Mike Bianchi: Hey, Jacksonville, save yourself a lot of time and trouble and build Jaguars a new stadium

Wouldn’t it be much easier and cheaper if the politicians in Jacksonville just gave the NFL’s Jaguars what they want now instead of going through the ceremonial and useless dog and pony show that will inevitably end up with them getting exactly what they wanted in the first place?

The longer Jacksonville waits to commit at least half of the money the Jaguars want for their estimated $2 billion stadium renovation project, the more it will end up costing city taxpayers in the end. In today’s inflationary times, construction costs and overruns are only going to go up and that guesstimated $2 billion price tag will soon be $2.2 billion … $2.5 billion … hey, do I hear $3 billion?

Mark my words: In the end, Jacksonville will end up paying whatever they need to pay to keep their NFL team in town, and the reason is very simple. Just listen to what Jaguars president Mark Lamping said last week when asked at a sports industry conference what would happen if Jacksonville residents were asked to vote yes or no on giving the Jaguars $1 billion for the stadium project.

“If there’s a referendum, the ballot question should be: Do you want to keep the NFL in Jacksonville?” Lamping answered. “Look, if Jacksonville loses an NFL team, they’re never going to get another one. And if the Jaguars have to relocate from Jacksonville, those of us that went down there would have failed. OK? And none of us want to face that.”

A few days later, Lamping tried to walk back his not-so-veiled threat about moving the Jaguars out of Jacksonville when he told News4JAX that his comments were “taken totally out of context.”

If you ask me, Lamping’s comments weren’t taken out of context at all and there was no need to clarify or apologize for them. While his remarks weren’t very diplomatic, they were completely accurate and honest. If Jacksonville loses the Jaguars, the city becomes Birmingham — a minor-league baseball town that is a candidate for alphabet football leagues, start-up basketball leagues, Major League Table Tennis and the National Pickleball League.

Because Jacksonville is such a small market (41st in the country), the city will never be a candidate for another NFL team, an NBA team or a Major League Baseball team. For comparison’s sake, Orlando is the 17th-ranked TV market in the country and has nearly double the number of TV homes as Jacksonville.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jacksonville and worked there for a number of years. It’s a great city with beautiful beaches and the scenic St. Johns River flowing right through the middle of its downtown. However, it does not check all of the demographic, geographic boxes when it comes to being a major league sports city. That’s why Jacksonville leaders know that they must do whatever’s necessary to keep the Jaguars.

Jacksonville’s population base is more in line with Oklahoma City — another one-sport town where Mayor David Holt recently announced plans to fund a new $1 billion arena for the local NBA team (the Thunder). However, the proposal, in which the team pay a miniscule $50 million of the arena’s total cost, must go before Oklahoma City voters in a special election in December.

“I think people need to understand the clock is ticking,” Holt said earlier this month. “I’d say there’s no Plan B if [the city] wants to be big league.”

If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it a million times: In a perfect world, cities would not have to help pay for the palatial playhouses of billionaire sports owners, but in the real world that’s not the case. In the real world, cities ante up to build these sports venues because if they don’t then somebody else will.

Hell, Orlando is considering putting nearly a billion dollars ($800 million to be exact) of tourist-tax money into upgrading our football stadium — and we don’t even have an NFL team. Imagine how much more we’d pay if the Jaguars were moving here.

But, of course, that’s not going to happen because, when the dog and pony show is over, Jacksonville will end up giving the Jaguars exactly what they want. I may miss on a good number of football-game predictions, but I will guarantee this prediction:

Jacksonville will end up paying for more than half of the stadium renovation and also will provide the premium land around the stadium for Jaguars owner Shad Khan to develop (and keep most of the profits).

But we must first endure the ceremonial civic dance. City politicians must flex their muscle and play the role of hard-line negotiators who are trying to squeeze Khan and get the best deal possible for the taxpayers.

The news columnists (see the Scott Maxwell-types) must write their obligatory columns about how the billionaire team owner should pay for his own damn stadium and the taxpayers are getting ripped off.

The local university must conduct a scientific poll like the one recently released by the University of North Florida, which determined that only 6% of the registered voters in Jacksonville were in favor of the $1 billion in public money currently being recommended by the Jaguars. However, when the pollsters presented the question as an ultimatum — either the city contributes $1 billion to the stadium project or the Jaguars relocate to another town — the results were split almost evenly with 46% saying, yes, contribute the money and 47% saying no.

These polls always show the same thing: Residents love having a big-time sports team to root for as long as they don’t have to subsidize it.

Unfortunately, in today’s sports marketplace, that’s not possible.

So why not just get it over with and give the Jaguars what they want?

Believe me, the bill will be a lot cheaper today than it will be two years from now.

It’s like the old TV commercial where the auto mechanic is urging car owners to change their oil regularly with a Fram Oil Filter or risk having to rebuild their engine for a lot more money in the future.

“You can pay me now,” the auto mechanic says, “or pay me later.”

In case you were wondering, Shad Khan, the Jaguars’ owner, made his billions selling auto parts.