Enough with the freaking out already

What the fuck is this, bad idea week? First we discovered that somebody thinks we want to know the answer to the question "I wonder what the life of a nationally ranked women's high school basketball team is like" is. Then Fitzy floated his horrible idea for a community-owned Stockton Thunder. And now the City Council has decided to one up Fitz and is considering buying the team outright in addition to buying out the remainder of its contract with IFG.

On the surface it seems like an OK idea. The deal with IFG continues to hamper the Arena's ability to even come close to turn a profit and a buyout clause in the IFG contract would allow Thunder owner Michael Reinsdorf to require the city purchase the teams anyway should they pursue a buyout (we've mentioned the shadiness of this whole relationship before right? Really fucking shady). Plus, if the city were to buy the teams, it would only be for the short term. Yesterday, our main reason against a community owned team was the the team's long-term profitability. That wouldn't be the case with this deal.

But it's still a bad idea just for timing's sake. This council seems to have a penchant for bad timing and going through with the first option would only piss off, well, pretty much everybody. Cops would be pissed because, if we have the money to buy a fucking hockey team, we should have enough to finally give them their raises and shut fuck up about layoffs. Already laid off city employees would be fuming. City services would be royally pissed after getting reorganized earlier this month for budgetary reasons. And most important of all (at least to Mike Fitzgerald), what about the dying urban forest!?

And the thing is, they'd all be justified. Especially with the less expensive option B (subcontracting out venue management to a 3rd party) sitting right there. All we have to do for that option is wait for the teams to be sold. We're still having a hard time fathoming why everybody's jumping at the opportunity to buy/save the Thunder. We said it earlier this week, they're not going fucking anywhere. Everybody needs to slow their fucking roll and realize we're talking about a 4-year old minor league hockey team (well, 4 years in Stockton at least) in a brand new arena, and not the fucking Moon Grizzlies (h/t KSK). Jesus, and I thought Kings fan's freaking out was overkill.

David Siders has the specifics of both proposed options up on his bad ass blog. It involves a lot of math and numbers and I was a journalism major so I'll let you figure it all out.