SDHornet said:
BTW, with the Timbers owner being forced to sell and new PSU administration on hand, any chance you guys get out of that rec center and back into Providence Park?
If only the Timbers owner was being forced to sell.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/11/23/will-merritt-paulson-prune-the-thorns/
Matters get complicated when the commissioner is fishing buddies with Daddy Warbucks.
Put it this way… you’re going to buy the Thorns and turn around and pay rent to Merritt Paulson? In the rules of modern sports, the only teams paying rent are in Top 5-to-7 markets. In NY and LA and Chicago, the TV money more than pays for the rent. Not for our markets, though.
It’s not for lack of effort from Timbers fans as to trying to push Paulson out the door, depending on what you think of $9.2 million pledged by fans to buy him out. It’ll take way more than that, however. And, frankly, I’m more of a Timbers fan, but have been really selective about what I attended last year. There’s been a semi-active boycott in place since September 2021.
Even if MP goes, there’s the matter of who’s buying. Hey, MP decided he’d have a football game this year, and it just so happened that Oregon State playing Montana State sold the place out. Which brings us to problem 2, something from the oldies catalog.
https://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/john_canzano/2014/10/canzano_guess_which_local_coll.html
All the talk about Hillsboro Stadium as a semi-regular or regular home for Portland State started after that column published. Truth is that the attendance was headed down well before PSU left Providence Park. Considering that there was zero effect on attendance from the 2015 playoff team (especially compared to the D-2 days), it’s kind of a surprise PSU held on as long as it did. One thing to note: the story that has come out recently is that the breaking point came when Paulson’s org told PSU that they couldn’t store equipment in the stadium during the season anymore. PSU chose not to say anything about that when they announced the move, so while it was realistically a force-out, that’s not how it read in the media at the time. Seems like a recurring MO for Paulson. HOWEVER, I think the bigger point is that PSU has to find a way to draw crowds first.