THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602170003
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PAT LACKEY
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Perhaps Hampton Roads can obtain a National Basketball Association team without having to wait until seven different cities cooperate.
Everyone knows Hampton Roads needs a 20,000-seat arena to attract an NBA team. Small minds have assumed that the only way to get one is for Hampton Roads cities to agree on a location and then to share in paying for construction.
Norfolk already has agreed on a site: downtown Norfolk. Virginia Beach would agree on a site, as well: Virginia Beach. And so on.
If money grew on trees, each city could build an arena and the Hampton Roads team could play Sunday games in one city, Monday games in another; you get the idea. Since Hampton Roads has a major city for each day of the week, the plan could make sense - if money grew on trees.
Regrettably, Hampton Roads can't afford seven arenas, and getting all seven cities to agree to award the arena to any one city may prove impossible.
So forget it. Throw in the towel. We're a minor-league town. We'll never think big if thinking big means thinking together.
But wait! What if a single arena were built on a barge? If Newport News Shipbuilding can build a nuclear aircraft carrier, it can build a one-piece, arena-shaped barge, with 20,000 seats. We're talking lots of jobs.
Higher prices might be charged for seats from which fans could fish during halftime. Imagine the excitement when the public address announcer informed fans: ``The gentleman in seat 111-C just caught a 13-pound bass!''
Moving the barge after every game would get expensive, so the season might be divided into sevenths. Straws would be drawn to see which city got which seventh. Tourists might pay to ride the barge from city to city and meet the players.
It is not certain that the cities could agree on a name for the team. So for the one-seventh of the year that the barge was docked in Suffolk, the team would be the Suffolk something - whatever Suffolk residents wanted.
Are you seeing the beauty of this? No regional cooperation is required. Perhaps we could have the Suffolk Suns, the Chesapeake Clippers, the Virginia Beach Beacons, the Portsmouth Currents, the Norfolk Compasses, the Newport News Buoys and the Hampton Harpoons.
Each city would provide its own uniforms, so no consensus on colors would be required. Cheerleaders would be clothed in a manner determined appropriate by each city. Considerable revenue might be produced selling those sea-sickness clips that go on the ear, and the home-court advantage would be formidable as visiting players struggled to find their sea legs.
Sportscasters would suffer some confusion. One might announce, ``Last night, the Chesapeake Clippers, who the week before were the Suffolk Suns, if not the Newport News Buoys, blew by the New York Knicks after star center Patrick Ewing suffered mal de mer during the third quarter and begged to be taken ashore.''
With the arena-barge plan, the name Hampton Roads would be lost, but the name wouldn't matter anyway, since no two cities would be cooperating. We'd simply be known as the Seven Cities. Games would be played on the Seven Cities Arena-Barge - SCAB, for short.
If the arena-barge idea falls through, a really big arena hot-air balloon might do the trick. Games would be played away - or up, up and away. With balloon or barge, areawide cooperation is unnecessary. Don't let any ballyhooing spokesman for regionalism try to tell you otherwise. MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer.
by CNB