This story in USA Today talks about something that Lynn Lashbrook, the founder and president of Sports Management World Wide, has been talking about for more than a year.

People have made huge investments in high-definition television and sound systems for their home these days — and you can’t blame them for staying home and watching games, rather than paying to get into games. For a lot of reasons — including rude fan behavior, traffic, too-crowded stadiums, to name just a few — watching at home can be a better experience than actually attending the games.

It’s the new challenge in professional sports — even for a league as wildly successful as the NFL, where at the height of the sport’s popularity attendance has dropped for two straight seasons. How do you get people to come to your stadium and buy tickets when it’s so easy to sit at home and watch the game for free?

Well, in the NFL, the blackout rule helps. If the game isn’t sold out, home-team fans CAN’T watch the games at home. No other sport has this rule — but they probably should. Even though teams are making more money off television than they are gate receipts in every major sport, they are still reliant on those gate receipts for a significant portion of revenue.

That’s why, at this point, serious thought is being put into added value for spectators at games. And I’m not just talking about bobblehead dolls and refrigerator magnets, either. The huge scoreboards are a help, as are insightful interviews on those boards before and after games. All-you-can-eat buffets in certain sections is a big deal these days. But you’re going to see more innovations inside arenas and stadiums as teams attempt to fight the battle against stay-at-homes.

Just wait until you see sports on 3D TV. I watched a baseball game in 3D earlier this summer and it was spellbinding. Sports have been playing a dangerous game for years now, competing against their live gates with home TV.

And it’s shaping up to be quite a fight.

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It’s time for a new name.

Never liked the name, anyway. New stadiums are one thing, but I’m not much a fan of selling naming rights to stadiums that have already been in existence for like a century. It was Multnomah Stadium for decades and then the city bought it and turned it into the drab old, “Civic Stadium.”

So for a few bucks it’s got a new name. And what do we have to look forward to now? Burgerville Stadium? Do you want fry sauce with that?

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When Portland lost the Beavers a couple of other times, I figured it wouldn’t be long before the city got another PCL team. But this time, I don’t expect Triple-A baseball back soon, or maybe ever.

But at least now it’s out in the open that this city is finished with this go-round in the Pacific Coast League. So if you’re nostalgic at all about the Beavers, you better find a game or two to attend in the next few weeks.

I can’t get too worked up about the team leaving this time, either. Man, PGE Park stinks to high heaven as a baseball facility and pretty much always has, especially so since the city chose the wrong plan for the latest renovation.

Latest rumor on the future of professional baseball in Portland: The University of Portland is making plans to move Joe Etzel Field from its current on-campus location next to the Chiles Center to a spot down the bluff near the Willamette River. The idea being floated around is that the city of Portland could share the cost of construction of that new ballpark, which would then be used in the summer as the home for a Class A, short-season, Northwest League team for Portland.

While the Mavericks and the Rockies both had successful runs in the NWL in previous times when the PCL was jerked out of Portland, I can’t say I’d be too excited by another Class A run. Been there and done that.

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What’s worse than losing the Beavers? Watching a little town of 137,000 people build a Triple-A ballpark while this city cannot get anything together for stadiums other than once again renovating an old barn for soccer.

This is from a recent Sports Business Daily:

An ownership group led by Padres Vice Chair & CEO Jeff Moorad is “close to signing a deal that calls for the team to move” the Triple-A Pacific Coast League Portland Beavers, a Padres affiliate, to a 9,000-seat ballpark in Escondido, Calif., to be built by the city for $45M, according to J. Harry Jones of the SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE. If the memorandum of understanding is finalized, Escondido “would agree in principle to build the ballpark on city-owned property — mostly vacant land used partly as a public-works yard — just east of Interstate 15 and just south of state Route 78.” The city “would hand over to the Padres all money from concession sales and naming rights for the facility.” Jones notes negotiations “could hinge on how the ballpark is financed.” One proposal calls for Escondido to “sell bonds that would be repaid with property-tax revenues that the city’s redevelopment agency is expected to generate over the next 26 years.” Interest payments on the project “could push the final bill” to $90M. Moorad as part of the deal “would buy” the Beavers franchise (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 7/21). Moorad said, “We’re in the process of putting together a deal to acquire the Portland franchise. And we’ve had talks with several municipalities, including Escondido. But I need to clarify one thing. The Padres are not trying to purchase the Portland franchise. Jeff Moorad and his ownership group are. I know it sounds like the same thing, but it’s not.” Moorad added that the cost of the franchise is “expected to be from” $20-25M (NORTH COUNTY TIMES, 7/21).

