Over the span of the last decade or so, Georgia and primarily the Metro Atlanta area has seen a lot of sports-related projects be dropped onto us. Spouting bullshit like economic impact, (minimum-wage) job creation and moar reasons for people to come visit _____ to feebly mask the reality that a bunch of old men are going to be getting rich on their investments while the taxpayers of each locale eat the brunt of the cost, we in Atlanta have witnessed such projects emerge or be proposed:
- ScumTrust now Truist Park, the brand new home of the Atlanta Braves so that Braves fans could get away from all the scary black people in Downtown Atlanta
- Mercedes-Benz Arena, the home of Atlanta United and the Atlanta Falcons because there was nothing wrong with the Georgia Dome other than the fact that it wasn’t designed to look like Megatron’s butthole and didn’t have an endorsement built into it
- Atlanta United’s Training Grounds, because practicing and training at their brand new stadium is probably difficult because of all the traffic in Downtown
- Gateway Center Arena, in Jurassic Ghetto College Park so that the Atlanta Hawks could have their developmental G-League squad have their very own stadium too
- It was once proposed to build a Cricket Stadium out in Smyrna, coincidentally there is an extremely high concentration of Indians in the area, whom could probably actually justify its existence, but thankfully nothing really came from this
- Out in Dawsonville, some developers want to build a Battery-like multi-purpose park, centered around a massive arena that would hope to lure an NHL team back to Atlanta in the event there are any more expansions in the future
So short of an NHL team that the city had already squandered, Atlanta’s pretty well represented in most major spectator sports, with the Braves, Hawks, Falcons and United, as well as minor league baseball and hockey smattered around the outskirts. And they’ve all got their expensive little homes to mostly themselves; you’d think at this point, the city was actually full of sport venues/facilities, and couldn’t actually find any more means to build sport-related shit to bilk taxpayers, right?
LOL this post wouldn’t have come to fruition if the answer were actually yes.
So let’s congratulate Fayetteville, Georgia, for becoming the new and future home of the US Soccer National Training Center and the US Soccer Federation, and the latest victim member of Georgia’s club of regions to get more than likely fleeced by the building of something that the state had no need for in the first place.
Everything about this story is pretty laughable to me, from the fact that the article continuously dodges naming actual Fayetteville, and continuously tries to keep referring it to as Fayette County or as Trilith, which I had to Google myself and find out that that’s the name that used to be Pinewood, as in Pinewood Studios, which I’m guessing they had to change the name because a Pinewood Studios already existed in England long before it emerged here and nobody bothered to check so now we’ve got Trilith for some reason.
But for some reason, US Soccer tries to sell that the proximity to a movie-studio catered micro town is the justification for wanting to come to Georgia as the primary reason, and keep on the down-low the fact that both Coca-Cola and rich sports fan Arthur Blank both fronted a whole lot of money to make it happen, not to mention the State of Georgia is probably giving a ton of tax breaks which will undoubtedly come at the expense of State employees. I mean it would be pretty refreshing if US Soccer reps would just come out and spit the truth that they chose Georgia because it would benefit us the best financially, on an individual personal level and thanks for all the money chumps.
Among other bullshit reasons Fayetteville was selected was that it was closed to a major airport, which is actually true, in actual spatial distance from point A to point B. The mileage between Trilith and the airport isn’t really that far, but the actual time it takes to get from Point A to Point B is a completely different matter, as Trilith is literally in the middle of the fucking countryside, surrounded by a web of backroads and local routes unless some serious infrastructure has changed since I used to take them to an old job. Getting to the airport would still take 30-60 minutes depending on how many trucks and/or elderly drivers are on the roads with you, and nothing short of having a private Stonecutter’s underground tunnel from the soccer HQ to the airport can justify the benefit of being close in distance.
Another cited reason was that Georgia’s climate made it optimal for training to be able to be done year-round, which is a fair point, but at the same time, I counter with the fact that there’s a reason why US Olympians train up in Colorado Springs. If athletes can endure the cold and the altitude, there’s little reason to believe that they couldn’t succeed anywhere else on the planet. Training in Georgia subjects all these soccer players to pollen-filled springs, summers that are on the same tropical conditions as competitors from Guatemala or Bolivia, and maybe falls and winters that might make players capable of playing in Premiere League conditions.
Sure, they may be able to train outdoors year-round in Georgia, but as the US demonstrated before in the past, schedule international games to be played in Denver, in the snow, and teams like Costa Rica and other warm-weather nations just can’t compete. Not sure why they don’t game the system more whenever international friendlies and CONCAF qualifiers are played in America.
But of course, the best cited reason,
SUPPORT FROM A DIVERSE, GROWING COMMUNITY WITH OPPORTUNITY TO DRIVE ECONOMIC IMPACT LOCALLY
Because I know what kind of community this is. I lived on the south side for 13 years, and I used to live in Fayette County. Diverse means that Fayetteville has a lot of black people that live there, growing refers the gentrification sprawl that all the white folks in Peachtree City are creeping into the area, and the opportunity to drive economic impact means that their presence might actually bring restaurants that are going to be more impressive to the only Bonchon restaurant in the entire state, that’s coincidentally in Fayetteville.
US Soccer probably thinks they’re going to be some Jesus entity that’s going to bring 400 minimum-wage jobs to the local area, and that their arrival is going to transform anything other than the fact that the 1%-ers of US Soccer might actually have to move to Peachtree City to be close to their jobs, or perhaps take over Evander Holyfield’s foreclosed mansion.
Whatever though; just when I thought that Georgia had all of the major sports checked off as far as needing facilities or arenas for, I guess my line of thinking was too small, thinking about local, regional teams. Clearly, at the National level, there’s still plenty of opportunity to rope some organizations into coming to Georgia so that local stiffs can swindle taxpayers and line their pockets. Perhaps in the future, US Basketball can call up Shaq, who has a lot of ties in Atlanta, and then maybe out in like Carrollton or Covington, Georgia can build the future home to USA Basketball next.
Never say never, when it comes to the lengths Georgia politicians will go to when it comes to imagining new and inventive ways to bilk taxpayers and pad their own personal interests. It was the film industry the last decade, but it appears the sports industry is still viable and very much on the table.
