And you were 100% wrong about it coming to fruition.
MBB Poll
- Thread starter HerdFan300
- Start date
Nor the specs, the bid process , or design, or project manager, or brick program, or.................................
You are correct. I was only right about the first 100 or so "done deal" baseball projects that the usual posters gushed over. Once again I, and plenty of others, warned that this deal was, yet again, going to end the same way.
And it would have, but for one man.
Big Jim Justice.
Let us review recent history.
For as long as I can remember, WVU has spewed out the lie that its athletics are "self-supporting". This is not true, and never has been. The actual numbers are reported to the IRS, and published by USA Today every year, in 2022-23, WVU got 8.45% of its budget, or $8,887,649, in state subsidy. This does NOT include things like maintenance, utilities, and other things that it charges off to the general budget. And, just for the record, I'm not picking on WVU. First, our percentage of subsidy is higher, and second, except for a few blue bloods, every program is taxpayer subsidized. I am making fun of the mind numbed robot Spamite fan base that ACTUALLY BELIEVES the idiocy that WVU athletics is not taxpayer funded.
So WVU (foolishly) joins the Big 2, Little 8. Problem. WVU was playing baseball in a lot behind its basketball arena that was inferior to what a good large HS would have in WV. Not up to Big 12 standards. So WVU needs a baseball stadium. But, having spend money it didn't have (story for another day, but WV taxpayers got soaked in that one too) to get out of the Leastleftovers, there was only one source of $$. WV taxpayers.
But the spew about being self-supporting.
So WVU and the Charleston politicians cooked up this elaborate deal. First, suddenly and for no reason, the DOH decided that Morgantown needed another exit. And, guess what, they just happened to need a "spoil area" (a place to dump debris from the construction). And, guess what, when they were all done, the spoil area looked just like a perfect place to build a baseball park. WV gas tax money did the excavation.
Not to the building. So they come up with the "TIF". Tax Increment Financing. Now, a TIF is a real thing. Works like this. Say you have an empty field. An empty field isn't worth much, and thus the taxes on it are low. So you make a deal with the government to build something on it, which will make it pay more taxes, but the taxes get diverted to pay for the construction costs. Fine. Of course, there is one problem. WVU doesn't pay taxes. So they make this TIF about a mall BESIDE the baseball park. The baseball park and the mall are unrelated to each other.
All they did was divert the taxes on this mall, which should go to the general treasury, to WVU for an unrelated baseball park. It was voodoo. WV taxpayer money for the WVU baseball park. And all of this to preserve the lie that WVU sports are "self-supporting", which they could have just paid for its above board and legally and 12 Marshall fans, and 9 old men that rail on talk radio would have complained, and no one else would have cared.
So MH, whose family is political, knows what is going on. He wants to raise a stink. So the players are MH, Kopp, Ollie (everything I touch turns to s***) Luck, and WVU president Mike Garrison. So they tell MH to STFU and in a couple of years we will figure stuff out for MU. So MH agrees. Then Ollie moves on from failure at WVU to being a failure at the NCAA office (later failing at the XFL after failing at the NCAA). Then Garrison is canned because the fake degrees for US senator's daughters program. Then Kopp dies.
Leaving MH holding the bag.
So there we are. MU is foiled yet again in its quest for a baseball park. (And, yes, I said so at the time, and yes, I was right.)
Then came the first MU graduate in decades to be governor. Big Jim Justice. Then came C****-19. The federal government threw millions at the states to keep the economy from tanking. Including money that the states could spend on literally anything. And Big Jim Justice used that money to build MU a baseball park.
Thanks Big Jim.
And it would have, but for one man.
Big Jim Justice.
Let us review recent history.
For as long as I can remember, WVU has spewed out the lie that its athletics are "self-supporting". This is not true, and never has been. The actual numbers are reported to the IRS, and published by USA Today every year, in 2022-23, WVU got 8.45% of its budget, or $8,887,649, in state subsidy. This does NOT include things like maintenance, utilities, and other things that it charges off to the general budget. And, just for the record, I'm not picking on WVU. First, our percentage of subsidy is higher, and second, except for a few blue bloods, every program is taxpayer subsidized. I am making fun of the mind numbed robot Spamite fan base that ACTUALLY BELIEVES the idiocy that WVU athletics is not taxpayer funded.
So WVU (foolishly) joins the Big 2, Little 8. Problem. WVU was playing baseball in a lot behind its basketball arena that was inferior to what a good large HS would have in WV. Not up to Big 12 standards. So WVU needs a baseball stadium. But, having spend money it didn't have (story for another day, but WV taxpayers got soaked in that one too) to get out of the Leastleftovers, there was only one source of $$. WV taxpayers.
But the spew about being self-supporting.
So WVU and the Charleston politicians cooked up this elaborate deal. First, suddenly and for no reason, the DOH decided that Morgantown needed another exit. And, guess what, they just happened to need a "spoil area" (a place to dump debris from the construction). And, guess what, when they were all done, the spoil area looked just like a perfect place to build a baseball park. WV gas tax money did the excavation.
Not to the building. So they come up with the "TIF". Tax Increment Financing. Now, a TIF is a real thing. Works like this. Say you have an empty field. An empty field isn't worth much, and thus the taxes on it are low. So you make a deal with the government to build something on it, which will make it pay more taxes, but the taxes get diverted to pay for the construction costs. Fine. Of course, there is one problem. WVU doesn't pay taxes. So they make this TIF about a mall BESIDE the baseball park. The baseball park and the mall are unrelated to each other.
All they did was divert the taxes on this mall, which should go to the general treasury, to WVU for an unrelated baseball park. It was voodoo. WV taxpayer money for the WVU baseball park. And all of this to preserve the lie that WVU sports are "self-supporting", which they could have just paid for its above board and legally and 12 Marshall fans, and 9 old men that rail on talk radio would have complained, and no one else would have cared.
So MH, whose family is political, knows what is going on. He wants to raise a stink. So the players are MH, Kopp, Ollie (everything I touch turns to s***) Luck, and WVU president Mike Garrison. So they tell MH to STFU and in a couple of years we will figure stuff out for MU. So MH agrees. Then Ollie moves on from failure at WVU to being a failure at the NCAA office (later failing at the XFL after failing at the NCAA). Then Garrison is canned because the fake degrees for US senator's daughters program. Then Kopp dies.
Leaving MH holding the bag.
So there we are. MU is foiled yet again in its quest for a baseball park. (And, yes, I said so at the time, and yes, I was right.)
Then came the first MU graduate in decades to be governor. Big Jim Justice. Then came C****-19. The federal government threw millions at the states to keep the economy from tanking. Including money that the states could spend on literally anything. And Big Jim Justice used that money to build MU a baseball park.
Thanks Big Jim.
All that needed to be typed. No reason to read the rest. Moving on.
I've never seen such a long winded response to say "I was wrong"
