Bombers: more debt won’t mean less talent

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2010 (5426 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some day — maybe this week, maybe next month, maybe when the doors swing open on a new football stadium in 2012 — there will be another ribbon cutting with all the politicos and major players slapping backs and smiling for the cameras.

Yes, when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers move into just the third facility they’ll have called home since the days of leather helmets it will be a historic occasion worthy of a parade or a party.

Just think of it for a moment: Joe and Jill Fan will rejoice because the new digs will have enough legroom to prevent their lower extremities from going numb — in July — and they’ll be able to enjoy some of the amenities sports fans have come to expect elsewhere in this city. Things like a parking lot without potholes only a monster truck could manoeuvre and hotdogs that taste like they were made this decade.

It’ll be just dandy, too, to move into a barn that doesn’t make the Brady Road Landfill look like Wellington Crescent or come with a lingering scent of pigeon poop.

It has to be said, however, that this current chapter of the great stadium saga — financing details of the new stadium were made public by the mayor on Monday and the Bomber board approved the deal later in the day — had all the pomp and circumstance of a balloon going pbbbpppppphhtt!!! while it darted around the room losing air.

We’re as ecstatic as the next guy that this story has finally reached some sort of resolution, at least to the point where the costs for the facility and who is on the hook for how much is about to be finally locked in, signed and agreed upon by all the players.

But the Bombers covering $85 million of the $190-million deal screams out for some serious second-guessing. And no matter how their consultants/accountants/illusionists spin how the club is going to pay for all this — seat licences, ticket taxes, public-share offerings, concerts, whatever — there is one meaty question that will swirl over the franchise:

If there are to be no corners cut in the construction of the original stadium design, will there be corners cut on the football product itself?

Understand that a stadium was to represent a bright new future for the Bombers. Increased revenue streams were to be the financial lifeline that helped soothe the wounds from awful seasons and build a war chest in good times.

That, of course, may still be how the next few decades unfold for the franchise, with it becoming the picture of financial stability. That’s the promise that comes with every spiffy new home for any business.

But anyone who has watched the fortunes and misfortunes of this franchise over the last couple of decades can also hold up some rather compelling evidence to the contrary. This is an organization which, like it or not, has battled a cheapskate image while fielding teams that have posted a winning season just once in the last seven years.

And now it will have to come up with $4 million annually just to service the debt on the $85-million loan over the next 40 years.

Heck, that’s a mortgage payment jump akin to moving from a van down by the river to a swank mansion in Tuxedo. And it has more than a few CFL observers wondering how it happens without a nip and tuck to the scouting department dollars and/or a reluctance to sign the fat cheques during free agency.

“We have structured this deal so that the football operation is not affected by any obligations we take on and that will be evident when the details of the financing and the (loan) repayment are made public,” insisted Bombers board chairman Bill Watchorn Monday night. “We’ve been very careful to protect the integrity and the viability of the football team under all circumstances. And in return we’re getting a new facility.

“It absolutely had to be that way and it took a little bit longer to get it that way. This is a football team, that’s always first.”

Fans can take comfort in that, we suppose.

Cynics will counter by saying the numbers in any annual financial statement can be shaped and shifted to give the impression no corners are being cut in football ops.

Unfortunately for the Bombers that kind of thinking isn’t going to be disproved or changed — new building or not — until this fact does: their Grey Cup drought is now 20 years and counting.

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca