Doyel: Time to talk Pacers, Colts, downtown and public subsidies for pro sports

[Muda69]

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2019/02/20/time-talk-pacers-colts-downtown-and-pro-sports-public-subsidies/2914062002/

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They could just leave, right? These millionaires, these billionaires and their toys. These owners of professional sports franchises. All that money, and they want the public’s help?

First the Pacers and the new lease they seek to keep them in town for at least 25 more years, and now the Indy Eleven and a possible new $150 million stadium? On top of the Colts and their $720 million stadium funded mostly by public money? Outrageous, some of you are saying.

So here’s what we ought to do, some of you are saying: Tell them they can’t have any more public funding. Tell them no. What are they going to do? Leave?

Well …

That’s the gamble.

The thing about any wager is this: If you’re willing to make it, you better be OK with losing. Which is the pivot point of this whole thing.

The issue here is not: Should public money be used to help the richest of the rich get richer? That’s an irritating question to ask, I’ll give you that. It doesn’t sit right with me, either, the prospect of Jim Irsay and Herb Simon receiving tax money that could go elsewhere – we could just fill potholes with those $20 bills – to subsidize their sports homes.

Here’s a harder question, and the ultimate issue: Would you rather the city hang onto every penny of the public funds in question … or would you rather the city hang onto the Pacers? Feel free to substitute “Colts” or “Eleven,” though the Eleven are in the same sentence with those other two, in this story at all, simply for the timing of last week’s bombshells.

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Herb Simon doesn’t want that legacy. He wants to pass the Pacers someday to his son, Steve. What he also wants, now: millions of dollars of public money set aside for use by the Capital Improvement Board – which manages Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Indiana Convention Center, Lucas Oil Stadium and Victory Field – largely to operate and improve the fieldhouse.

That doesn’t sit right with a lot of people around here, and again, I get it. But not every answer is an easy “yes” or “no.” Sometimes you want to scream: No! But this is what you do instead: You close your eyes, pinch the bridge of your nose to ward off the headache, and you whisper: yes.

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That’s how it works, and you don’t have to like it any more than I do. But this is the deal: In markets our size, NBA and NFL owners expect public help, and if they don’t get it, they make noise about leaving. Usually they don’t, no. But usually, public funds have to be diverted – away from roads, schools, libraries, etc. – to keep them. It’s the dance, and we either turn up the music or risk the devastating sound of silence downtown.

Sorry Mr. Doyel, that irritating question you posit is the most important one. 

And yet the question Mr. Doyel dodges is why do these owners expect, no demand, public dollars, use their franchises as a bargaining chip?