Save Rosenblatt's Alternative: Too Little Accomplished for Too Much Money

As I called it two months ago, the Save Rosenblatt committee has completed their study of Rosenblatt Stadium, and sure enough, come back with an alternative that costs a lot of money yet still doesn't meet the demands of the NCAA. They point out their proposal only will cost $60-$65 million, as compared to the $95-$115 million new downtown ballpark proposal. Which is true. They also address some of the NCAA's demands:

• Wider Concourses
• Additional Parking
• A Clean Zone surrounding the ballpark
• Expanding Rosenblatt's locker rooms
• Expanded media facilities
• 2,000 additional seats

But they fail to address several of the NCAA's other demands, which led the NCAA to request a new downtown stadium:

• Open concourses with a view of the field
• Additional skyboxes for NCAA corporate sponsors
• Nearby hotels and restaurants

Most eye-opening is the statement of Save Rosenblatt committee member and city councilman Garry Gernandt:

"The purpose of (the Save Rosenblatt plan) is to keep the CWS here for five years. We've been getting five-year extensions for years, and that has always worked for us."

Let's do some simple math with the figures most advantageous to the Save Rosenblatt committee:

Remodel Rosenblatt: $60 million / 5 years = $12 million a year
New Downtown Ballpark: $115 million / 20 years = $5.75 million a year

Now I'm not an accounting whiz by any means (though I did work on accounting systems about a dozen years ago), but it's not difficult to see that building a new downtown ballpark is the most financially prudent decision.

The NCAA wants a new ballpark. We might be able to band-aid Rosenblatt and get another five years out of it, but then five years down the line, the NCAA will be back to request a new stadium. Give the NCAA what they want now, and we're not discussing this issue again until 2031.

Fail to do so, and we might get five more years before we're spending that $115 million on top of the $60 million we just spent (except now that inflation has made that $150 million). Or worse, the College World Series goes on a rotation between Indianpolis, Orlando, and Omaha.