As much as I can't stand the recycled cover stories on the Rays' stadium saga in the Tampa Trib recently, I applaud the paper for one thing (even if it's by accident): shifting the focus of the stadium talk from a silly debate over stadium location to the challenging task of finding funds.
Similar stadium situations in Minnesota and Sacramento underscore how easy it can be to find land and how difficult it can be to find financing.
I still maintain if the Rays get a new Tampa Bay stadium, it will be at - or near - Toytown in North St. Pete. If the environmental issues of the area prove to be too challenging, a land-swap could be easily worked out.
And regardless of how much land developers may find in Downtown Tampa, they'll never come up with the huge amounts of money for a stadium. One way or another, that task will be left to the taxpayers and the Rays...with both sides leveraging for the other to shoulder the bulk of the load.
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