Cory Merrifield Can Live Without Subsidized Professional Sports? #wilfare
Shakopee Patch has a nice profile of Save the Vikes’ Cory Merrifield. It helps explain where the guy in coming from with his constant demands for other people’s money to subsidize his Vikings season tickets.
The most interesting part of the article to me was this quote:
Merrifield also remembers too well when the Minnesota North Stars hockey team left the state, in 1993, and he doesn’t want to see it happen again.
“I grew up playing hockey,” he said. “But after the North Stars left, I was done with hockey.”
He was done with hockey after the North Stars left? Life went on without a professional sports franchise subsidized by the public? Wow.
Were the Vikings to leave due to a lack of fan support, would life continue to go on for Merrifield? I have a hunch that he’s be just fine.
And, the public would be better off financially without the weight of $50 million/yr in debt payments to subsidize Vikings season ticket holders.
So, again, it comes down to a want vs. a need. Cory’s experience with the North Stars illustrates that he doesn’t really “need” 10 days a year of entertainment subsidized at a cost fo $5 million/game. But, if he truly “wants” it, he knows where he can send a check to make it happen.
