Columnist Dean Juipe: City should court NFL’s Cardinals

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, May 2, 2000 | 1:54 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

With the mayor himself expressing the obvious, Las Vegas has lost its enthusiasm for enticing a National Basketball Association or National Hockey League franchise to relocate here.

As Oscar Goodman said last week, the city has not demonstrated the type of resolve -- and financial commitment -- it takes to attract a team that's dissatisfied with its current situation. That assessment comes only a few short weeks after Goodman led a crusade designed to stimulate interest in landing a team that might be anxious to be swept off its feet and curious about a new home.

Before the NBA's Houston Rockets or Charlotte Hornets, or the NHL's Calgary Flames, Ottawa Senators or Edmonton Oilers could conduct an exploratory inquiry regarding Las Vegas, the city has retracted its feelers. While those teams could still relocate here and play at the Thomas & Mack Center, any scenario that does not involve a new arena is highly unlikely.

That's just as well, of course, given Las Vegas' reluctance to support live sports and its inability to mount a cohesive effort to attract a basketball or hockey team.

The very fact that those teams would be playing 40-plus home games should preclude even the most optimistic Las Vegas supporter from pushing for a team. Forty games spread across six months exceeds the typical Las Vegan's attention span.

But there is a team in a major league that's out there that would fit and succeed in Las Vegas if the city could rush to make the appropriate accommodations.

If Las Vegas really had a sports-minded entrepreneur who was thinking big, this would be the time to roll out the welcome mat for the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals.

The Cardinals, who have played at Sun Devil Stadium near Phoenix since the franchise moved there from St. Louis in 1988, are ready to move again. They have become testy with the political infrastructure and the state's unwillingness to finance a proposed new stadium, which has a $331 million price tag.

Last month the Arizona House of Representatives voted against appropriating that money, although its Senate believes the best solution is to send the matter to voters. Apparently it will be voted on in November.

An early opinion poll determined the item is unlikely to pass.

There -- right there, just 275 miles down the road from us -- is a team Las Vegas would support in a league -- the only league -- that actually fascinates the city's sports fans.

Eight home games is something the community not only could handle but would thoroughly enjoy. While the success of an NBA or NHL team here would be an extremely iffy proposition, the NFL is another matter.

Of course the missing ingredients may preclude the Cardinals from moving here. For starters, there is no stadium immediately available; for the sake of argument, none is planned either.

But that's the direction Goodman should take in lobbying for a sports team. He should be thinking football in an outdoor stadium with 60,000 seats, and forget this notion of an NBA or NHL team coming here.

The rest of us already have.