[troutman]

Many people are praising the fan who passionately blasted COG last night. This blogger says her rant missed the point.

http://deadspin.com/fan-wants-to-spe...ium=socialflow

Ronda Pearson, a 40-year-old nurse from Phoenix, blasted Glendale mayor Jerry Weiers and other government officials for voiding the contract, a legally questionable move that puts the Coyotes’ future up in the air. She decided to make it about financial support, which was precisely the wrong tack to take.

Pearson gave an interview to Sportsnet, in which she hit the same points: the city isn’t supporting the franchise. She couldn’t be more wrong. Glendale—or more specifically, Glendale taxpayers, which Pearson, as a resident of Phoenix, is not—are supporting the Coyotes to the tune of $15 million a year. The city has lost more than $14 million over the first two years of the deal.

It is frustratingly backward that Pearson is being cast as some sort of populist hero, when it’s really the politicians of Glendale who are attempting to fight back against the public-funding blackmail that sports leagues and teams have perpetrated almost unopposed across the nation over the last few decades. It says something depressing about America that we take it as a matter of course that tax dollars should go to providing real estate to the ultra-rich so they can become even richer.

It says even more about fandom. And that’s what Pearson is, after all: a fan. She doesn’t want her hockey team to leave town. That’s a sympathetic position, and I do actually feel for her. But fandom blinds. The only honest argument she could have made would go along these lines: I want the Coyotes in Arizona, and I do not care about the real and opportunity costs required to keep them here.