Eric Flack joined Grant & Danny Wednesday to give them the latest on the RFK bill moving out of Senate Committee, and noted that if there is no vote before Congress adjourns on Jan. 3, we could be in the same position at this time next year…which is not ideal.
“There’s basically nine opportunities when they're together to get the final hurdle cleared to get this land given back to DC,” Grant said. “If nothing happens, then you would have to wait until Congress is back together, restart the entire process, and it would seem almost certain that you're adding a year until the stadium would be able to be opened, IF next year you get the land, which is not a guarantee.”
So here’s the big question, as we all want a new Commanders stadium as soon as possible: how patient are you willing to be with the RFK situation?
“I may be in the minority on this, but I am one of the few people who, as much as I want the stadium at RFK, if you could guarantee me I could get the land next year, I would do that,” Grant said, “but going into a year where I don't know if I'm actually going to get the land, and I'm just waiting an extra year for the possibility that this time might be different and I might actually get the RFK land, I would be team take the half-billion from Maryland to build a town center around your stadium, go out by Landover and build something amazing, and let’s open it as soon as possible.”
Whatever, wherever, and whenever the new digs are built, it has to be “something that is state of the art, where you can host major events, and have a roof over that thing so that you can host tournaments and championship games and it's multi-use.”
Even if it’s somewhere Grant, specifically (because we know Danny will never set foot in Landover unless he’s being held hostage) doesn’t particularly want to be.
“I’d be like, let's have the best stadium in the league in a location that I don't want it in, but I don’t know how long I'm expected to keep waiting and waiting and waiting,” GP said.
“Here's the thing: if there was a finite number, in this bizarre alternate universe that doesn't exist where you're not relying on three different municipalities, local governments, and then the federal government to boot, and you just go, ‘it will be 381 days from right now, and then they will be able to say yes and then begin breaking ground,’ I think a lot of people would do that, myself included,” Danny said. “Whatever the number is, I think there's a threshold. Some people may have shorter fuses, but there’s just no guarantee.”
And that’s in part because the two no votes in Committee, from Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee, represent two completely different wavelengths of thinking, and who knows what will happen if and when the calculus changes in January before this is done.
“The two no votes are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum – the spectrum wraps all the way around and they're almost touching because one's all the way left and one’s all the way right,” Danny said. “If one of those two guys is in charge of the committee now, you sure it's just getting right out of committee again? That doesn't account for any Maryland Senators that might want to do some shenanigans, or the next Steve Daines, who's like, ‘actually, my constituents stitched the first jersey, and now we got to do this.’ There’s no guarantee; the breeze could shift a millimeter and everyone hates each other again, and it’s not possible.”
Then again, Danny still can’t believe James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, sponsored this bill to help one of the country’s least-conservative cities, so who knows – but for Grant, time is of the essence.
“Yeah, I just need certainty or I'm keeping it moving, because 2030 is already so far away,” GP said. “A lot of people that don't go to games or the current stadium might care a lot less that they're there in perpetuity, but for someone who does go to all of those games, and pays for season tickets that my wife uses at that stadium, it’s not okay to just keep going back to this awful place that you're paying a lot of money to be at. The next several years matter; if they got a deal in place today, we’re talking about five more seasons after this one ends. You want to add one or two more to that potentially? I’m sorry, no.”