Dayton, NFL trade polite nods
The big meeting between the NFL and MBD took only about a half hour today at the Capitol, and it seems to have made about as much progress as the last seven months have. The topline: no breakthroughs on stadium deals.
The league's executive vice president Eric Grubman (who, if memory recalls correctly, made his last public comments in Minnesota in the chilly and deflated Metrodome) did the talking for the NFL. He was joined by another veep, Neil Glat.
Gov. Mark Dayton spoke for a few minutes immediately following the talks. He didn't add much, although he did up his deadline ante:he said if a deal didn't get done this fall, it could be three years before a deal gets done.
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"It's just too easy and too petty to play the blame game," Dayton said. "And If people want to get this done, now is the opportunity to do so. If they want to play political games, and try to score poltical points for 2012 or 2014, I think the people of Minnesota deserve better than that."
Here's what the governor had to say:
Grubman didn't have much to say about the standoff here in Minnesota, other than to say that the league feared a stalemate for the Vikings, and that the other owners wouldn't tolerate that for long. For those of you following along at home, he used the word STALEMATE, which is precisely the term cited in NFL regulations as a factor in relocation of NFL teams.
"I think its very obvious the NFL wants to be in Los Angeles," Grubman said. "We now have two sites. We believe both those sites could be financed. One of those sites has landmark legislation that streamlines the process. I don't know if its shovel ready, but its close... So the missing element is now a franchise. In my memory, this has been the first time all the elements besides a franchise has been assembled."
If you want to hear everything he had to say, click here: