Hochul has some history with new football stadiums

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Sometime, during the latter months of 1979, I caught wind that some resourceful Syracuse University students were lobbying for the new domed stadium on campus to be named in memory of Ernie Davis. I thought it was a brilliant idea, and advocated for it wholeheartedly while working as a sportswriter for the Utica newspapers.

Alas, the idea went nowhere. Money talks, and the $2.75-million the Carrier Corp. paid for the naming rights spoke louder than the idealism of students who thought it more appropriate to honor the legacy of an Orange football hero who was the first Black to win the prestigious Heisman Trophy and whose life was cut tragically short by leukemia at age 23.

One of the driving forces behind the movement was a young student named Kathy Courtney. That name probably doesn’t ring a bell with most. But you’d certainly recognize her by her married name because she’s been in the news quite a bit lately.

Kathy Hochul is what she goes by these days, and she just made history Tuesday when she was sworn in as the first woman governor of New York State.

Her rise to the highest office in the Empire State doesn’t surprise those who knew her during her undergraduate days. Raised in a tight-knit, Irish-Catholic family in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg, Hochul learned at an early age the importance of public service. Those lessons would continue at SU, where she immersed herself into studying political science at the nationally renowned Maxwell School of Public Affairs and Citizenship. Much of her education, though, would come away from the classroom in her roles as an activist and vice president of the student government association.

During her sophomore and junior years, Hochul successfully orchestrated a boycott that prompted the university’s bookstore to lower text book prices and provide more student services. She also helped force SU to divest itself from investments in apartheid-controlled businesses in South Africa.

Her campaign to commemorate Davis by affixing his name to what became known as the Carrier Dome may not have succeeded, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort or fearlessness on her part. She and another student government officer even managed to meet with Mel Holm, CEO of the Carrier Corp., and chair of the university’s board of trustees, in hopes of getting him to change his mind.

Interestingly, Hochul also played a minor role in getting the Dome built. By the time she arrived for her freshman year in August 1976, Archbold Stadium had deteriorated to the point where Orange football coaches wouldn’t show prospective recruits the dilapidated concrete bowl unless they asked to see it. Realizing SU would need to build a new stadium if it was going to continue playing major college football, Hochul and Student Association President Arnie Wolsky lobbied their campus peers as well as Gov. Hugh Carey and Chancellor Melvin Eggers.

Four decades later, the 63-year-old Hochul finds herself with another stadium issue to tackle. Only this one is more complicated and way, way more expensive. As someone Buffalo born-and-bred, she realizes what the Bills mean to Western New York. But she also understands she has more serious issues to resolve in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and Andrew Cuomo’s resignation from the governor’s job after a damning investigation of numerous sexual abuse allegations.

Restoring confidence and trust in state government, navigating this nasty, persistent coronavirus and rebuilding an economy wounded by the pandemic are vastly more important than whether the Bills get a new playpen in Orchard Park, funded, in large part, by state and county taxpayers.

Representatives for Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula have been ratcheting up the rhetoric in recent weeks. Though no one has threatened to move the team, that fear lurks like a lake effect storm cloud, and has caused no shortage of angst and anger among Bills fans on social media and sports talk shows.

At Monday’s annual Jim Kelly charity golf tournament in Batavia, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell reiterated for the umpteenth time the Bills need for a new stadium. His comments didn’t appear quite as ominous as in times past, and he said it would take a collaborative public-private effort, similar to ones in other NFL cities where new stadiums were erected. He sounded optimistic something would eventually get done.

Of course, the devil will be in the details. Will the Pegulas and the television-cash-mega-rich NFL foot a good chunk of the reported $1.4-billion price tag? Probably not. And how much will state and county taxpayers be on the hook for? Probably a lot.

By no means does Hochul want to be the governor who “allowed” the Bills to bolt under her watch. She understands their impact on the collective psyche of the region — an impact that goes beyond dollars and cents — just like she understood what a new stadium at SU could do for school and community spirit. But she also has an obligation to address vastly more pressing and important issues first. At a time when bridges and roads are crumbling and many residents are struggling to pay rent or mortgages, doling out dollars to billionaires seems morally and ethically repugnant.

In the meantime, it would be nice if representatives for Pegula Sports and Entertainment cool their jets with their new stadium media campaign. It’s premature and it’s tone-deaf.

Best-selling author and nationally honored journalist Scott Pitoniak is the Rochester Business Journal sports columnist.