This is a column I wrote for the Daily Cougar after a referendum on a new basketball arena failed. A new referendum was put on the ballot the following year, which passed.


Is McLane the devil or Bud Adams?
By R. Alex Whitlock
UH Daily Cougar
November 12, 1999

This may come as a surprise to many, especially to those who are familiar with my ideology, but I voted for the downtown basketball arena. Typically, I oppose corporate welfare. I consider myself pro-business, but that belief is a product of my greater support of the free market -- and that means curtailing over-regulation and corporate welfare both. In addition to that, I have a real problem with cities paying off owners just to keep sports teams. Ultimately, however, I felt that paying off Alexander was the least of existing evils. When we kissed Bud Adams good bye, it wasn't even a couple of years before we were clamoring for a new team.

Watching the Oilers leave was a very expensive proposition for a number of people, even though it was gratifying to tell Bud Adams to kiss off. To be sure, Leslie Alexander is no Bud Adams. Adams never delivered anything but disappointment. Alexander has delivered a total of five championships: two for the Rockets and three for the Comets. Alexander has been aggressively attracting star talent and promoting the team as well as the city. He has also given some charity to the city.
Those thoughts don't make my vote feel any less dirty. The politics of sports has gotten out of control. The free market no longer exists there because of rotten deals like the one I voted for.

You see, in a free market world, the players' salaries would keep increasing until it reaches a ceiling. At some point, it would not be profitable for owners to keep raising prices to pay for the latest thing out of college.
At some point (in a non-subsidized free market) the owners would not see a return on their $50 million investment in Joe Rookie as more and more fans refuse to pay $75 for a ticket in the upper, upper mezzanine. Unfortunately, they've found a way for the taxpayers to pick up the check.

As taxpayers pay for arenas, the owners can free up money to pay the ridiculous player salaries that we've come to expect. How do they do this? They threaten to leave. Pay up, or we leave town and it'll make you look bad. You don't think a team leaving a city looks bad? A Canadian friend once described his perception of Houston as a has-been city that went dry with the oil bust.
This was obviously the case since the Oilers left our fair city for Nashville. So pay up or good-bye.

This amounts to little less than extortion.

So do we give in to blackmail? That's what every city is being asked. Some defy the extortionist and pay the non-monetary price. We lost the Houston Oilers for that very reason. We might have lost the Astros as well. However, Drayton McLane Jr. was losing money because all across the nation, competing teams were being subsidized and it was impossible to compete? unless we built him a stadium. Bud Adams was making a handsome profit. So once again an owner is threatening to leave unless we build a stadium. As far as I know, Alexander is not losing money like McLane was (basketball has salary caps in place to prevent runaway bidding), but he has delivered a sense of pride to this city that had not been seen before and has not been seen since.

Is it worth paying him (by way of a stadium) millions of dollars for that pride? The voters ultimately decided no. I don't regret my decision to give the devil his due, but I sure am proud of the city that took a stand against the athletic extortion epidemic that has robbed this country of its senses.