Soccer talk in S.L. has a familiar ring

The more things change, the more they don't.

All the current talk about Salt Lake's new professional soccer franchise, Real Salt Lake, and the debate over where the team will play has a certain dejavu for me.

I was the sports reporter assigned to cover Salt Lake's first professional soccer franchise when it arrived here in the spring of 1976 — I know, that was a long time ago — and even though the world has gone through a change or two, there are a number of similarities between then and now.

For starters, that franchise didn't have a place to play, either. And it also had a weird name.

The team was known as the Utah Golden Spikers, a name chosen after 5,500 people entered a name-the-team contest. Salt Lake resident George Stephenson won a color TV for submitting the winning name, which managed to connect pro soccer to the golden spike that completed the transcontinental railway when it was pounded into the ground at Promontory, Utah, in 1869.

1976 was the year of America's bicentennial, and patriotic themes were in.

Another weird thing about that team. My brother, Dee, played on it. He was one of a handful of local college players added to a roster made up otherwise of mostly Europeans. As I remember it, his contract negotiation lasted about seven seconds. They offered him meal money and he took it. The only local professional sports contract that consisted entirely of hot dogs.

The main thing I remember about his career is him complaining, "Hey, you never give me any ink."

Anyway, the team wanted to play in a classy place. It tried to share space at Derks Field, the baseball park, and was turned down. It was also turned away by the University of Utah, although the U. did allow the team to make its debut at Rice Stadium, an event that occurred on May 1, 1976, and drew a reported, albeit highly suspect, 8,000 spectators (these were the same franchise officials who reported the 5,500 name-the-team entries).

Poetically, 29 years later, Real Salt Lake, or RSL, is also scheduled to make its debut at Rice (now Rice-Eccles) Stadium.

But it's only temporary. Like the Spikers, RSL needs a permanent home.

The fact that Murray and Salt Lake City are thinking about providing land for a permanent stadium shows just how far, and out-of-whack, sports has come since 1976.

Not that the Golden Spikers weren't above asking for civic handouts, either. But things were more modest back then. Instead of asking for an entire city block, the team asked to play at the State Fairgrounds Arena.