From Deseret News archives:
Checketts' problem? Wrong ball
All that's lacking is a New York Post headline: Dave's Meltdown!
Checketts is upset at politicians, both state and local, at Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon and at Utah Jazz owner and noted movie critic Larry H. Miller, who he says tried to sabotage a proposed stadium deal in Sandy.
New York Post: Brokeback II!
He has intimated that he has been led along, double-crossed and left to hang out to dry.
For all I know, he may be right on all counts.
Then again, maybe the problem is something else entirely.
Maybe the problem is soccer.
In all the stadium rhetoric since Checketts after making his name, and fortune, as a sports management wunderkind in New York brought Major League Soccer to his home state last year, there has been an underlying assumption that soccer is a prime-time sport. That a soccer-specific stadium ought to be built somewhere. That Real Salt Lake is the summertime equivalent of the basketball Jazz.
But is that reality?
Is soccer that big of a draw in the United States of America?
Do enough people who matter really care?
There's a reason it's the world's most popular sport.
But that still doesn't make it basketball or football or baseball.
I think Dave Checketts' biggest problem is that in trying to bring a world-class sporting franchise to Utah, he brought the wrong-sized ball.
Sports in America and everywhere else is all about irrationality. Huge stadiums get built, ridiculous ticket prices get paid, ornate corporate boxes get leased, 19-year-old athletes get the keys to a fleet of new Escalades, the modern parasite known as ticket scalper exists, all because of the ability of sports fans and this includes politicians to be irrational.
But it's hard to get irrational about soccer in Salt Lake City and in America in 2006.
On paper, it works in Utah. Thousands of kids, both boys and girls, play youth soccer. Thousands more immigrants grew up with soccer as their first language. There's your attendance base right there.
Comments
- Lakers booed at home in loss 12:53 a.m.
- Big games keep UHSAA coffers full 12:51 a.m.
- TCU stuck at fourth in BCS 12:50 a.m.
- Students from abroad come to Utah 12:26 a.m.
- Sports on the air 12:18 a.m.
- Sports briefs 12:17 a.m.
- Editorial: Red flags at Fort Hood 12:14 a.m.
- Rid Capitol Hill of 'roaches' 12:14 a.m.
- Health proposal not 'reform' 12:14 a.m.
- Afterthoughts 12:14 a.m.
- BYU happy to escape with victory
230 - TCU creams U.
225 - Editorial: Mormons and gay rights
206 - Will state consider gay rights law?
149 - Can BYU root for (ick) Utah Utes?
131 - RSL heads to MLS title game
125 - Utes remain silent about BCS
120 - Celtics crush Jazz
104 - TCU stays 4th in AP; Y. 19th, U. 23rd
97 - 3A: Hurricane advances to title game
88
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