It's Wednesday-- Do You Know Where Your Favorite Football Team Is?

One of our favorite episodes of "the Simpsons" is the monorail episode, the one where some con artist (voiced by the late, great Phil Hartman) convinces Springfield that the one thing they need to do to put themselves on the map is a monorail. Of course, it all goes to pot when the guy takes off with some of the money and Homer somehow manages to become the monorail's conductor. So what does this have to do with the 49ers? Because at a meeting yesterday with the Santa Clara City Council, a consultant hired by the 49ers painted such a rosy picture of what would happen if Santa Clara builds them a stadium, we can't but help think about the episode.

The consultant, Bill Rhoda, told the City Council that the stadium would generate $249 million for the county. Monorail! He then added that it'll bring in $12.3 million dollars annually in tax revenue for the county. Monorail!! And they'll be guaranteed to get at least one Superbowl every ten years. Monorail!!!! Oh, and the best part is that Santa Clara would only need to throw in a mere pittance of $200 million dollars to build it and they could do it without raising taxes or any other sort of thing. MONORAIL!!!!

Now, of course, these types of studies are always considered slightly dubious, especially when it comes to football stadiums. It's one of those things where economists can dance the numbers in any sort of way to get what they want to say. We doubt Rhoda, for instance, crunched the numbers and said "d'oh! That's not going to work" and then told the York's to forget about it. But that's what was presented. So far, it seems to be working as some of the more thrifty officials in Santa Clara appear to be buying it.

Still, the big hang up appears to be the $200 million that is needed for Santa Clara to put in to building the stadium. Former City Manager and Councilman Don Von Raesfeld thinks the money can come from some reserve cash from their city-owned utility that happens to be just lying around to use in case of emergencies but other people think that's kind of stupid.