They prob know the dates. Other stadiums don’t share their stadiums with other teams and don’t have park districts with stupid rules about the turf. The bears don’t control these rules and don’t own their stadium.
So Now that Hoops Over... What the Heck is Happening with 2024 Place to Play
- Thread starter wildcatcoaster
- Start date
I have no idea whether they considered it but they didn’t know for certain that bulldozers would be on the ground until November.
What’s not clear is whether there were any contingencies, what the potential paths were/are, how much they know today vs don’t know.
What is clear is the communication has been frustrating. I wouldn’t necessarily be annoyed if they shared the dates that were locked and said they were working on a few options for the rest vs what they are doing now with no comms until it’s fully baked.
They knew well before November that we would need somewhere to play in 2024 and 2025. Evanston was always going to sign off on it, the only question was how much NU/Ryan would have to cough up to get it done.
The NFL home and away opponents are set in advance. The exact dates are not. (Maybe the order is??). You can probably back into back to back weekends where the bears don’t play? Not sure what happened there.
I will say that the Fire didn’t play at Soldier Field then (and the MLS season is over by then). NU has no issue with November for the next two seasons anyway.
You knew it would come down to the mayor breaking a city council tie? That was pretty fing close for comfort.
The lack of preparedness indicates that NU just assumed they would lose the vote, doesn’t it?
I have no idea but I definitely found it insane that it was a mayoral tie breaker after that much cash was thrown at the city.
Mayor Biss even pre empted pushback by writing a long letter to everyone in Evanston on why he broke the vote. Evanston is a unique place…
Chicago Fire was probably playing at Toyota Park (now Seat Geek) at that time.
Ha yeah but don't you think if we had planned more than 6 months in advance when we knew this was coming for 2 years, that Soldier might have prioritized 2-3 dates for college football games and then had the MLS schedulers work around them (or told the Fire they had to play at SeatGeek those dates)?
I am not an avid MLS fan, but have been to a couple Fire games at Soldier's - barring it being a Lionel Messi game against Miami, I would think that a B1G conference football game would be a bigger draw than an MLS game.
I think the hazing investigation created a lot of contingencies especially as to funding and may have sucked up a bunch of management time. Still doesn't excuse everything we are seeing.
The NFL schedule is not known until it comes out. Right now the teams only know who they're going to play, not when. The way this normally works is that the NFL teams know their conflicts in advance and inform the league, and then the league schedules around the stadium conflicts. (This is why it's really hard to make the schedule.)
Obviously, that didn't happen in this case - perhaps because of the Soldier Field turf rules and with the Fire around the Bears already had too many conflicts to reserve even more dates in advance? Also wouldn't shock me if NU just didn't bother to reach out to them in time.
Planning isn’t a linear process. It’s OK to be simultaneously working on part B & C while part A is in the works.
The last sentence I think is the most likely point here...
Soldier would likely have been willing to reserve at least one home date for us, maybe 2-3. I'm pretty certain Soldier would have been willing to push the MLS aside for a couple potential home dates. I suspect we just didn't contact them until after the point that it's too late to reserve dates in the NFL and MLS scheduling system.
"Buffoonery" I believe is the operative word.
If that's not a straw man of a choice then I don't know what is! Congrats on hitting the #1 logical fallacy for arguments today!
What? You started with “don’t you think” as a question. Then I answered.
It’s all speculation. That’s half the point of a message board.
It's not just the NU Athletic Department that struggles with a place to play. The Oakland A's lease on the Coliseum is up at the end of this season and their new home in Vegas won't be ready until after Ryan Field opens, so the A's (they are dropping the Oakland name) will play in a 10,000 seat minor league stadium in Sacramento.
But they literally have a place to play, even if it’s a minor league field. We don’t even have that yet.
For unclear reasons, the Oakland A’s owner John Fisher has been on a 20-year mission to get all of Oakland to hate the team.
Vivek Ranadive, of the Sacramento Kings and ‘RiverCats’, is willing to help out his pal by committing to use his ballpark for more than twice its usual use — in 100-degree heat, all summer long. It might look like the Wrigley Field goal line, but all season.
Yeeeeesh.
The spat was over like a $35m delta.
Sacramento heat is going to be hilarious but a grass bleachers area and a small stadium is going to be really cool. Minor league stadiums rule.
The A’s didn’t struggle to find a place to play. They elected to stay in Northern California to retain the exclusive broadcast rights. Salt Lake City was a real option for two seasons as well. Also, the Oakland Coliseum is still there. The city of Oakland tried a last minute effort to extend the lease after it became apparent Sacramento was in play.
As a (I guess now former) hardcore Oakland A’s fan, don’t get me started. MLB and Fisher, in the way they approached this, were oblivious to the long term damage they are inflicting on their product for short term games. I am old, and I imagine my grandkids won’t be going to games 20 years from now because MLB has tailored their approach to corporate entertainment rather than day to day attachment to a team. When my generation (and maybe the next 2) are dead, there will be no one to buy luxury suites in the palaces cities are being extorted to build.
I feel your pain about relocation but it’s not just your grandkids who won’t/don’t go to games. All I’ve heard about lately is how hardcore the fanbase is but it doesn't matter how good the team is: the fans show up. They have had some elite seasons with embarrassing attendance, and although it’s definitely not a nice stadium it’s very easy to get to via BART or car.
I get hating the owner but when you hate the owner more than you love the team it’s time to look in the mirror as a fan.
Jerry Reinsdorf is the worst, I refuse to watch the Sox anymore as there is no hope with him as the leader of that team.
I assume you watched this from a distance. I was a STH for the A’s up to 2 years ago, when I got a message from my sales rep that they were upping my ticket package price 80% the same week they let Marcus Semien, a local kid who I saw play in high school and college, go. That was 15 years supporting the team DESPITE the nickel and dime way he treated the team. They promptly let go Olsen, Chapman and several other first tier players, just to make clear what the plan was.
By several objective evaluations, the Fisher A’s drew well enough to be profitable every season he owned the team through 2019. The five years before Fisher bought the team, they averaged 2.2 million in attendance.
I’m listening to their game as I write this. I look in the mirror often, and know I am not the reason this bodes badly for MLB.
Sox - Reinsdork
It took him to destroy my from birth south side Irish support. Endured NU. Endured Dollar Bill. But have given up on my Sox and trying to learn to become a Tampa Bay fan
Owners like Fisher and Reinsdorf stink. However over 70M people attended a MLB game last year. 17 teams had over 2.5M in attendance.
I went to the Cubs/Dodgers game yesterday to see Show time play. I wanted to tell my grandkids that I saw Willie Mays ( even if he was 102 that season) , Rose, Bonds, Ichiro, and Ohtani play. That isn’t going to change with upcoming generations. I would guess half the crowd at yesterdays game was under 30.
Now excuse me while I go mow my lawn.
There will always be cities, especially faux cities like Vegas, that will drop their drawers to get additional teams
With you on Vegas. The A's died in that mausoleum on that barren site and in that town. Perhaps could have worked on the new site or down in San Jose - anywhere with some life.
If the Sox or Tampa ownership decided to move their teams, it wouldn’t exactly be surprising. Saying “hey at least we aren’t much different than The White Sox or Rays” is not a great place to be.
The Sox are especially pathetic though. They’ve still never made the playoffs in consecutive seasons and their rebuilds are embarrassing bad.
It's set up entirely to fool people out of their money, most of whom rationalize it by saying it's entertaining and they enjoy it (losing the money). It reminds me of something politically but there is no rant board. As an economics major, I don't respect it.
