If Gov. Glenn Youngkin can pull off the tentative deal announced this week to move the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL’s Washington Capitals to Alexandria, he’ll have achieved a goal that has eluded his predecessors: to bring major league sports teams to Virginia.
Just how many bragging rights come with teams that would still be called “Washington” is something we might need to ask New Jersey — the New York Giants and the New York Jets of the NFL have played there since 1976 and 2009, respectively, but still bear the name of the city across the Hudson River.
The most obvious comparison here is with Douglas Wilder, who tried in 1992 to bring the then-Washington Redskins to the same location in Alexandria’s Potomac Yard. The Washington Post called it “one of the most valuable pieces of undeveloped property on the East Coast.” The deal proved controversial (perhaps an understatement). Local officials opposed it and the team eventually wound up with a stadium in Maryland, which is now considered outdated. Fun fact: The Baltimore Sun reported that the team’s then-owner, Jack Kent Cooke, contemplated changing the team’s prefix from “Washington” to “Maryland.” Would there be more prestige value here if the teams were the Virginia Wizards and the Virginia Capitals (the latter of which admittedly doesn’t make much sense, but then neither does the NBA’s Utah Jazz, a team originally founded in New Orleans)?
More recently there have been efforts to move the football team — now the Washington Commanders — to Virginia, perhaps in the Springfield area. The team’s previous owner, the unpopular Daniel Snyder, was keen on the idea, although his ownership of the team may have soured some legislators who might otherwise have been open to a deal. Snyder envisioned a grand “stadium city” where the stadium would be surrounded by about 200 acres of revenue-producing development, similar to what’s growing up around SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, where the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers play.
In his first address to the General Assembly in 2022, Youngkin surprised some by declaring his support for a stadium deal. There seemed to be bipartisan support for the idea. “This is not about what we can do for the Commanders — this is about Virginians finally getting a team,” Del. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico County, told The Washington Post. “Virginia fans deserve to reap all the benefits of a team and hope that this will be the first of more to come.”
Other legislators, though, were more skeptical. Even one of the Washington team’s biggest supporters, state Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, withdrew his support, citing declining fan support for the team during the Snyder era. Once the team regularly filled all 91,704 seats at FedEx Stadium in Maryland. Over the years, it’s been removing seats because the team can’t fill them, according to The Bleacher Report. By 2021, the team ranked 31st out of 32 teams in attendance, averaging 52,751 fans per game. (In 2022, the team’s attendance bumped up some, but the team fell to last place in the league for attendance.)
“I don’t have confidence in the Washington Commanders as a viable NFL franchise,” Petersen said. “What happens if Dan Snyder builds a stadium or the team builds a stadium, and we build all the infrastructure around it, and five years later they’re getting 20,000 people, [and] they’re like ‘we’re out of here?’ And then we’re sitting there with an empty building on I-95.”
Earlier this year, Snyder sold the team — bringing a chorus of hallelujahs from the beleaguered fan base — and new owner Josh Harris is also looking for a new stadium, so we can’t rule out that the Virginia stadium city concept won’t return.
For those with long memories (such as mine), we must trace lone Virginia’s major league sports team back to 1970, when the Washington Caps of the American Basketball Association — an upstart rival to the National Basketball Association — moved south to become the Virginia Squires.
For those who aren’t sports fans, the ABA was the league that gave us the red, white and blue basketball and the three-point shot. Those were different days — pre-social media, pre-cable, pre-just about everything — and there was experimentation with something called “regional franchises,” teams that had ties to more than one city. The ABA’s Carolina Cougars rotated home games between Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh. The Virginia Squires tried the same thing. The team’s main base was in Norfolk, but it also played games in Hampton, Richmond, Roanoke and Salem. (At the time, all those cities had new arenas, the result of a splurge of municipal investment in the 1960s, another example of how politics and sports are entwined.)
The Squires didn’t play many games in the Roanoke Valley — just four in the 1970-71 season — and those games didn’t last long, just two seasons. There was a brief time when the Roanoke Valley thought it might wind up in the NBA. On Feb. 5, 1971, the Squires played their first home game at what was then called the Salem-Roanoke County Civic Center (today just simply the Salem Civic Center). The game was a big draw — 4,542 fans, which was considered huge at the time. The Squires defeated the Pittsburgh Condors, 122-119, but the big news that night was the rumor that a merger between the NBA and the ABA was imminent, perhaps coming that very weekend. The Salem Civic Center was on the verge of being on the same circuit as Madison Square Garden!
Alas, that didn’t happen. The 1971 merger speculation wasn’t wrong — merger talks were underway, and both leagues soon agreed in concept, but the actual deal was held up by an antitrust lawsuit filed by the NBA Players Association. That lawsuit delayed a merger for five years.
While that dragged on, attendance at Squires games in the Roanoke Valley dwindled — one game in Roanoke drew just 2,057 fans. “Financially, it was a disaster,” The Roanoke Times reported. The Squires pulled out of the Roanoke Valley after two seasons.
