Guess Who’s Against the Jets’ Stadium Project

Who but the Big Loser Madison Square Garden

May 28,2004

There I was in my easy chair watching the Mets’ game, when abruptly the ugly image of Madison Square Garden and its master Cablevision popped up on the screen in a commercial commanding me to raise my voice against the building of the Jets’ Stadium.

Gee, I don’t think I’ll do that.

In spending the ton of money that tv commercials cost Madison Square Garden is obviously hitting the panic button: They’re wetting their pants over the prospect of the Final Four going to Jets’ Stadium. The reality is that the Garden will never get the Final Four, because the Garden is too small.The NCAA wants to make money, and there other locales that are simply bigger.

Personally, I can only say I wouldn’t want to see any such tournament in this travesty of a Garden. That’s because I worked in the old one.

I’m no architect, but just from having directed movie coverage there for Movietone News, I can tell you that the sightlines were far superior. The way it seems to me, the old Garden was designed vertically, and this one is designed horizontally.

The old one was conceived like an Ebbets Field or a Fenway Park – for the optimum pleasure of the spectators, as opposed to the Dolan approach, which is clearly for the optimum profits of Management.

When we used to shoot boxing, man, in the mezzanine you were looking straight down into the ring. I’m sure they have good locations for their cameras today, because tv is their business, but I hate to think where the customers are sitting.

I went there for a few events years ago. You’re sitting about a quarter of a mile away from the action, and I stopped going.

In a book that’s coming out by Murray Olderman, “Mingling With Lions,” this oldtime sportswriter and editor reports on a REGULAR SEASON Lakers game he attended as a guest of the management. He was stunned to see the price printed on the ticket they gave him: $1.150,00. I understand Dolan also charges something like that.

Excuse me, $1,150 to watch a basketball game?Not the World Series, not the Rose Bowl or the Super Bowl, but the game about which they say there’s no point in watching anything but the last two minutes, a meaningless (if the Knicks are playing) regular-season bouncy, bouncy ball-y game??

That’s the kind of thing Dolan and his cronies have been getting away with, as their Knicks team flops along a loser year after year after year.

If that commercial comes on again, just hit Muting and go to the refrigerator for a cold one.

– TMcM