vikings/nfl

We have had season tickets since 1963. We had to buy the worthless Met Bonds, then the soon to be worthless Dome Bonds and now this guy wants us to pay a premium for the seats we have had for 50 years! My dad is 89 years old and I convimced him not to give up his tickets, which happen to be on the 50 yard line, to wait to see what happens with the new stadium. Wilf you are talking about screwing your most loyal fans. Surprise us and do the right thing

I fully expected PSLs to be a part of the stadium plan as, I'm sure, so did every other intelligent person. The fact so many people are up in arms over this issue is the real surprise. The PSL language is in the legislation. No one was bamboozled. I thank Mr. Dayton for his signature on the bill, but disagree with his current political posturing.

I don't know why anyone is surprised about this. Wilf is, above all, a developer. And we all know that developers seldom put in much, if any, of their own money. They get "investors" (the public, in this case) to put up the money, then use the cash flow to cover the rest. If things go sour, they can walk away with their management fee. I could see this coming from a mile away.

Personal seat licenses? A lot of teams are doing that. Paying upwards of $150,000 to buy a license to buy tickets. Pay the licensing fee, then you also pay for the tickets. The owner of the Minnesota Vikings, Zygi Wilf, is a HUGE Democratic Party donor. He and his brother donate heavily to Democrats (and almost nothing to Republicans). Go to the Federal Election Commission website at fec.gov. Wilf donates under the names of "Zygi Wilf" and "Zygmunt Wilf". Wilf also donated to Minnesota Democrats like former Rep. James Oberstar ($4,600) and the late Paul Wellstone ($2,000). Wilf is also an Obama backer having given $30,800 to elect Barack Obama since 2008.

If anyone thought that julie rosen, ted mondale, mark dayton, rybak and meg tuthill were either smart enough to deal with wilf or were concerned about the public you were wrong. When rybak and meg tuthill refused to let the citizens of minneapolis vote on this they showed their contempt for the voters. If you think Wilf won't get his way about the PSL you are wrong.

Just saw a game at Lambeau. Three hours and 45 minutes for 60 minutes of football. Buddy timed a game recently. Two minutes, 37 seconds of actual action per quarter. Back to Lambeau; over four hours of sitting on a metal bench with no backs. Players standing around on the field for tv time outs, zebra's running over to review plays too often; love football but it's my den and an easy chair from now on. The Lambeau experience was great; but only once. Guess my rant might apply in some small way to Wilf's outrageous request. If not, it helped my aching back a little bit. Oh, they were 92 dollar seats a Lambeau, not nose bleeders.

Didn't anyone watch the statium debate? John Marty tried to take this out of the bill, But he didn't succede. It was part of the statium bill all along. Didn't anyone on the Governors staff read the bill before he signed it?

"Dayton made the deal he needed to make at the time to get the stadium passed." True but irrelevant. This deal wasn't made with a down-home good ol' boy with Minnesota roots and values. It was made with a billionaire from New Jersey which is roughly equivalent to dealing with someone from another planet. And unlike a political deal which can be adjusted as the political situation dictates this is a contract. The fans are naive to believe that their current season tickets constitute some kind of birthright which gives them free claim to seats of their choice in a new facility. That was never negotiated. There's going to be a lot of hurt feelings among the fans in the days ahead. However, they can be glad that this conflict is arising now, before any construction has started since there's less in the way of sunk costs at risk. But that also means it'll be a lot harder to resolve this disagreement the longer it drags on. If Gov. Dayton is serious about his position on PSL's and clearing up remaining misunderstandings now is the time for him to take a hard line but the fans also have to be serious about supporting him and be willing to risk losing the team if this contract has to be renegotiated.

The U of M did it for football, basketball, and hockey and people said the same things that are being said today about the PSL's. In the end, most of them renewed and paid the fee. Same will happen here.

Why do you think Wilf wanted a new stadium with the same seating capacity as the Dome? He complained about not competing with the other NFL teams and being near the bottom in revenue. Where do you think he was going to generate the additional revenue? All the NFL teams with new stadiums receive addiitional revenues through PSLs. Let's not act surprised.