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Richard Sherman: Seahawks Cornerback Has His Own Thoughts On Publicly Funded Stadiums

By Timothy Raymond
Published on: 12:19 PST, Jun 9, 2016

Richard Sherman, Seahawks cornerback, has a message to pass on to everyone. Every team has them, but over time, you will begin to notice how those teams are looking into building new stadiums. Of course, it’s nice to have them for the fans pleasure, but isn’t it more along the lines that it benefits the players more than the fans but the stadium owners make sure to get the funds to build it from their fans and other taxpayers? Richard Sherman plans to add his two cents to this topic

According to the Washington Post, we can expect to see a handful of newer stadiums popping up around the nation within a year or two. The L.A. Rams are currently in the process of building theirs. The Rangers from Texas are planning to replace their Globe Park which is only 12 years old. Richard Sherman, Seahawks cornerback, doesn’t feel that it’s right for stadium owners to tax the citizens around them. Arlington wants half a billion dollars in tax money to aid in its new stadium.

The unique thing about Richard Sherman is that he isn’t like most athletes, Sherman emphasizes his passion and care for his fans and people that are in love with the sport. Richard Sherman spoke earlier in a hypothetical tone of how his plans would look if Sherman were to be elected as president of the United States. On that note, he spoke,

“I’d stop spending billions of taxpayer dollars on stadiums and probably get us out of debt and maybe make the billionaires who actually benefit from the stadiums to pay for them – That kind of seems like a system that would work for me.”

The Washington Post reports that it is common practice for teams to threaten the option to move out of their current neighborhoods and into neighboring areas to try and strong-arm funding from their “fans.” The report also mentioned that “claims of economic growth and help building an identity for a region come alongside these plans for using taxpayer funds,” which has resulted in just under $5 billion in taxpayer money spent since 1997 to build 20 stadiums. Unfortunately, last year Stanford University went through a study and the result displayed that the promised economic growth was almost non-existent.

“NFL stadiums do not generate significant local economic growth, and the incremental tax revenue is not sufficient to cover any significant financial contribution by the city,” said Roger Noll, a Stanford professor involved in the economics department.

The economic strain of this ordeal is causing the communities around it to suffer negative side effects. Take into account Cobb County, who is trying to push a tax increase just to fund a project to improve and beautify their public parks. Why is that a problem? Because the initial sum of money that the county had put to one side turns out to have been used for establishing a new stadium for the Atlanta Braves, and Richard Sherman, Seahawks team member, doesn’t like that fact. Sherman feels that if those millionaire and billionaires want a new stadium, then the money should come from their own pocket, or at least they should come up with a way to award their taxpayers.

However, in the defense of the NFL, (which Richard Sherman is not attacking in any way), not all teams are planning on using taxpayers’ dollars to fund their new stadiums. The San Francisco 49ers built their stadium with very minimal public funding. Oakland is another one that is following their lead.

Ironically, this is not the first time that Richard Sherman felt the need to voice his opinion, and Richard Sherman is actually proving to be quite the person with a story to tell, even if it just has to do with hinting on a return of a fellow teammate, like Richard Sherman did last month, according to the Inquisitr.

[AP Photo by Eugene Tanner]

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