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It’s certainly the last time Oregon and Oregon State will meet in baseball in the Portland area for quite a while. As you know, PGE Park becomes a soccer/football-only venue after this summer and it’s not likely either school would give up a home game to come to Portland to play in a venue that doesn’t seat way more people than their own ballparks.

And I don’t see any ballpark plans on the horizon anytime soon for this city. Baseball was the last Civil War sport being played outside Eugene or Corvallis and is a major attraction here. It should be even bigger this time with the Ducks seemingly already having nailed down an NCAA tournament berth and the Beavers still having a shot at one.

My big regret for tonight is that the weather is probably going to be a pain. It will certainly hold the attendance down a little, along with the game being telecast locally on Comcast Sportsnet. If you can’t make it to the ballpark, catch Joe Giansante and me on the broadcast at 6:30.

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It’s no secret. There’s no place for them to play next season. They have to go somewhere else next summer — for at least one summer. I would guess that it would be Tucson.

Now that could be one summer or forever. Most likely forever. My guess would be that if the team isn’t for sale now it soon will be. And not a day goes by that some old-time baseball fan doesn’t send me an email or call me, begging me to help keep the team here. And to complain about “Merritt Paulson moving the team out of town.”

Sorry, I’m not going to go there. For one thing, all Paulson has tried to do is get this community to build a long-overdue ballpark. And he’s offered to put $10 million of his own money to help do it — way more than most minor-league team owners would do.

The place the Beavers have been playing since the mid-1950s was never a ballpark. It’s a stadium, always best fit for football rather than baseball — from that first day in 1956, when as a little kid I watched the team try to shoehorn itself into a configuration that for fans and players, never did make much sense.

There have been a couple of tries to make it a better facility for baseball but the wrong plan was always chosen and always failed. I have no nostalgic feelings about PGE Park, Civic Stadium or Multnomah Stadium — whatever you want to call it — and I have spent more time in that facility than just about anyone in this area. I worked there for years, from the time I was 13 years old picking up bats, all the way through college as a front-office employee and then as a writer covering teams.

It’s a cold, uncomfortable venue that in and of itself has done more to turn people off to baseball than any promoter or team that has ever played there. I wish those attempting to convert it into yet another type of stadium the best of luck. I hope it works. But it was never going to work as a ballpark.

And this city’s continued failure to recognize the need for even a medium-sized home for a professional baseball team no longer bothers me, either. I mean, at a certain point you just accept the fact that this is what we are as a city — a place unlike just about any other major city in the world.

Believe it or not, other cities everywhere recognize the value of pro sports to a community and what they bring. Not just monetarily but culturally. I don’t think we ever will get that here — we think, as a city, we’re too smart for that. We ask the Paulsons of the world to build their own arenas and stadiums. And they don’t. We got lucky when Paul Allen did it and we aren’t going to get that lucky again. Nobody else is that rich or that stupid.

There are too many other places who will build arenas or stadiums for these owners. Is that the right thing for a city? Who is to say. It’s just the way it’s done, folks. You want to be in the game, you spend the money. All other cities do it and don’t look back.

The price, really, is so inconsequential compared to the money thrown away on other stuff that you don’t even notice it. Or maybe you do. Fact is, at a certain point of living here all your life, you just lose patience with the whole concept.

I’ve pretty much given up on Portland ever realizing its potential as a city. Not just as a sports town but as a major city. The lack of understanding about what it takes to keep a city healthy and vibrant business-wise is appalling. The misplaced faith in our politicians has betrayed us over and over. There’s been a leadership vacuum here for decades.

And what’s always bothered me is not that we’re lost, it’s that most people here don’t even realize how lacking in direction we are. We have no leaders and no plan.

Bike paths are not a destination, folks. They’re a distraction on the way to one. Trolleys are an expensive and very slow ride to nowhere. But in this city, it’s always seemed that the journey matters more than the destination. That’s the way it works when you have no idea where you’re going.

Welcome to Portland, the city that doesn’t work. And hasn’t for years.

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No.

I’m taking some heat from a few long-time friends that I’m not in the middle of the fight to keep PGE Park as a combination baseball/football/soccer venue. But really, it’s not worth fighting for.

It’s never been a ballpark. It’s been a stadium. And I’m just not going to settle for a stadium any longer. If we have to lose baseball yet another time, in order to get a real ballpark built, I’m all for it.

The University of Oregon, for $21 million, has built PK Park, a gem of a ballpark — a facility that may be the best ballpark anywhere between Seattle and San Francisco. And Portland, in like 100 years, can’t build a new ballpark? Ridiculous.

