Minmann has some good posts

And yet there's no hint who this mysterious buyer/builder of stadiums might be? And leaders in Austin certainly act as though they're just starting to get to work on this project, scoping out potential underutilized parkland. But no, really, there's someone in Austin who's willing to drop $150 million (say) and a shitload of cash to self-fund a stadium down there?

Uh-huh. Maybe.

Or maybe Anthony Precourt is horribly bad at whatever game he's playing, is in way over his head.

Poison the well in TX. Whip up anger in San Antonio about how the league seemed to have knowingly screwed them over. Keep up the PR pressure. Again, if for whatever reason Austin doesn't come through with a stadium (I don't care who pays for it; Precourt or a new owner), the Crew isn't going anywhere. And if it's stuck in CMH, my guess is that Anthony Precourt's unwillingness to field offers from local investors might fade a bit. His whole approach to running this club - his lack of a real corporate structure (no permanent physical space; tiny number of employees who work remotely); the amateurish efforts in Austin; the way he gutted marketing efforts here this season - implies he wants to flip his investment at the point at which it reaches (according to his calculations) maximum value.

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I love you guys but, to be honest, there are several of you who I'd not want to be in a foxhole with.

The odds of this ending well for us are low. Especially if, by ending well, you mean retaining the team under new ownership, as opposed to, say, Austin falling through and having an untenable ownership situation here in Columbus.

And even if we do end up with a best-case scenario, understand the following: It'll be a long, miserable, gut-wrenching war of attrition. No glorious sudden victories, lots of moments where the whole damned thing could fall apart.

So spare me your 'oh, i'm all depressed now' weak-kneed bullshit because of some goddammed tweet, statement by an Austin official, or whatever the daily tea-leaf reading implies. This process sucks, and it's going to continue to suck. It is what it is. Accept that and do your best to get used to it.

A thing we deeply value is being threatened. It hurts, is frightening; makes some of us (raises hand) very angry. But it also gets your damned attention. If we lose this thing, this war of attrition, I'm not really sure what the next steps will be. We talk in here about that, mostly from negative perspectives ("I'll never watch another MLS game", etc.).

But I'll tell you this, if I run into any of you, five years down the line - even if this doesn't end in victory - sporting some #savethecrew button or t-shirt, I'll reach out my hand to shake yours, offer to buy you a beer, and talk about what a 'spectacular' experience it was; not really to support this team, but to be a member of this community.