The Winnipeg Blue Bombers will get a new owner in 2010 and a new stadium in 2011.
It’s probably the two best things that could happen to the franchise.
The Bombers are a proud franchise that continues to lose money and continues to lose football games. Although the team went to the Grey Cup in 1992, 1993, 2001 and 2007, the Bombers have not won a Grey Cup championship since 1990. Frankly, in an eight-team league, every team should win at least one championship in 18 years just by dumb luck.
There is no dumb luck in Winnipeg. Just when it looks like this team has the horses and is red-hot at the right something like, oh, a starting quarterback’s broken arm douses the flame.
In the meantime, the 55-year-old stadium, located in the centre of a commercial district in the west end of town, has become more of an eyesore than a destination. The most popular aspect of Canada Inns Stadium is the Appleton’s Rum Shack. In fact, it’s often more popular than the team.
So when media baron and property developer David Asper came forward 14 months ago with an idea to build a new stadium and take over ownership — and fiscal responsibility — from the community board that has run the team for almost 80 years, it seemed like the right thing to do.
Still, Asper has spent the last 14 months doing everything possible to sell his idea to the community. He’s run an interactive web site, www.blueandgold.ca; he’s held open forums, both public and with special interest groups; and he’s acquiesced to the demands of federal, provincial and civic politicians.
He has done everything in good faith.
But at the news conference on Wednesday to announce the deal, the new members of the old media (we’re not talking about the veteran reporters such as the Free Press’ s Randy Turner and Ed Tait, the Sun’s Kirk Penton, Global’s Joe Pascucci or CJOB’s Bob Irving, but this group of children who don’t Google and don’t read the printed material that’s handed out) gave a virtuoso performance of ignorance and attempts at, well, hubris.
It started when a young child from CBC television opened with a question impugning Asper about his business acumen. She suggested that because the family business, Canwest Communications was struggling, Asper himself was somehow going to go broke and default on his responsibilities.
Now I would not have thought anything of that question coming from, say CJOB, a Corus radio station that is and always has done quite well financially, but for CBC to send out its child reporter to suggest that Asper, who is using his own money (not Canwest’s money) to build the stadium, would soon go broke and we’d have a helluva mess is patently outrageous.
This, from a taxpayer-funded operation that has outlived its usefulness and contributed mightily to the recent problems faced by the Asper family and by the country’s other major television network, CTV. The CBC receives $1 billion a year from the federal government — one freakin’ BILLION, not million, BILLION — and can sell TV advertising on top of that and yet it still can’t balance its books. Instead, after losing $171 million in 2008, it went back to the feds asking for something called a “bridge loan.” Bridge to what? The CBC was never going to actually pay back the $171 million. They were looking for another handout.
This time the feds said, “Not a chance, you boobs,” and so last week, the public broadcaster announced 800 layoffs.
Still, despite all of its own incompetence, some CBC news producer sent out a little girl with an attitude to suggest Asper was somehow going to fail miserably. Had she only bothered to use Google, she might have learned that Creswin Properties and Canwest Communications are two different companies run by two different people. Leonard Asper is not involved in this deal.
Stunning.
From that point on, the news conference was loaded with questions that were already answered on the printed handout that was given to every media member when he or she entered the room.
Sad, but true. And the mainstream media is wondering why its days are numbered.
Here are the facts. The deal is tremendous. Asper pays $100 million out of his own pocket to build the stadium and take over the team. No other person on the planet — no one, nobody, period — would step up and do the same for a community or its CFL team. And besides, the new owner not only bleeds Bomber blue, but Bison brown and so the university will get a marvelous facility as well. (For those folks who live near the university, they will notice that the traffic will be a little busier 10 or 11 times per year.)
The new stadium will be fine — although after watching the Dallas Cowboys spend a billion dollars (there’s that B-word again) on their new building I sometimes wonder what we’ll really get for $140 million. Still, the old stadium is done. Let’s hope that by 2011 when the new building is finished, the upper decks in the old one haven’t fallen down on someone.
The days of public bailouts, which include right now to a certain extent, should be over. This is a good deal for everyone involved, especially the folks who buy tickets to Bomber games. Just go to www.blueandgold.ca for all the details.
It’s just too bad that so many people in the media don’t get it. Because they don’t get it and can’t explain it, far too many members of the public — who didn’t bother to show up at Asper’s public forums — don’t really get it, either.
