DMN: When the board of governors gets together at MLS Cup this year, do you envision many changes for the 2008 season?

Checketts: I think there's going to be step-ups, but I can't tell you that I know about any specific changes coming right away. I think our schedule was really bad this year, and it's going to help to have a 14th team, so you don't have teams taking byes, and having teams playing three games in seven days and then having 10 days off. That's bad for teams, it was actually bad for us a couple times when we had some momentum and then a long layoff. I'd like to explore in Utah, if it's possible, a Monday Night Futbol kind of thing during the summer. Whether or not the league will really consider it, I'm not sure, I just think it would work well here.

DMN: You've said you think the Sandy stadium is going to be the best in MLS. I'm sure every owner who's opened a stadium thinks his stadium is going to be the best, so why do think Utah's will be better?

Checketts: First, isn't everything in real estate about location? This is the best location anywhere in soccer in the U.S. Chicago is so far out of Chicago, and even Denver is a long way from Denver, and even the Home Depot Center is way south of Los Angeles. Now (ours) really is in the city. It's right on I-15, the main artery for the whole valley. I don't think we could've had a better location for ease of access and to be on people's radar, because eventually there will be a huge sign right out there on I-15 that will announce upcoming games. There's a million cars a year that go by that sign. The first thing is location. The second thing is Gino Rosetti, the architect who designed the Home Depot Center, did Chicago and is doing New York, has done a lot of stadiums, and he's enormously talented. So he's got all of this learning, now coupled with the fact that I've been to every major international soccer stadium in the world, so I started pushing on him my ideas. He's the one who's saying to (MLS Commissioner) Don Garber and others that it is going to be the best one we've built by far. And the setting of the mountains in the east and looking out at the Oquirrhs on the west, it's just going to be great.

DMN: Will beer be sold at the stadium, and was that a simple decision?