By Noah Dawson
It looks like council member Howard Smith was right in his prediction during the time capsule event in September: we are now “the Sod Poodle capital of the world.” With baseball back in the headlines though, I'm still not enthusiastic about the ordeal. In fact, with this latest announcement, I'm even less pleased with the whole ordeal. The legal questions about the stadium have yet to reach a final conclusion, the economics still make no sense, and the team name and logo are pathetic.
As far as the legal questions go, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a legal expert and don't know all of the ins and outs of the situation. Basically, though, local activist Claudette Smith, who has filed an injunction to halt construction, contends that the city violated state law in the process of approving the stadium. Her legal battle is not yet over, but the questions she raised are very valid, and they still need answers.
Even if the project is legal, it's a bad investment. Taxpayer funded stadiums are not the economic miracles supporters claim they are. As I've pointed out before, both sides of the American political aisle agree they are poor investments. John Oliver, who leans to the left, dedicated an episode of his show to the topic, and Reason magazine, a pro-capitalist libertarian magazine, has written about the topic. Even worse, cities compete to build crazier, more elaborate, and more expensive stadiums to attract teams, digging the financial hole deeper, racing to put themselves in horrible debt situations. Only in politics is such a foolish race to see who can offer the worst deal possible. Our city is sadly no different, considering the astronomical price tag we're paying.
On a lighter note, the team name really is Sod Poodles, a name for prairie dogs that was largely unknown to Amarillo until this whole ordeal. Some have defended the silly name, saying it's in line with other teams in the league. Aside from the fact that we don't need any more embarrassments than what our council has given us over the past year, it's still not a good name, even if being silly was the goal. Sod Poodles aren't part of our cultural identity. The term is not representative of Amarillo, even in a silly, self deprecating way. To make things worse though, the mascot on the logo. It doesn't even look like a prairie dog. It’d call it Picasso-esque, but that would be insulting to Picasso. The snout is not the right shape, and the mouth is, for some reason, directly under the eye. In one version, the head is sticking out of a hole, but without context, it just looks like another impressionistic abstract blunder. In another version, he's in the position to be drawing a gun from his politically-correct gun-free belt, making his pose look more like an awkward attempt at drawing a Michael Jackson dance move.