Prairie View/Grambling Cotton Bowl extension not a done deal
I really should have known better. I mean we are talking about Laura Miller right? You know, the one who has had an off again, off again relationship with the African-Amercan community of Dallas. The one who has no idea why black folks in Dallas would be so hard on a liberal female Democrat. The Laura Miller who has been in hot water every since she called former Dallas Police Chief Terrell Bolton an 'idiot'.
Well looks like the mayor is at it again, and I allowed her self-indulgent, gloat-filled press conference to get in the way of what I was hearing throughout. What was being said was that an extension with Grambling and Prairie View was forthcoming. What was being reported was that an extension with the two historically black universities had been completed.
The truth is that after months and months of negotiations between Dallas, the University of Texas, and the University of Oklahoma; the city has barely made contact with the folks in charge of putting on the State Fair Classic. Saturday's Dallas Morning News chronicles how "the magician", Pete Schenkel helped negotiate a deal between the city and the Red River Rivalry participants. According to the article, even DMN publisher Jim Moroney got in on the act, meeting with Schenkel and key administrators at UT.
Yet today I learned that the PV/Grambling folks were made aware of the proposed deal on Thursday night just before the press conference. There were no negotiations, they were told what they were going to get and that was that.
There's more digging to do here, but it seems like as the city tries to find more teams to play in the Cotton Bowl during the State Fair (Texas Tech, A&M, Baylor, LSU, Nortre Dame), they may want to make sure that the current teams are squared away. Seems to me like it would be easier to fill two weekend rather than three. We can all agree that PV/Grambling is not Texas/OU, but both games are essential to the long term viability of the Cotton Bowl.
As a matter of fact, it would make more sense for Prairie View and Grambling to move to Arlington than it would for Texas and O.U. Neutral site game are a rarity in Division I football, but black school hit the road all the time, see the Labor Day Classic, Southern Heritage Classic, and of course, the Bayou Classic.
I can hear it now when the mayor is told that she has once again slighted the African-American community. Here's how it will go down. She'll run to Heaven 97 to defend herself, stick her foot in her mouth (once again), and then get blasted by Robert Ashely's audience. In the end, it will cost we the tax payers more money to cover up for another Laura Miller misstep. May 12 can't get here fast enough.
