Scott Mitchell was quick to point out the double dose of reverse history.
The City of Hamilton and the Tiger-Cats are holding hands walking away from the first two scheduled games at Tim Hortons Field — we're suggesting, for the marketable drama, that they make it three games — being moved to the safe landing spot at the university campus on the other end of town.
"The irony is that a couple of years ago, there was not a great relationship between the city and Tiger-Cats," the team's CEO was saying after the city announced that the Cats' games against Ottawa on July 26 and Winnipeg on July 31 would not be played at the construction-delayed Tim Hortons Field.
"Today, we sit here with a great relationship, having negotiated a great lease. And a couple of years ago, things weren't great at Mac for us. Now they're a tremendous partner. So things have really come full circle with a Hamilton solution, and that's good to know."
The Ticats will play their games against, fittingly, the other two new-stadium teams at McMaster's Ron Joyce Stadium, as they did their pre-season game against the Montreal Alouettes. The club also has an option for a third game there, Aug. 16 against Calgary, if they feel the Pan Am stadium is not ready to properly inhabit.
Mac, of course, broke off negotiations with the Ticats 25 months ago, compelling the team to play its 2013 home games in Guelph rather than in Hamilton. And the city and the football team waged one of the great public face-scratchers of all time over where to invest the windfall of federal and provincial stadium-funding money.
And now, the city and the Ticats may eventually have to go to court as allies to recover direct and indirect losses stemming from the two games, which will be played in a facility with 25 per cent per cent of the seating capacity of the Pan Am edifice.
Mitchell said yesterday: "We'll see, but I think, clearly, litigation is going to occur here."
For its part, the city still says local taxpayers will not be on the hook for any of the legal see-sawing.
It was only in the past couple of business days, Mitchell says, that the Cats were made fully aware of "the seriousness, in terms of a solution, of the nature" of the stadium problem.
While all partners in the project agreed yesterday that the stadium would not be ready for July 26, the Ticats saw the problem from a broader perspective than whether it was serviceable for a couple of early games.
"The situation was being presented to us as a temporary solution, a five-day turnaround (to the second game), and construction would have had to stop. Where would that have left the stadium in September and October?
"Our disappointment was quickly usurped by the fact that we were slowly being chased into a poor solution with a poor first impression. Not just for us but for our fans, our partners, the city, TSN. And we started thinking, 'We're doing to this to save … whom?'"
TSN is a factor in this discussion because it is the league's sole television partner and trying to celebrate a partially finished stadium — a de facto construction site — would serve neither the network nor Hamilton's reputation.
"This is a chance for Hamilton, after a very long process, to put on a great show," Mitchell said. "The last thing we wanted to do was give the impression to a million-plus people that this is anything but a great facility.
"We're talking about a couple of weeks here. We're not talking the season, we're not talking long term."
Infrastructure Ontario is adamant, the Cats say, that by Labour Day, the stadium will be not just ready "but substantially complete, as per contract." Of course they were adamant about July 26 just a fortnight ago.
Mitchell says the Cats will leave all that to Infrastructure Ontario, but unless the lost income is too much, and not recoverable, it says here that three games at Mac would be the preferable, and by far more memorable, scenario.
That would put the Ticats into a stadium with a better chance of it being all gussied up, against the Toronto Argonauts. On Labour Day.
They couldn't possibly make a better first impression than that.
smilton@thespec.com
905-526-3268 | @miltonatthespec
