The case for Salt Lake

If Seattle is going to enter the league with a rival already lined up, we can think of no better choice than Real Salt Lake.

There's a couple reasons. One, obviously, is their silly name. The Sonics and the Utah Jazz have a pretty good rivalry (when the Sonics are competitive) in the NBA. And RSL are possibly the closest team to Seattle (San Jose might be closer), which makes sense geographically. But the biggest reason? They cost us Seattle fans 4 years of MLS.

In 2004, as many may recall, Seattle was a leading candidate to score an expansion team. Don Garber, MLS commissioner went so far as to say that our bid "absolutely has an inside track." But then the Salt Lake City bid kind of came out of nowhere, throwing cash all over the place and stealing our MLS franchise away from us. Surely this is legitimate reason to consider them our rivals.

And seriously, who picks Salt Lake City over Seattle for a sports franchise? That's like, to conjure up a hypothetical example, moving a team from Seattle to, say, Oklahoma City.

Stadium Mumblings

So we've heard some stuff we're pretty sure we weren't supposed to hear.

But this requires a sort-of introduction to the Seattle basketball scene for those not in the know. A bunch of rich midwest guys have kidnapped (bought) the Seattle Sonics Basket Ball team and are trying to move them to Oklahoma City. Their reason: KeyArena, current home of the Sonics, isn't big or fancy enough. And so far Seattle's been pretty 'eh' on the whole thing, acting as if they don't really care.

Until now. Apparently there's been a lot of recent talk between Seattle mayor Nickels and a bunch of other Seattle political people, and they want to partially remodel Seattle Center in order to take down KeyArena and build a new, big, fancy place for the Sonics to stay. But they all want this kept quiet for some reason, which is why we have to be annoyingly vague.

So how does this relate to Seattle MLS? Well, we'll tell you. But first read this, or at least the first paragraph. Clicky.

If you were lazy and didn't read it, basically Memorial (currently a pile of crap) Stadium might be remodeled, too. We've talked to one of the guys behind this thing. Although the article doesn't mention it, we've heard on good authority that under this plan the New Memorial Stadium could be used to house an MLS team. Seriously. Now, how much of this plan the city is talking about using, we're not entirely sure. Possibly none. But there is a slim chance that Seattle Fillintheblank soccer club will one day be playing in a Soccer Specific Stadium, downtown and in an awesome location.

We will update as we learn more, and as soon as the city decides to stop being all secret-like about their plans.