San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
City to blame for stadium mess
Sez Me …
Apparently the Ham & Eggers Real Estate Co., City Hall slum lords who brought — and bought — us the Ash Street building, have allowed SDCCU Stadium to sink (literally, in parts) to new lows.
And here we thought they didn’t have anywhere to go but up.i didn’t like it, but understood San Diego State announcing its home football games would be moved to Carson for its 2020 and ’21 seasons while its new stadium was being built and the old one razed. There would be no other facility here in which to play before fans (again, thanks to 1970s Ham & Eggers).
But my interest was really piqued when I saw that, if there is a 2020 season played this fall — as now planned — their home games also will be in Carson.
Why?
In California, there can be no fans, so why not play 2020 games in Mission Valley (which was their plan as of August)? After all, SDSU now
owns the stadium, which we’ve learned will be demolished sooner than expected.
Why? Why go pay rent in Carson this year?
I had speculated SDCCU has become unplayable. Seeing that, an engineer who knows the layout tells me the stadium’s structural concrete is deteriorating via corrosion and it would be an “endless Band-aid project. … The cancer had set in. It’s a sick puppy.”
The city just let it all go to hell.
So I wasn’t surprised when I asked Aztecs Athletic Director J.D. Wicker why he prefers Carson this season.
“The city basically stopped taking care of the stadium once the coronavirus hit,” he said (although repair has been lax for 30 years). “It would have required us to invest a lot of money in the building. So it’s cost effective for us to go on with demolition sooner.
“The elevators didn’t work, the escalators didn’t work, there was cat feces in the press box. It hasn’t been cleaned. No equipment has been run in six months.”
That makes sense. It’s easy to blame it on the city. But the city is to blame. It’s to blame for all of this rotten stadium business.
“Another thing,” Wicker says. “So we decide to play in the stadium and halfway into the season a major system goes down. What we’re doing is not ideal, but it’s what we have to do.”
With Petco out of the question, J.D. said a while back he saw no options in San Diego, because of TV, facilities, etc. I thought they could play at USD, if approved.
“All COVID protocols will be set up in Carson,” he said. “Here (not this season) we would have to find a concessionaire. We would have been scrambling. It’s just easier access with Dignity Health (Carson). Easier for TV, all the elements.
“I want our student-athletes playing in a football stadium, not in a building with different parts sinking at a different rate.”
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No football game should end in a tie. …
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Raise your hand if your voting choice ever has been changed by a political ad. …
I’m becoming loyal to the Loyal. Maybe they should change their name to Noble. …
Wear. A. Mask.