MLS leader speaks, but message is duplicitous
Don Garber, the commissioner of Major League Soccer, has kept a low profile since Crew SC owner Anthony Precourt announced in mid-October that he was thinking of taking his talents to Austin.
Garber literally disappeared when he blew off a television interview that was scheduled to be conducted by
Alexi Lalas before the second leg of Eastern Conference final two weeks ago. Garber excused himself by saying he was stuck in traffic. (Even Bud Selig must have had a laugh at that one.)
Garber stuck his head out above the hedge on Friday, when he was forced to deliver the annual State of the League address, and face the international media, on the eve of the MLS Cup final in Toronto. Half of his news conference turned out to be about the Crew, which was the last thing he wanted to discuss.
Garber’s talking points carried to two themes:
1. The breakdown in negotiations between MLS/Precourt and Columbus city leaders
is entirely the fault of the city leaders. MLS/ Precourt insists on pursuing “parallel paths” in Columbus and Austin. To local leaders, “parallel paths” is just another way of saying “bidding war,” and they want Austin taken off the table. That is not going to happen, Garber said:
“There is talk of owners coming together (but) Anthony is not interested in selling. There is talk of stadium opportunities, which I think is intriguing. We need to all get back together and see if there’s an opportunity to determine two possibilities.”
Translation: Fair offers for local ownership do not matter in this case. Nor do generous offers of Downtown land for a stadium. Columbus needs to get back to the table to discuss how Austin is a terrific MLS MLS commissioner Don Garber speaks during a state of the league news conference on Friday before the MLS Cup final in Toronto. Crew SC’s potential move to Austin, Texas, was a hot topic.
market.
2. Columbus has been historically inhospitable — especially in its corporate support — as home for the Crew. Garber said:
“The level of municipal public support (for expansion teams) is significant, and we haven’t seen that in Columbus. … Maybe Columbus should look at what Detroit and Nashville
and Cincinnati and Sacramento are doing and I think maybe if this was turned from where it was to where it needs to be, maybe the Crew might have been more successful.”
Translation: To hell with history, this is all about supply and demand. There are expansion cities that will fill stadiums for a few years and, when
they stop filling stadiums, their teams can be moved to other expansion cities. I am not the first to say this, but MLS looks a lot like a Ponzi scheme, and the Crew’s pants-on-fire is but a new feature of it.
Lalas posed the most pointed question to Garber.
Lalas: “Don, do you think it’s disingenuous from you as the league, or from Anthony Precourt, to not have made it public that this move was contractually based at the time of the sale?”
Background: Hunt Sports Group turned down a local buyer and instead sold the team back to the league — which in turn sold it to Precourt, at a profit. The sales agreement included an escape clause for Austin. For more than four years, nobody in Columbus was aware that Precourt and the league were Authentically Austin.
Is that disingenuous? Garber: “I don’t think so, Alexi … ”
Pause now and think about that. Goodness, these people.
Last week, as Precourt was unveiling his stadium plan for a piece of parkland in Austin, the big parallel-path news in Columbus was the rediscovery of the “Modell Law” (h/t state Rep. Mike Duffey of Worthington). In short, if the Crew wants to leave, it has six months to give locals a chance to buy the team.
Litigation looms, and with litigation comes discovery — and with discovery comes the only truth anyone will get out of this craven league and its band of pusillanimous “investor-operators.”