Tag: Qualcomm Stadium

New stadium ‘negotiations’ underway and other Aztec football tidbits

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The Mountain West Football Media Summit is underway in Las Vegas, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The most interesting SDSU football news of the day (OK, more like vague rumblings of the day) came out of San Diego.

One day after the SoccerCity folks unveiled the unfortunately-named #WaitForSD campaign — publicly pleading with MLS for an extension, as if their land deal is a book report on the Berlin Airlift — there was some SDSU-related movement on a couple of fronts.

Continue reading “New stadium ‘negotiations’ underway and other Aztec football tidbits”

SDSU just got a fighting chance to pursue its own vision for Mission Valley. It had better step up this time

‘Concrete tombstone’

Monday’s 5-4 vote by the San Diego City Council to kill a November special election did not kill SoccerCity dead. At least not yet. The FS Investors group could push forward with a new timeline and potentially put the same vision before voters in November 2018 — provided the MLS expansion deadline isn’t as hard as they’ve been letting on.

Similarly, Monday’s vote did not necessarily offer irrefutable proof that San Diego State University holds ample local political sway and you must appease it or suffer the consequences. This vote was likely as much about the Council’s Democratic majority wanting to dunk Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s head down in a urinal and hit flush for the second time in as many weeks.

But I’ll say this for old alma mater on the Mesa: Playing hardball has paid off so far.

Continue reading “SDSU just got a fighting chance to pursue its own vision for Mission Valley. It had better step up this time”

SDSU and Soccer City continue to skirmish but the war may be over

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I think we can all agree that what this world needed was more speculation and hot takes about San Diego State and Soccer City. Fortunately, I am here to oblige. Don’t all thank me at once.

But hey, at least today we have something approaching actual news to speculate about!

What does this mean? Reading the tea leaves, I think the death rattle of San Diego State’s anti-Soccer City insurgency is at hand.

Continue reading “SDSU and Soccer City continue to skirmish but the war may be over”

Five things learned from the new MLS stadium rendering(s)

Two exciting things happened today in SDSU’s quest to actually have a place to play football after the 2018 season that is not Patrick Henry High School!

The first happened on an aircraft carrier moored in San Diego Bay.
(Editor’s note: It’s the USS Midway ffs, show a little respect you damn hippies.)

The second happened on THE INTERNET, where soccercitysd.com – the splashy website of our MLS investor heroes – posted new stadium renderings. Well, if they aren’t new, at least I hadn’t seen them before. I think that counts as new.

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The Q is ours! Uh, so what should we do with the crumbling hulk?

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Remember that immediately irrelevant thing I wrote last week about stadium options? Sadly, we’re now in a post-Chargers world in San Diego and that conversation has to begin in earnest (as AKH covered).

Like most everyone I’m a bit stunned by all of this. I’m a lifelong, third-generation Chargers fan who is sad to lose our team. But pleased as punch to lose the Spanos family! I guess that puts me in good company because San Diego State has to be feeling similarly today. Check out this U-T article about SDSU’s experience as Qualcomm Stadium’s lesser tenant trying to deal with the Chargers.

As we talked about last week, Qualcomm Stadium is a dump. San Diego State attempted to do the following to make it less of a dump:

  • Upgrade video boards
  • Upgrade advertising boards
  • Improve wireless access

The Chargers didn’t want any part of it. It’s clear now that their plan all along was to make the stadium look as awful as possible and let everybody else do their work for them. Clearly, that plan worked spectacularly.

Continue reading “The Q is ours! Uh, so what should we do with the crumbling hulk?”