A report has come out that Ted Leonsis has been having conversations with the state of Maryland about a new arena there, which you may have heard on BMitch & Finlay and can listen to Grant & Danny discuss below – of course part of that coming from what happened in Virginia.
"If Sen. Lucas doesn't do what she did to, to just not allow this to happen, where are we?" Grant asked. "I think it might have been close; whether they get the votes or not, I'm not sure, but because they never even got to the point where it's being debated or voted on, it feels like they were just throwing a Hail Mary. Their last play was from midfield, when really they might have been inside the 10-yard-line, but then she just made a tackle and the ball came out, and then she memed about it a bunch."
"When the Nationals were first coming back, it was all a done deal, from everybody you'd ask, and then at the 11th hour and 59 seconds, Linda Cropp goes 'not so fast,' and decided it's not done, and like that was a rogue actor in that," Danny replied. "Whether you thought she was good, bad, or indifferent, I don't care, that's what happened. That's how this read to me: one person decided I'm going to use this to further and increase my profile 10,000-fold, and she was able to do that. A person whose name I never heard before, I heard an awful lot over a pretty short amount of time, and these guys were counting chickens. If you want to fault them for it, I think that's reasonable."
And that brought out another Rouhier Rant when Danny read a Tweet directed at the guys about them flip-flopping on wanting to go to NoVa, and we learned HARD that Danny is NOT having an arena in Maryland.
"I did this my whole life, I drove and went to Landover for a lot of stuff. I don't care if it's Northern Virginia or not, I keep talking about other places like National Harbor, I was basically talking about not geographically as the crow flies, but like the pain in the ass equivalent for folks on the opposite side," Danny said. "I was thinking about me going from Fairfax to Landover for a game versus someone that's on that side going all the way around to Virginia. The point I'm trying to make is, going to the spot where they already moved from once would be such an abject failure."
You can't go home again? Maybe not, which is why he's also against the Commanders building a new stadium in the shadow of the old one.
"It's the same reason to me the Commanders cannot go back to FedEx Field 2.0: even if it's the greatest deal in the history of mankind, you can't go back there. All the bad is there, you have to go, and when you get a safe distance away, you turn around and shoot a missile at that place and never look back again," Danny said. "Cool guys don't look at explosions."
GP's response, since he was roped in?
"He said you guys and then described everything you were saying, and I said I would have no issue going to games there – I'm the guy that asked when it opens, because I want a new arena," GP said. "But is it in a location where it should be if it's in Landover? No. How many buildings do we have to put there before we decide this is not a good place for our stadiums? We don't want it there. Let's just keep having stadiums there that eventually leave or are ranked the worst in their sport, or we could not do that or we could find somewhere else. But, if you want to put it there, just let me know when it opens, because I'll be there with bells on, watching Bilal Coulibaly and the Tom Wilson-led Capitals."
