History will be made this month, and it’s the sort of landmark that marks the passing of a generation.
The World Cup, the soccer tournament that is one of the pre-eminent sporting events in the world, comes to Dallas – not because we need it or because we want it, but because the people who used to run Dallas figured that if Dallas was going to be a world-class city, it was supposed to host world-class events such as the World Cup.
Thankfully, after the World Cup leaves, we won’t have to put up with that sort of spurious logic ever again.
When Dallas bid for the World Cup, Jan Hart was still the city manager, and Dallas was still trying to prevent the federal courts from enforcing the Constitution’s one-man, one-vote mandate.
Image was everything, whether it was preserving the City’s bond rating despite a crumbling infrastructure or pretending that a decorous City Council meant that Dallas didn’t have any problems.
Of course, Dallas had plenty of problems, but they weren’t the issue. The issue was reassuring the rest of the world that this was a city that made things happen.
What did it matter if the library system was broke, or that crime was overwhelming the cops, or that the homeless wandering around Downtown seemed to outnumber the office workers?
The issue was giving us circuses to make us forget that our bread was moldy.
That’s why we got the Meyerson Center, the boondoggle to end all boondoggles, and why we almost got a Downtown mall, which would have made the Meyerson look like brilliant urban planning – and that’s why we got the World Cup.
We close swimming pools, but we’ve got the World Cup.
Each August, when the City Council must foist an ever-increasing share of a reduced pie on the backs of homeowners, it’s harder to justify spending the millions of dollars that Dallas has budgeted to host this soccer tournament. It’s bad enough that we will have to endure drunken soccer hooligans (I shudder to think what they will do to the West End); it’s worse that we should pay our tax dollars for the privilege of enduring them.
Know this: the World Cup is a terrific soccer tournament for anyone who likes soccer tournaments. As a vehicle for economic development, it’s a terrific soccer tournament for anyone who likes soccer tournaments.
During one of my previous incarnations as a sports writer, I spent a lot of time writing stories about how sports was an engine that propelled economic growth. I was writing a bunch of bunk, but I was too young and stupid to know it.
I talked to experts and learned the language and tasted the theories, and I believed them. My favorite was the one that said money turns over six times – that every time one dollar is spent, economic alchemy transforms it into six dollars for the community. I first heard this 15 years ago, when a Chicago suburb was going to host what was then the world’s richest horse race. This race, I was told, was going to help transform sleepy Arlington.
Some transformation; Arlington lost its high school a couple of years ago, despite the fact that the race is still held in the town every year (on a new and improved race track, to boot).
Yet we are asked to believe that the World Cup – those dozen or so games that will be played at Fair Park – will stimulate economic growth because there’s no other reason why we should have to brave it. We no longer accept the image argument; Dallas has changed too much. Anyone who doubts that need look no further than the Tinseltown imbroglio earlier this year.
It’s a good change, too. Circuses have their place, but what’s better is lots of bread – for all of us, whether in East Dallas or North Dallas or Oak Cliff. That will be a fitting epitaph for the World Cup, may it rest in peace.