And I sit back and watch politicians criticize Randy Leonard and Sam Adams for what they’re doing with PGE Park, well — at least it’s SOMETHING. I mean, if you’re against the current plan for PGE Park, what exactly is your plan for professional sports in Portland? That’s what I thought — you really don’t care. You have no plan.

Am I big soccer fan? Obviously not. But for me, it is serving a purpose. It’s forcing this city to face up to its sports future. Will we ever build that ballpark, that gem, here? Maybe not. Probably not. At least not in my lifetime.

But at least we’re no longer fooling ourselves into thinking PGE Park is a real ballpark. It’s a stadium. And if you don’t know the difference, well, that’s maybe why we’re in the fix we’re in.

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I got a note from a Portlander named Sean-Michael Riley a while back. There is an advisory committee taking suggestions about possible ideas for the development of the Rose Quarter and his notion is getting some traction.

Riley has proposed a roller coaster for the area — and I think it’s a pretty good idea. Yeah, I’d still like a ballpark and believe it to be the best possible use of the land, but when I got his note I remembered that Marshall Glickman and I once had a discussion about the same thing.

Marshall, who ramrodded the planning and construction of the Rose Garden for the Trail Blazers, thought a roller coaster was a fun idea to bounce around. Since I’m a coaster-rider from way back (seriously, I’ve been on some of the best in this country) I was excited.

But not just any roller coaster, please. Build the biggest, fastest, highest or longest. Or, since it tends to drizzle here a little, how about the world’s biggest covered one? Or biggest enclosed one?

Riley’s website for his vision is here and I encourage you to take a look. I mean, why not? We don’t have a serious roller coaster anywhere in the Pacific Northwest and I believe it would be a big draw. You could still have an entertainment district but the big coaster could hover above — making it an iconic image for Portland and a destination for tourists.

But maybe such out-of-the-box thinking is way too much for the folks around here?

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I sent you to the website the other day – imaginejumptown.com — but I didn’t have time to comment much. It appears that Larry Miller has gotten his old pals at Nike to buy into the thing with some sort of Nike museum. That sounds great for the area in the Rose Quarter.

But what still bothers me is the stubbornness of sticking to this “bright future for Memorial Coliseum” garbage. I realize the Trail Blazers have sold themselves on the concept that the indoor venue, the coliseum, cut down to seat 5,000 or 6,000  people, is a more viable venue than a Triple-A baseball park for bringing people into the new neighborhood.

I think they’re wrong. Yes, much of the winter the ballpark would be vacant. But that’s the time of year when the Rose Garden will be hopping. You don’t need the ballpark in the winter — you need it in the summer and spring when the Rose Garden (and Memorial Coliseum) is dark all the time.

Does Portland need a 5,000-seat arena? I don’t think so. We already have one at University of Portland’s Chiles Center. I think that size is a little too small for the Winter Hawks, who should be playing in the Rose Garden. And I think by the time you get done updating 50-year-old plumbing, wiring and structure of the old MC, you’re spending so much money you’d have been better off leveling the thing and starting all over.

It’s going to be a money pit. A big, big money pit. And when you’re done, what kind of arena will it be? Probably not much of one. Honestly, if they’re so committed to keeping the outside structure, the box, they ought to gut the inside and install the world’s biggest and fastest indoor roller coaster there. It would have a better chance of being a big attraction than that old junky arena. Seriously.

A wise baseball guy, Bill Cutler, a one-time owner of the Portland Beavers, once sighed as he watched the city of Portland first installing artificial turf on ancient then-Civic Stadium. He turned to me and smiled.

“It’s like putting silk stockings on a hog,” he said. And he was so right. But this is Portland — we just can’t bring ourselves to throw anything away here. We’re constantly recycling.

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KGW.com is teasing a story for the news at noon that he’s “suspending” efforts to relocate the Beavers in Beaverton. It wouldn’t be surprising. There’s simply no time to wait for them to have an election.

Beaverton residents can now go back and rest comfortably, knowing they will now continue to be totally irrelevant. Take that five bucks a month it would have cost and buy a happy meal.

UPDATE: The story is here. Paulson informed the mayor with a letter that read:

“It is with sadness that I am writing to inform you of my decision to suspend planning and negotiations with the city on a new stadium. I’ve made this decision for practical, not political reasons. … The practical consideration is that after more than three months of effort, there is no stadium location under city control and the City’s timeframe for making a firm financial commitment is months off. This makes it impossible to meet the timelines required to start groundbreaking in time to play the 2011 season at a new stadium.”

Your turn Gresham. Or Oregon City. Or West Linn. Or Lake Oswego. Or Vancouver. Or Linnton.

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