The Squires initially were a strong team on the court — playoff contenders their first four years. They had star players such as Charlie Scott, George Gervin and Julius “Dr. J” Erving. However, the team’s finances were thin. The Squires started trading or selling off its most expensive players, who also happened to be the stars. That hurt the team both on the court and at the box office. By 1974, checks started bouncing — player Barry Parkhill (a former University of Virginia star) sued the team for his pay. The Squires almost shut down in February 1976, but an emergency loan kept the team going. Just not for long. On May 11, 1976, the league dissolved the team, which had just tied the league record for the most number of losses. A month later, the ABA and NBA merged. Four ABA franchises joined the NBA: the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York (now Brooklyn) Nets and San Antonio Spurs. The other two ABA teams were paid off for going away. Since the Squires had folded, they got nothing. Even if they hadn’t folded, they wouldn’t have been eligible for the NBA — their home arenas were considered too small. The Scope in Norfolk can hold up to 10,253 for sports events; the smallest NBA arena today is the 16,600-seat State Farm Arena in Atlanta; the biggest is the 20,917-seat United Center in Chicago.
So, no more basketball.
Fun fact: The Squires’ final game was April 7, 1976 in Norfolk, where they lost 127-123 to the New York Nets, who went on to win the final ABA championship. If the deal with the Wizards and Capitals goes through, some sportswriter will get to write that the Wizards’ first home game in Alexandria is the first by a Virginia-based major league team since the Squires lost that outing back when Gerald Ford was president and leisure suits were considered fashion.
Over the years, there have been other attempts to land other major league teams for Virginia, all unsuccessful.
In 1990, a group of Northern Virginia investors — led by telecommunications executive Bill Collins but including a young high-tech executive named Mark Warner — formed to land a Major League Baseball team for Arlington. They pitched for an expansion team in 1993 but lost out to Miami and Denver. They tried again 1998 and were one of four finalists, before losing out to Phoenix and St. Petersburg (today’s Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays). Next came a deal to buy the Houston Astros if a referendum in Harris County, Texas, to build a new stadium failed. It passed. In 1999, the group struck a deal to buy the Montreal Expos. That fell apart, too. By 2003, the Expos franchise was so precarious that Major League Baseball took over the team and was looking for a new owner — an Arlington location was again in the running.
Arlington Now magazine says one of the keys to the Arlington bid was the support of Charles Monroe, chairman of the Arlington County Board of Supervisors. He unexpectedly died at age 46. “By July, the county board had changed its tune,” the magazine says. The Northern Virginia group was forced to shift its focus to a stadium site near Dulles. That wasn’t nearly as appealing in an era when downtowns were considered the prime sites. The Montreal Expos went to the District of Columbia — and a different ownership group — and became the Washington Nationals.
So, no baseball.
George Shinn, then owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, tried to land a National Hockey League team for Hampton Roads in the 1990s. It even had a name — the Hampton Roads Rhinos. At one time, Shinn’s bid for a Norfolk-based team was thought to be in the running for one of four expansion teams the NHL planned to award. However, the Hartford Whalers relocated to Raleigh, and their proximity knocked the Rhinos out of the running.
So no hockey, either.
Virginia Beach has sometimes been mentioned as an NBA location. In 2013, the city tried to woo the Sacramento Kings, whose owners at the time were looking for a better deal. The Kings stayed in Sacramento, but with new owners. The NBA is talking about expansion again, but Virginia Beach hasn’t been one of the cities mentioned. It’s considered a given that the next two NBA franchises will go to Seattle and Las Vegas. Commissioner Adam Silver has also mentioned Vancouver and Mexico City as possible locations.
Would the Wizards in Alexandria preclude Hampton Roads from ever being considered for a future NBA team? The NBA seems to have its sights set on more exotic locations.
One thing is certain, though: None of these leagues will be setting up shop in the Roanoke Valley, as we imagined for a time in February 1971 with the Squires. That doesn’t mean, though, that these questions don’t concern us. If there is any legislative action required for any of these deals, one logical question for legislators outside Northern Virginia becomes: What’s in it for us?
The Washington Post reports that: “Two aides to Younkgin who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share confidential details of the plan said the state would contribute $150 million to $200 million in transportation improvements for the project and issue $1.4 billion in bonds through a newly created sports and entertainment authority. The bonds would be repaid over 40 years, in part with a portion of tax revenue generated from the first phase of the project, arena parking revenue and annual rent paid by Monumental.”
State Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, has already said he would “urge caution” on the deal, according to the Post. “I’m always skeptical of giving tax breaks to billionaires,” he said. “I would much prefer a reduction in the corporate tax rate, which would benefit people across the commonwealth, corporations who have been here for decades, than a single billionaire and maybe a couple of his billionaire friends.”
When there was talk of a similar bonding aspect to a football stadium, I proposed one solution: Maybe some portion of the tax revenue from the project should be dedicated to something that would benefit less fortunate parts of the state, such as a fund for school construction in economically distressed areas. Might that be a way to win support from downstate legislators? If so, then what’s happening in Potomac Yard may matter to more than just sports fans in Northern Virginia.