\nThe question has been posed: Could the Hamilton Ticats and Toronto Argos, arch-enemies through the eons and brothers in blood-red ink, find financial salvation by taking up residence in the same suburban stadium?\n<\/p>\n
\nBob Young, the Ticats owner, offered a take.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s hard to see, just on the face of it, how it works. But my reaction is all ideas are worth investigating,\u201d Young was saying Thursday. \u201cIt is sufficiently hare-brained to be worth looking at.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHare-brained,\u201d by the way, was this typist\u2019s description of a Ticats-Argos co-habitation, and certainly the plan has its not-so-ideal aspects. But if you glimpse the picture currently being sketched for the venues of the 2015 Pan Am Games, you\u2019ll know \u201chare-brained\u201d lines up impressively next to \u201cill-conceived\u201d and \u201cso intensely illogical it could only happen on a garbage dump on a non-existent LRT line on a campus of the University of Toronto.\u201d So, \u201chare-brained\u201d? I like its chances!\n<\/p>\n
\nThe business case is a no brainer. Both teams need new revenue-generating homes. There\u2019s federal and provincial cash committed to build a stadium somewhere in the Golden Horseshoe for use in the 2015 Pan Am Games, multi-millions that won\u2019t come around again anytime soon. Civic leaders in ham-handed Hamilton are currently fumbling the ball while a highly-paid facilitator, Michael Fenn, searches for alternatives to a proposal, panned by the Ticats, to build the stadium on a low-visibility, parking-challenged site best accessed by charter chopper on the former steel city\u2019s west harbour.\n<\/p>\n
\nAnd dual tenancy has worked well enough for the NFL\u2019s New York Giants and Jets that they\u2019re getting ready to move into their second co-habitation in the New Jersey swamplands. Not that every owner doesn\u2019t dream of sole domain.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI covet BMO Field,\u201d said Young of the home of Toronto FC, when asked if there was a model for his field of dreams. \u201cBMO was built largely with public funds but it was built in such a way that it\u2019s a single-use stadium. It seems very wrong. A poor use of public funds. . . . But it\u2019s a relatively well-done project and it was done relatively quickly in the right location. In that sense, I admire BMO.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nIn addition to taking a shot at the big smoke\u2019s pension-plan profiteers, Young, who says he has lost millions since buying the Ticats in 2003, spent a few minutes pontificating about a theoretical day when his team and the Argos play in a stadium at, say, Oakville\u2019s Bronte Park. There\u2019s a GO station nearby. There\u2019s plenty of tailgating real estate not far from the QEW and 403 and 407. It sounds like football-fan paradise, not that there aren\u2019t downsides.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe distances are far enough that the risk you\u2019re running is you don\u2019t actually serve either audience properly,\u201d Young said. \u201cThe Argo fans don\u2019t go because it\u2019s too far from Toronto. The Hamilton fans don\u2019t go because it\u2019s too far from Hamilton.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nYoung, to counter that, has also talked about the necessity of turning the Ticats into a regional concern, drawing fans from Welland to Waterloo. So whether they actually play in Hamilton, or on its outskirts, or 20 minutes down the road, what, really, is the difference?\n<\/p>\n
\nIn any event, you\u2019ll notice Young didn\u2019t say, \u201cOn a cold day in hell.\u201d That\u2019s because, thanks in part to the peerless work of my colleague Dave Perkins and other conscientious truth tellers, there are powerful types suddenly recognizing the embarrassment looming if a poorly-conceived Pan Am bid book is followed to its letter. (An example: The current plan calls for U of T\u2019s perfectly good internationally-certified Bloor Street track stadium to sit idle while the Pan Am folks build another track venue that would require a multi-millon-dollar conversion to CFL standards. Far better, as many have pointed out, to hold track at Varsity, then build the new stadium for Pan Am soccer with CFL-ready dimensions).\n<\/p>\n
\nLet\u2019s not even discuss the U of T swimming pool built on the backs of students on the garbage dump on the due-in-2030 Scarborough light-rail line. Note to Pan Am CEO Ian Troop and chair Roger Garland: You gents have certainly inherited this flawed script, but you\u2019ll wear the bomb if you don\u2019t get it to re-write, and quickly.\n<\/p>\n
\nSurely Young knows, with the entire schmozzle due for revision, he can\u2019t be too choosy. As much as the Ticats and Argos are rivals, Young has an ally in David Braley, the owner of the Argos and the B.C. Lions who on Thursday was appointed an Ottawa senator. Braley has refused to comment because he\u2019s on the Pan Am board, but one assumes he has sufficient connections to make \u201chare-brained\u201d happen. Whatever happens, here\u2019s hoping for a higher-minded end to the dimness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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