A "Soccer-Specific Field" Needed? I Don't Think So

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I live in a sports-happy town. The sport that people are happy about, however, is college basketball. NOTHING else. The college football team's 40,000-seat stadium (and that should tell you something, given that we have stadiums in places like Texas, Michigan, and Ohio that hold 100,000) was half-empty when the team fell on hard times last year. The college baseball team's games are free, and they're not full. And you know something? That's fine. I have no problem with that. It's a fact of life. It's like that old TV show Friday Night Lights, that explored how important (religiously) high school football is in Texas. When it does become a problem is when someone wants to dip into the taxpayers' pocketbook in the name of expanding or growing a team. Case in point: a recent study that said our minor-league professional soccer team, the Louisville FC, needs a "soccer-specific field in order to grow." I was born here, and I've lived a sizable majority of my life here. I'm also a sports nut with a fairly good memory. I remember seeing the Louisville Colonels, the farm team of the Boston Red Sox, when I was little. I had a major schoolgirl crush on Louis Dampier, the guard for the American Basketball Association's Kentucky Colonels (the same team that sported Artis Gilmore at center and Dan Issel at forward). In adulthood, I attended professional (albeit minor-league) games by hometown teams such as the IceHawks and the RiverFrogs (hockey) and the Thunder (indoor soccer). I never got to see the Louisville Fire arena football team. And I never will: all of these teams are gone. With the exception of the Louisville Colonels, who were forced to move when they lost their lease in the park they played in 1973, every one of these teams disappeared when the league folded. Remember, among those now-defunct leagues is a professional soccer league. (And indoor soccer was great fun.) And yet, despite the fact that only one team has survived in this city (the Louisville Bats, formerly the Louisville Redbirds, the minor-league baseball team), someone paid to do a study (hint hint) says, "Hey, we need to spend money on a stadium for our minor-league soccer team." (They currently play at Slugger Field.) I don't think so.