The Weekly Dis
Untimely storms make men expect a dearth. / All may be well; but if God sort it so, / 'Tis more than we deserve or I expect.
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At last check, this website has drawn 26,391 unique visitors since I launched on Sept. 12 of last year. Since, the largest spikes in visits have come during the interludes when the Blue Jackets and Crew were hiring and firing coaches, times when, it seems, TheDisrespected.com snuck into a continental or even international algorhithm. To date, the five posts that have gotten the most visits are:
- Columbus Crew coach poaching (18 Nov. 2025).
- Kevin Dineen is battling cancer (1 Dec. 2025).
- An exit interview with Dean Evason, who on Monday was fired by Blue Jackets GM Don Waddell (16 Jan. 2026).
- How I got here (a piece on my background that appears on the homepage).
- Unrolling the metaphorical meatball that is Henrik Rydström (16 Jan. 2026).
Over the past 30 days, the post that has drawn the most traffic, and it's not even close, is The Weekly Dis from Saturday, March 28 (bookmarked immediately below). There are a couple of reasons for this, I think: One, there is no paywall on the Saturday Disses and, two, the subject matter in the lede item touched a newsy nerve around here.
Michael Arace
On Tuesday, I covered the dog-and-pony show that was the announcement that the majority owners of the Crew, Haslam Sports Group (HSG), along with two of the minority owners from the Edwards family – Drs. Pete and Chris Edwards – along with Nationwide insurance, had won their bid for a National Women's Soccer League team. Man, that was a helluva sentence. My apologies.
The Columbus franchise is scheduled to come online in 2028. My thoughts appeared at the website the next morning (bookmarked immediately below).
Michael Arace
Monday, the Columbus City Council held their nose and voted for a plan to give $25 million to the NWSL bidders. The money is to go toward renovating a city park the city ceded to the NWSL bidders, and to build a women's locker room at the new Crew stadium (aka Fertilizer Field). The renovated park will serve as the training ground for the new team.
Mayor Andrew J. Ginther was a champion of the plan and he put the city council in a tough spot: Vote for this, or forever be known as the councilpersons who sneer at equality, and who blew the chance to land a women's professional soccer team. Haters and misogynists, in other words.
Led by City Council President Shannon Hardin, the councilpersons were able to extract a couple of concessions to make this corporate welfare a bit more palatable: They kept their hands out of the general fund by making the $25 million a type of loan, to be paid off with a 2% tax on all tickets sold for events at Fertilizer Field; and at the last minute, a provision was inserted so that the city would be bound to replace the park in question – McCoy Park, on the Southwest Side – with relative alacrity. And the billionaire Haslam family, et al, would have to contribute $3 million to the effort.
City Council President Shannon Hardin told the Columbus Dispatch: "I’m taking a terrible vote to make sure we’re able to do a very big thing: bring women's soccer to Columbus."
Tuesday morning, less than half a day after the City Council vote, the Franklin County Board of Commissioners did their part in this carefully arranged political play and voted to give the billionaire Haslam family, et al, another $25 million, bringing the total taxpayer contribution for a (temporarily?) stolen city park cum NWSL training facility.
As I wrote in "Well, that was fast ..." (see bookmark immediately above), it was clear that McCoy Park was a key to winning the bid for Columbus to become the NWSL's 18th franchise. The league, led by commissioner Jessica Berman, is increasingly insistent that that club-specific facilities are integral to the league's growth and stature.
All of this led to an intelligent discussion – the only kind I host here – at TheDisrespected.com. One of the commenters pointed out that, among other things, Berman and NWSL can be rapacious when it comes to community green spaces:
I believe when Mr. James speaks of co-opting public parks, he is referring to Houston Sports Park, which was, according to its website, "developed by the City of Houston with the assistance of the Houston Parks Board," and to Sylvan Lake Park, which is leased by the Orlando Pride.
The buildout of the NWSL has been impressive. There are a couple of clubs that have, or are building, their own stadiums. Nine of the 16 teams currently online have their own training facilities, and some of them are stunning.
As Berman, speaking of the Columbus NWSL team's plan for a training facility, said at the Tuesday afternoon dog-and-pony-show announcement at Fertilizer Field:
"I think it's a critical component to how we evaluate an expansion bid. In particular, I think it's a really clear demonstration that the community and, by proxy, the public is behind the team coming to a market. We were really excited to hear the good news (council vote) last night, and excited to bring the team here to Columbus, where we know that the community will embrace this team and enjoy all the things professional women's soccer has to offer."
