What's your price?
Blue and gold traded for stadium
JESSE BEACH
David Asper wants to buy the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I’ll repeat that. David Asper wants to buy the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. David Asper, the eldest son of the late Izzy Asper and executive vicepresident of the CanWest Global Communications Corporation, wishes to purchase one of the oldest sports teams in Canada, an organization that has persevered and flourished through 76 years of community ownership. That’s right, community ownership. The Bombers are not owned by any single person or corporation, they are owned collectively by the community which supports them. The Bombers are owned by every fan who sits through three-hour games in 20 below weather; they are owned by those who continued to buy game tickets during the disastrous Jeff Reinbolt campaign in the late ’90s, and yes, the Bombers are even owned by those who only cheer on the team when they are winning.
This is a team that began in 1930 as the Winnipeg Football Club, that won their first championship in 1935 as the first Western team to win the Grey Cup. Since then, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, as termed by Vince Leah in 1933, have made 24 Grey Cup appearances, taking home 10 of them including a dynastic run of four Grey Cup victories in a span of only five years from 1958 to 1962.
However, David Asper is threatening to take the ownership of this legacy from us with a tempting bribe. Asper does not wish to buy the Bombers from the real owners, the community, he wishes us to give it to him if he contributes to the building of a new stadium, two-thirds of which must still be covered by the provincial and federal governments. You may have seen the fictionalized drawing of this new stadium in papers recently. Asper unveiled it before submitting his proposal to the Bomber organization, and of course it caused a serious debate within the city.
Should we spring for a dome? Asper threatens to end 76 years of community ownership and the community’s response was immediate — greed. Mine was also immediate — disgust. Disgust that my fellow fans, the people that I live and die with every summer and fall cheering on the Bombers, would be so quick to end a 76-year legacy of Bombers pride. This is a team that has been through hard times in the past, and the community has always stepped up to the plate, giving the organization roughly $10 million since 1996, according to Mayor Sam Katz. However, now that the team is on the upswing, starting to pull in profits, Asper suddenly wishes to take our team and we are about to let him. I had thought that this city bled blue and gold, but we are apparently willing to sell our souls for nicer seats.
Not that I have anything against David Asper: this man is a true fan who has supported this team as much as anyone. I remember when, after the 2005 Banjo Bowl in Winnipeg, Asper proceeded onto the field and began to berate the Bomber players for their apparently uninspired play; now that’s the kind of passion I love to see in prospective ownership. And after all, what’s the big deal about being a loyal, community-owned team anyway?
It’s not as if Asper would sell the Bombers, he does love the Bombers. My largest concern is what private ownership can do to the running of a sports team. Look at what the Gliebermans did to the late Ottawa Renegades franchise; they purchased the team, made many unconventional promotions to increase profits, and drove it in to the ground within three years. Though I appreciate the thought, and I am almost positive that Asper has the best of intentions, I am personally unwilling to part with a 76-year legacy of community ownership for the flashy illustration I saw in recent papers. Call me oldfashioned, but I like the idea of being a community-owned team versus the idea of cheering on someone else’s latest financial purchase. With all due respect to David Asper and all the support he and his family have shown the Blue Bomber organization over the years, I would like to end on one final note: get your hands off my football team.
Jesse Beach is a third-year English student.
