CSotD: For $25 million, you get a wearable blanket
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Tank McNamara is a funny strip, and I don't just mean that in the ha-ha sense. It is essentially the Doonesbury of sports strips and, as with Doonesbury, there are times when you have to check to see if Millar and Hinds are riffing on an actual event or just inventing an absurd situation to illustrate a trend.
Silly as this situation appears, I already knew there really was an NHL team in Arizona called "The Coyotes," so I went to Google to see how much of the strip was real. I typed in "Glendale" and "coyotes" and one of the suggested searches was "Glendale Coyotes 25 million."
Ridiculous, yes, but it's real. I particularly liked
During a meeting break, a resident began shouting about the city's debt burden, which is higher than most cities of the same size.
"This city is bankrupt!" the man shouted.
Coyotes fans immediately silenced him with boos.
and
Kurt Larson, a Glendale resident and business owner, argued that like "socialized health care," the city's pledge to keep the Coyotes is "getting socialized sports."
This seems like one of those situations where, not only can you not make this stuff up, but the stuff you do make up about it has to be toned down for the funny papers. Glendale approved the payment, and, just as Tank reported, it's the second year in a row that the city is covering Coyote losses.
Financial losses, that is. The team has actually posted a winning record during those years. They made the playoffs, but that's a dubious distinction in the NHL, given that 16 of the league's 30 teams make the playoffs each year. Which I guess is another symptom of socialized sports.
My NHL fan days were back when the league consisted of Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Montreal and Toronto. I managed to weather the first expansion to 12 teams, but even then, the quality of play dropped off and the chippiness of play increased. I regained interest when I moved back east in the '80s and followed the Canadiens' run to the Cup, but they then sold off all their players and I gave it up again.
But I do know that the league is looking to place a team in Winnepeg, and is considering either the Atlanta or Phoenix (Glendale) franchise for relocation.
This is what I mean. If a cartoonist invented a hockey league that had teams in Arizona and Georgia, but no team in Manitoba, he'd be crossing the line from silly to stupid.
It's a rule: Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction is required to make sense, while truth is under no such obligation.
For instance, in looking this up, I came across this ad. Now we know what the well-dressed Glendalean wears:
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