Yeah, that’s right — meat.

If you’re a steak lover, and I bet you are, you really have to get down to The Ringside, which has temporarily relocated to the Fox Tower, while the old location on Burnside is being remodeled.

Man, Craig Peterson and his family have owned the place for decades and it’s Portland, through and through. The service is extraordinary — professional people who have spent their lives learning how to take care of customers, a throwback to the old days when people went to restaurants as much for the service as the food.

The onion rings are a trademark and I have to tell you, even if you don’t like onion rings, try them. You will become addicted in a short time.

And the steaks are unrivaled anywhere. The best. I’m not getting anything for saying this, consider it a restaurant review. I just can’t help myself. I’ve been a customer for years and I think it’s a unique experience that you need to visit — or revisit — if you can.

And I write this now only because I want to make sure everyone knows about the new — very interesting — location in the Fox Tower. You really ought to get there soon.

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This franchise can take injuries and defections at just about every position but one — at the very top. There is no other owner out there like Paul Allen.

I remember telling someone this summer, every time this man sets foot in the Rose Garden he ought to get a standing ovation. He’s been that important not only to this franchise but this city. Do you really think Portland would have built a new arena unless he paid for it? Really? I don’t. No way.

The city of Portland would either be still trying to tweak and “renovate” Memorial Coliseum — or the team would be long gone to Memphis or somewhere else by now.

Do you think any other owner would be willing to lose the millions and millions of dollars Paul Allen has lost on the Trail Blazers? I don’t think so. The realities of owning a team in a small market haven’t been a problem here for years. We’re so spoiled here that fans and media take it for granted. I have for years.

Allen treats this franchise as if it’s located in New York or Los Angeles, spending what it takes to win and knowing the bottom line is going to be scary. He’s tightened his belt at times, but who doesn’t? It still hasn’t deterred him from trying to make this the best franchise in the NBA.

He just wants to win. God love him for that. And God bless him in his fight against non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

My first reaction upon hearing the news that he’s fighting cancer again was pretty much what I wrote at the start of this post. I worry about who would own this team if he doesn’t. I can’t imagine the next owner being willing to subsidize the franchise the way he has.

I think that’s a natural knee-jerk reaction a lot of us had. But what I’m thinking about now is the man I’ve now been acquainted with for nearly two decades. A quiet, hard-to-get-to-know guy who keeps to himself and doesn’t reveal much. I’ve tweaked him in print and on the air countless times, without him ever complaining or whining or even acknowledging it.

But to watch, through his tenure as the team’s owner, what he’s put in to this town, both financially and emotionally, has been amazing.  He doesn’t ask for kudos or credit, but there ought to be a statue of him in the courtyard of the Rose Quarter.  Someday, the arena should bear his name.

I’m reminding you, he’s a special guy. Sure, he’s made mistakes and we’ve criticized him for them. But I also think we’ve taken him for granted for too long in Portland. Without him, I just don’t know where we’d be as a sports town — but it would be a lot less than what we are now.

Good luck, Paul. Beat this thing. Your team has a long run ahead but for it to reach its potential, you’ve really gotta be here running the show.

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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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Here’s your link to the website. The plan also includes “a bright future for Memorial Coliseum.” That promise right there might be enough to make the project difficult to pull off.

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I’d never thought much about the leverage that college students might have with athletic departments all over the country.

Until I found BCSbusters.com.

If you’re in college, or wish you were, you really need to go to that site. It’s maintained by a group of college kids in Portland (who attend a college that doesn’t even have football!) who are fed up. And they’ve found a little bit of leverage where I think they might have a valid way of impacting that system.

Every year, students pour millions into college athletic departments with student fees. In many cases, those athletic departments — and football programs — would be in some serious financial trouble without that contribution.

But what if students decided to rebel and withhold that money until the whole BCS thing is fixed? Or better yet, abolished? I’m not sure, but I can tell you right now that it would frighten the daylights out of some colleges to even hear of a student senate contemplating legislation that would cut off funds.

And why shouldn’t students get involved? Perhaps it’s the only thing that would help. I’m so sick of this stinky stuff — a bunch of university presidents bowing down to the bowl bigwigs in a corrupt system that really makes no sense in the modern world.

