News Flash for Mike Lupica:
The West Side Stadium has been designed to be expanded by pushing out the west wall towards 12th Avenue. This expansion is going to be funded by privately raised monies. You would know this if you would bother to actually follow the news.

End of News Flash.

If you want to read the sharpest, most interesting sports columnist in New York, pick up a copy of the New York Times on the days Selena Roberts has a column. She knows her stuff and she writes like a dream. Read her column of Sunday, April 10th. It is not related to the stadium, obviously, so I'm not going to post it, but here is a link to the page on the web site of The New York Times.

Roberts is what Lupica was a generation ago: a breath of fresh air.Now, Lupica is anything but a breath of fresh air, at least when it comes to the stadium.

In Mike Lupica's world, everything related to the stadium is reduced to black and white, no grays involved. You are either good (you oppose the stadium) or you are evil (you support the stadium.) I suppose that reductive world view is convenient, considering Lupica's style of writing, in which he must make a witty, pithy, definitive comment on nuanced, complex issues.

So if Sheldon Silver and/or Joseph Bruno become convinced that the stadium is a good long term investment for the city and the state, they are merely "political toadies."

Is Charles Rangel a "political toady?" Rangel clearly has wrestled with the question, and his support is nuanced, yet real- the type of position that defies the typical five or six word summation from King Lupica.

 

More fun information on the West Side Stadium, whose price goes up every day, like Ortiz's numbers against the Yankees:

The stadium that Mayor Money and Doctoroff want to build for the Jets isn't big enough to be the Olympic Stadium.

In Atlanta, home of the '96 Games, they built an Olympic stadium and then scaled it down into Turner Field.

We're building the football stadium first, for the oh-so-needy Woodman Johnson.

Then, if New York beats the odds and beats out Paris and London and the rest of them, they do ANOTHER construction job to make the thing bigger for 2012.

And after THAT, they do another construction job to make it back into just a football palace for the Woodman.

Is this a great city, or what?

By the way, I love the fact that every time we see a design of what the retractable-roof stadium is going to look like, it never ever has the roof closed.

Looks sweet, too.

But how many times a year do you think that roof is going to be open?

It's all part of the come-on.

All part of the con.

More fun information on the West Side Stadium, whose price goes up every day, like Ortiz's numbers against the Yankees:

The stadium that Mayor Money and Doctoroff want to build for the Jets isn't big enough to be the Olympic Stadium.

In Atlanta, home of the '96 Games, they built an Olympic stadium and then scaled it down into Turner Field.

We're building the football stadium first, for the oh-so-needy Woodman Johnson.

Then, if New York beats the odds and beats out Paris and London and the rest of them, they do ANOTHER construction job to make the thing bigger for 2012.

And after THAT, they do another construction job to make it back into just a football palace for the Woodman.

Is this a great city, or what?

By the way, I love the fact that every time we see a design of what the retractable-roof stadium is going to look like, it never ever has the roof closed.

Looks sweet, too.

But how many times a year do you think that roof is going to be open?

It's all part of the come-on.

All part of the con.

And if Sheldon Silver and Joe Bruno go into the tank for Mayor Money and the outgoing governor on this, then they come up as two more political toadies of this city, and nothing more.