THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 9, 1996 TAG: 9601090329
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Go away.
Is that what Hampton Roads' political and business leaders, by dragging their feet for more than two months, are really telling Bernie and Lonie Glieberman to do with their Canadian Football League team?
Maybe that's not the case. But you don't need a degree in reading between the lines to figure out that those who could make life easy for the Pirates don't seem to care if they play here.
Clues? Well, as staff writer Harry Minium reported Sunday, the Pirates, despite repeated attempts at negotiation, remain leaseless, which also means not one Foreman Field brick has been retouched with opening day six months away. Not promising.
By relation, the CFL's directors, with schedules and other business pressing, are being backed into a corner over what to do with their latest foundering franchise. Their decision on whether to approve the club's move, which could come Thursday, might not be good for the Pirates.
The Gliebermans have hit a lot of stone in Old Dominion University athletic director Jim Jarrett, who holds the stadium's keys, and Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim, whose deal-making history shows he could get a lease and the $400,000 stadium renovation done if he considered it a top priority.
And, too, the sporting public, under absolutely no urgency to buy season tickets, has responded with underwhelming enthusiasm. Keeping in character, it remains very content to look closely before it leaps, if at all.
It's that blasted baggage, isn't it? All those loose ends, financial embroilments and niggling details left over from the Gliebermans' Shreveport getaway. Ironically, many of that city's proud football fans are about to get the wish they wished for long ago - a CFL team not owned and operated by the Gliebermans.
The irony for Hampton Roads, now that it has a football team for the taking, is that it seems to want the same thing. So maybe it is closing its eyes and hoping the Pirates straggle off to haunt some other area.
Sure, anybody in government will tell you pro football sounds like a great idea, but under the right conditions. Conservative, spotless ones.
That bogus eight-man football idea that floated into the mist last year went away before it could be spurned, which it would have been.
The Gliebermans, total strangers with a team and league of rickety reputation, could pack too powerful a risk for the political palate.
They've surely taken that hint. But the Pirates have no place else to go. That was a slight problem in October when Lonie Glieberman stormed into Hampton Roads shooting from the lip. It's a huge problem now because of the deadline crunch. They either stick it out here or they fold.
Personally, I still can't understand why Bernie Glieberman didn't do the latter long ago with this amazing money-losing hobby, but then I'm no business visionary, either. He swears that the CFL is going to hit and hit big in the United States. OK, fine.
Eyes seem to be looking to Richmond, and Gov. George Allen, to make all problems vanish and usher the Pirates into Foreman Field, trumpets blaring. I'd be surprised if that happens.
Yes, Allen is a football guy and reportedly is looking into clearing state money for the stadium renovations, thus smoothing away many wrinkles. Well, I'm a transplanted Yankee, but I've been around long enough to know Virginia spends money like it still has its first tax dollar ever collected under glass.
Suppose Allen cracked the rainy-day piggy bank or something for a quick $400,000. How do you suppose that would play, for one example, in the state's halls of academia, where quality professors are stepping on each other in their haste to leave for more lucrative halls?
What I take from all this is that T.J. Morgan, the local football fanatic whose CFL expansion dreams were burst by the Pirates, probably ought to keep his business plan warm. Much more stonewalling of the Gliebermans and Morgan might wind up the only show in town. by CNB