularity among girls participating in high school sports, while it's sixth most popular among boys. It's the most-played sport in the world and continues to grow in the United States.
Chuck: I want to sound every bit like a biased American sports elitist here: Soccer is too tame for American tastes trained to appreciate American-style football's fast-moving mayhem and violence.
With apologies to the Minutemen, perhaps the arrival of more Latin and African immigrants and 20 additional years of youth soccer will result in a fan base sufficient to create your soccer utopia.
Amy: If everyone had always felt like you, perhaps your beloved American football would be a Japanese import. Why follow when you can lead?
Chuck: I think ReAL OSAKA has a nice ring. Let those 45,000 soccer-playing tykes reach legal age and they can vote Checketts his soccer palace. Until then, he should pay his own way even if that means continuing to play at the stadium on the hill or elsewhere in the Lower 48.
Amy: We're asking them to fail if we continue to make them pay rent at Rice-Eccles. If so, we deserve to lose out on the opportunities that come from having a major league soccer team.
Chuck: I attended my pair of games in the company of a 17-year-old Mexican soccer fanatic. On his Thrill-O-Meter, the games landed between buying a new lawn mower and renting "Beaches" on DVD. He equates the level of play to a B-League team in his native Mexico. No one is confusing the MSL, with which RSL is affiliated, with the top soccer leagues in the world.
Amy: Long-live the B-team! Big isn't always better. Everyone doesn't have to be in the stands, appreciating the finer points of the game, to know we all benefit.
Chuck: Benefit? Or benefactor?
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