EverBank Stadium, seen here in October of 2024, will begin four years of renovations in early 2025. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on January 26, 2025 at 3:20 pm
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With the ink not yet dry on Jaguars Coach Liam Coen’s contract, we’ll see what he and the new GM can do to turn around the team’s fortunes. There’s pretty much nowhere to go but up.
I know all about dysfunctional pro football franchises. I grew up in Michigan, where the words “long-suffering” were most often used for Detroit Lions fans. The Lions were so frustrating that my own mother became a Dallas Cowboys fan. The Lions’ last league championship came in 1957, before there was a Super Bowl. The Lions were the first NFL team to go 0-16 in 2008. “It was a losing culture under a dark cloud of joyless mistrust,” wrote Detroit Free Press columnist Jeff Seidel.
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Yet the Lions just had a magical season with a 15-2 regular season record. The reason for the Lions’ turnaround is widely credited to recent principal owner Sheila Ford Hamp because ownership was the only consistent variable for decades of Lions’ mediocrity.
William Clay Ford became prime owner of the Detroit Lions in 1963, and his wife succeeded him. Daughter Hamp took over in 2020 and made changes in both personnel and culture that have turned the Lions into a winning pro football franchise.
Check out these headlines:
- Sports Illustrated: “Sheila Hamp transformed Lions from ‘mockery’ to Super Bowl contender.”
- Detroit Free Press: “Owner Sheila Hamp has been bold, different and smart in mapping out the Lions’ flight plan.”
- The Athletic: “These are not the Same Old Lions. Their owner made sure of it.”
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As Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson tweeted, “Shelia Ford Hamp is a force to all who know her. Her leadership and vision are a large if not the largest reason the Lions are playing football in Detroit in the postseason. We are so lucky she is running this team.”
With the Lions’ loss in the playoffs, they remain one of only four teams to have never played in the Super Bowl, along with the Houston Texans, the Cleveland Browns and, of course, the Jaguars.
That brings us to the elephant in the room for the Jaguars: The only consistent variable in the team’s losing record is the owner, Shad Khan. A successful businessman, he has been a miserable failure as owner of the Jaguars. In fact, since Khan purchased the Jaguars, the team’s record is 64-148 — last of 32 teams in all of pro football, according to News4Jax.
Based on performance alone, Khan ought to sell the team. If not, he could turn it over to his son, Tony, who seems to be groomed for this.
But this is much more than a sports story. For good or ill, the city of Jacksonville has linked its self-esteem and its financial future to the Jaguars, committing much of its discretionary income to funding half of the $1.4 billion bill to renovate the city’s football stadium for the team.
Meanwhile, Jacksonville’s quality of life is being threatened by a severe lack of affordable housing and increased flooding risks. The city will need an additional 106,000 affordable housing units in the next 20 years, according to the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, and the market alone won’t solve the problem. Let’s say it would cost $100,000 to subsidize each of the affordable housing units; that’s a bill of about $10 billion. That makes the $300 million committed to local improvements in the stadium deal look like the pittance it is.
Meanwhile, Duval County has 1,000 miles of waterfront susceptible to sea level rise along the St. Johns River, its 50 tributaries, the Intracoastal Waterway and the oceanfront. According to Climate Central and Zillow, 2,700 homes in Duval County will be underwater by 2050.
The city is also under financial pressure to build a new jail, expected to cost over $200 million, while the Mayor Deegan administration intends to return its public safety pensions to traditional defined benefit plans.
How much will all of this cost? Where will the revenue come from? The city of Jacksonville is all-in for the Jaguars but is willing to live with token gestures on affordable housing and climate change.
The city needs a respected, independent evaluation of future finances, the equivalent of a financial counseling session — tough love. Isn’t this the job of City Council? Yes, but politicians usually don’t look beyond the next election, especially if there are unpopular costs involved.
I suggest choosing one of two options:
- Revive the Jacksonville Community Council for a one-time study of city finances. This would be an independent no-holds-barred review of the bill Jacksonville must face to avert a quality-of-life catastrophe.
- Or tap into Florida TaxWatch, an independent and respected nonprofit organization, to conduct such a financial review. I previously shepherded such a study, which resulted in a 2008 report that exposed Jacksonville’s pension crisis.
Either option would require private funding. Government cooperation would be nice but it would not be required.
On the current path, Jacksonville housing will be unaffordable and flooding will be a common occurrence, but we will have a shiny new stadium for our pro football team to play seven or eight home games per year.