And it’s so ridiculously unnecessary. Previously I’ve outlined my plan to use almost all the existing bowl games to host national playoff games, suddenly turning obscure bowls into first-round playoff matchups that could feature some of the top teams in the country.

And talk about television revenue! It would make March Madness look like chicken feed. But oh yeah — there are all these reasons that we can’t do it. Of course, none of those apply to every other level of NCAA and NAIA football, where playoffs already exist.

Anyway, these kids at BCSbusters.com have it figured out. I’d love to see people all over the country involved in this — just to make university administrations uneasy, if nothing else. Please kids, go there, register for their newsletter and forums, send the link to your friends and get involved.

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Merritt Paulson is trying to get a ballpark. He’s trying to see if some community in this area is willing to build a real baseball stadium in a public-private partnership. You realize, perhaps, that the ONLY stadium or arena of any size that this area’s ever built with public funds is Memorial Coliseum — which was done about a half century ago.

The Rose Garden, PGE Park (Multnomah Stadium when it was built), Vaughn Street Ballpark — all were done privately. My point is, we’re kind of due, aren’t we, to do some sort of arena or ballpark?

Anyway, Paulson, who had no connections here, moved into the area when he bought the Portland Beavers and Timbers and is in love with owning pro sports franchises. He’s been villified, made fun of and derided because he’s asked the public to help fund a ballpark that IT will own.

He’s willing to pour millions of his own money into this operation. Millions. And for anyone who thinks he’s got a great chance of even earning all that money back, well, you’re nuts. I just don’t think it pencils out. The fact is, he’s a wealthy guy who loves owning and operating a sports franchise.

Just like Paul Allen.

But Paul’s taken a lot of hits over the years, too. Yet the contributions the Trail Blazers have made to this community are too many to count. Seriously, with all of our job and economic problems here, the constant rain and the idiocy of some of our politicians, it’s the only thing a lot of people find themselves feeling good about when they pick up the morning paper.

And you know what? Paul has lost tens hundreds of millions on the Trail Blazers. Can you imagine? It’s never been a profitable operation. The people of Portland owe him a standing ovation every time he walks to his seat in that arena. Has he made mistakes? Of course, and we’ve always called him out on them. But on balance, Paul Allen has been GREAT for the city of Portland.

Traditionally, we’ve not had wealthy people who live in our area step up to own franchises. The closest I can come is Harry Glickman, but he wasn’t rich enough to own the team — he just was farsighted and creative enough to put a group together that had enough financial clout to buy a team in the NBA.

I think Merritt Paulson is trying very hard to be great for the Portland area, too. Certainly, to anyone who believes he’s here to make his fortune is sadly mistaken. If they think that ballpark in Beaverton is going to benefit only Paulson, they’re seriously deluded.

That ballpark will be a gathering place and a focal point for Beaverton that the city has never had. An identity and a soul. Just wait. What really bothers me is the whole political side to this. Some people don’t like Paulson’s father, Hank, the former secretary of the treasury, so they don’t like his kid. I mean, man, the guy was a REPUBLICAN — which is pretty much always a crime around these parts. And man, he’s from the EAST COAST! How terrible.

All I’m saying is that we ought to be thankful that people like Paul Allen and Merritt Paulson have chosen Portland as the home for their teams. Nobody around here is wealthy enough or willing enough to do it.

And we’re better off for what they’ve done.

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Don Lovell was one of the great baseball players ever to come out of the PIL and for the past few seasons he’s been the baseball coach at Jesuit. But his real job, along with his wife, Alison, is to operate that chain of sports-themed barber shops around the Portland-Vancouver area called simply “The Barbers.”

Right now, the Lovells are working very hard to help the Sunshine Division gather supplies for the winter to come. It seems protein is the big need and a great source of that is peanut butter. So the goal is to gather 5,000 pounds of peanut butter at the various “The Barbers” locations around the area (and there are several with more to come.)

I think it’s a great idea and you ought to come to their aid if you can. Just drop off a jar or three of peanut butter at any of their locations — and you can find out exactly where they are by visiting their web site. It’s a very admirable project and I hope you can help.

This website doesn’t do this kind of thing often but when the Sunshine Division needs some help, we ought to be responsive. That group does an awful lot of good.

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