ESPN rates the food at Arizona's sports stadiums. Result: Not very appetizing
The sports network has a major story and a full interactive map of the country’s sports stadiums and their food inspections reports.
The Arizona entries are Chase Field, US Airways Center, the Jobing.com Arena, and the University of Phoenix Stadium.
All have the distinction of having had between a quarter and a half of the different food concessions at each venue “cited for at least one ‘critical’ or ‘major’ health violation.”
[ESPN] submitted its findings to Dr. Robert Buchanan, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Food Safety and Security Systems. His background includes 10 years overseeing food safety research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which sets the guidelines by which most U.S. health departments conduct inspections.
[He said:] “Certainly, if you have a high rate of facilities within a stadium coming up with critical deficiencies, that to me strikes of systemic errors in either management of the stadium or in the infrastructure of the stadium, and both of them need to be corrected.”
For the record, what do “systemic errors” cause?
One of the most worrisome violations to health inspectors is food not being cooked, reheated or held at safe temperatures, because that’s when dangerous bacteria – such as E. coli, salmonella, and staphylococcus aureus – can grow and, if consumed, can trigger nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting.
The full story here
11:50 AM
When it comes to wasting taxpayer dollars on sports teams . . .
… Arizona is the winner.
That’s the verdict of a fact-laden analysis and history of the phenomenon by the business of sports expert Evan Weiner on the site NewJerseyNewsroom.com.
After a lengthy history of the practice, Wiener writes:
You can go virtually to every state in the union, including Alaska and Hawaii and find public dollars invested in sports. But who are the dumbest politicians in the country when it comes to sports spending? That is an easy question to answer.
Arizona.
Had the Phoenix city council been smart, which they were not, they would have approved a multi-purpose arena back in the late 1980s that would have accommodated the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and an NHL team. Instead lawmakers approved a $90 million expenditure that was designed to appease Suns owner Jerry Colangelo.
The arena was built in such a way that the building was only good for basketball and not hockey or Arena Football or indoor soccer and that severely limited the potential revenues that could be generated in the place.
Making sure they further satisfied Colangelo, the terms of the lease between the city and the NBA team required that the franchise pay the bulk of lease payments in years 36-40 of the 40-year lease agreement.
The real rent is supposed to kick in around 2028 but given the lifespan of facilities (the Miami Arena was viable for about 11 years, the Charlotte Coliseum for about 13), it is doubtful that the team will even be playing in the arena in 2028 or 2029.
He then does a case studies on all the other Valley sports facilities.
It’s not a pretty tale.
7:25 AM
The mysterious disappearing All-Star Game boycott of Arizona
Yesterday, you’ll remember, the Republic front page was all abuzz with talk at this year’s All-Star Game in Anaheim about boycotting next year’s game, which is currently scheduled for Chase Field in Phoenix.
Funny, today the paper fronts another big story about the All-Star Game coming to Phoenix…
… with nary a word about boycotts or SB 1070.
The same writer, too—Nick Piecoro.
This is what I hate about the Republic. How dishonest it is.
From the outside, it sure does seem like there were some high-level discussions at the paper about the splashiness of the possible boycott story Tuesday.
One might even speculate that some behind-the-scenes power brokers with some financial interest in the game’s being held here gave the paper hell.
And then, obviously, someone ordered up a “redo”—essentially the same story, scrubbed of anything that might offend the town’s sports swells.
It’s almost like rewriting history.
10:27 AM