There was a time when it was fairly common for NFL franchises to share the stadium that they played in with a MLB team, the greatest number of NFL teams to do that according to footballgeography.comwas: ”In 1971, 17 of the NFL’s 26 teams shared a stadium with a MLB team.” That was then, and this is now, so that the only NFL franchise that currently shares a stadium with a MLB team is in Oakland, and that is it. While there are perhaps another 10 NFL franchises that share their stadium with a collegiate football team, the rest of the NFL franchises are standalone stadiums, to which the NFL season consists for most home teams typically of two preseason games and an additional eight regular season games, with no further games guaranteed unless that NFL team makes the playoffs. The fact that millions upon millions is spent on the construction and the maintenance of these stadiums, it would seem that logically that there should be an incumbent duty upon the envisioning and construction of these stadiums to consider the overall utility of the project at its inception.
To make matters worse, and probably the most significant reason, why so many coliseums are built with the purpose of only glorifying the NFL, is the fact that it is estimated by Mark Fabiani, special counsel to the San Diego Chargers that: “The average subsidy in the NFL is about 65 percent of the costs of a stadium is paid for by the public.” It is a truism that one spends other person’s money differently that one spends their own money, after all, if one can fleece the public and get a large group of people, that is to say the taxpayers of a certain community, to foot the bill for the so-called “greater good” of creating a stadium solely meant to be used for NFL games, it will be done.
While there are many good and valid reasons why it is senseless to build expensive state-of-the-art stadiums which sit basically unused for virtually every day of the year, it is a real tragedy that in many major cities the NFL could avail themselves of sharing their stadium with a MLB team, which would make the overall building proposition logically more cost-effective and fairer to the taxpayer who is left stuck subsidizing some of the richest men in the entire world. The fact of the matter is that the technology and experience today needed to create a successful multi-purpose stadium is far greater than back in 1971, yet we have gone in the exact opposite direction and the stadiums built in the present day are the most expensive behemoths on record.
It’s bad enough that out in the real world, that there is mega division between the truly rich and powerful in comparison to the common American, what makes it even worse, is to take America’s most popular sport and instead of offering the taxpayer fair entertainment to soothe his psyche after another week of drudgery mix with frustration, we instead, empty his pockets out, figuring him for a sucker, because, well, he is.