Wait a minute, though. There's a whole lot of sharing going on in the NWSL. Here's a primer which, while it is a year old, remains a useful primer:
Madison McAleese
I read that, then poked around for a few hours to get a clearer picture. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Condor was also looking into this subject matter, and prodding AI:
A summary:
- Of the 16 cities currently online in NWSL (not including Boston), seven are sharing training facilities with at least one other team.
- Houston Dash share a training facility with Dynamo and Dynamo FC Youth Academy.
- Utah Royals share a training facility with four other teams – Real Salt Lake, Real Monarchs, RSL U-15, RSL U-17.
- Washington Spirit share a training facility with D.C. United, Loudon United and DCU Youth Academy.
- North Carolina Courage share a training facility with NCFC.
- Gotham FC share a training facility with NYRB.
- Racing Louisville share share a training facility with Louisville City FC.
And the Columbus NWSL bid absolutely had to include a dedicated practice facility? They could not share with the Crew and its academy?
It might've been a dealbreaker?
That's what they sold us.
Per usual, follow the money
Billionaires own sports teams for two main reasons – tax writeoffs and ever-rising valuations.
Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Ellis Simani
This piece has been lodged in my brain since I first read it five years ago.
It cost $150 million for the Haslams (and Dr. Pete's family) to clinch Save the Crew in 2018. Last year, Sportico valued the franchise at $900 million. The Crew over the past two years have been ranked as one of the 50 most valuable soccer franchises in the world. But the Haslams bought the team for the fans, you know. For the city.
In 2020, Kansas City paid $5 million to get an NWSL expansion team. Ah, the old days. Now ... From The Guardian:
According to reports from multiple outlets, the Haslams will pay an eye-popping fee for entry: $205m, a record amount for the NWSL that tops the amount Blank paid for the Atlanta franchise by $40m. The fee is also more than all but two MLS ownership groups have paid to enter that league, with only Charlotte FC ($325m) and San Diego FC ($500m) shelling out more.
Women's sports is a growing industry and the billionaires want a piece. There is some social consciouness involved, i.e. giving girls something tangible in the way of role models to whom they can aspire. It's about time.
Mostly, though, it's about the money.
In the case of the Haslams, et al, they were willing to pay a record fee to win a bid. If it took an additional $50 million from the city and the county, well, that's no problem for the Haslams – who were able to extract $600 million from the state for their Cleveland Browns domed-stadium project in Brook Park. The Haslams even got the state legislature to change the Modell Law to facilitate the Browns' move out of the city, because they wanted more money from parking (among other things.)
If the NWSL bid requires $50 million in taxpayer money, which, according to Berman, is some kind of show of "public" support, well ... Done. If the league and/or the ownership group need a city park – to what? Separate Columbus from other bidders who don't give up public space? ... Done.
Billionaires can do anything they want.
Nate Ulrich, Akron Beacon Journal
The people who brought serial assaulter Deshaun Watson to Cleveland and gave him a fully guaranteed, five-year contract worth $230 million, which included a $44.965-million signing bonus, are all about empowering women.
Sigh.
I'll end this thing where I ended the last one I wrote on the subject:
I love that Columbus has a professional women's soccer team on the way. I do.
I have to keep saying that to myself.
Pity Party
In my March 25 post, I wrote this:
Order up the two-by-fours, buy some tires and get some old paint cans out of the back of the garage. It's time to build a bandwagon, and I mean a big one, because the largest city in Ohio needs room to c'mon aboard.
The Columbus Blue Jackets are in second place in the Metropolitan Division.
Man, I didn't think they could blow it, but after 26-plus years of covering this team, should I have known better?
On March 25, the Jackets had 11 games remaining in the regular season. They lost nine of them, one in a shootout.
I don't mean to tread upon painful memories for Jackets fans, it's just that when I scroll through the posts at my website, that headline – "We're going to need a bigger boat" – shines like a neon sign outside of a strip club.
Then, there's the caption on the lede photo: "Who doth not look for night?" Which is Shakespearan. Literally. It's from Richard III:
When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.
All may be well; but if God sort it so,
‘Tis more than we deserve or I expect.
The point here: get rid of Grammarly, which finds five words in the above quote where Shakespeare misused the English language.
If, like Blue Jackets fans, you feel bad and somehow want to feel worse, either run some Ferlinghetti through Grammarly or watch the latest "Cannon Balls: Reign of Terror" podcast.
Another video I saw this week that I enjoyed
To the point where I watched the whole thing
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Michael Arace
