FC Cincinnati seemed to come out of nowhere.
For a town that's never had much in the way of professional soccer, we've taken to the Orange and Blue, set ourselves up in the Bailey and broken United Soccer League attendance records.
Major League Soccer has taken notice, and Cincinnati is being considered as one of the next MLS expansion teams. Although everyone seems to want the expansion to happen, there's a catch: MSL requires new teams to have their own stadiums, and FC Cincinnati currently plays out of the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium.
FC Cincinnati has proposed using public money to help build the stadium and even riding on the tail end of the infamous stadium tax that built Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park, but many in Cincinnati and Hamilton County are still sore over the stadium tax.
Will our new crop-of soccer-silly fans pay for a third stadium?
Kevin Necessary is the editorial cartoonist for WCPO. His opinions do not reflect those of WCPO.
WCPO Insiders can scroll below to view some of Kevin's sketches from the past week.
Kevin's sketchbook
Welcome back to the behind-the-scenes look at how I come up with my editorial cartoons. Before I work on my final cartoon, I usually go through several sketches, trying to nail down the right idea and image to go with what I'm trying to say.
Here's the rough sketch I did for today's cartoon. Not much changed from the sketch to the finished drawing, but initially, in the second panel, the main character was going to be holding a DVD, rather than sitting in a movie theater. I felt the cartoon's design was too lopsided, with the panels on the left having two characters in them each, and the panels on the right having only one character. That's when I decided to balance the design out.
Sometimes, even when I know there's a topic I'll want to draw, I'll do a sketch or two of a different topic just to see if anything sticks. I've got hundreds of sketches that went nowhere, just like this sketch. Most of them are done on pieces of scrap newsprint, and I dash them on using pencil, pen and, occasionally, crayon.
The idea I was playing with here was that the Reds have had some great batting this year, but their pitching is still a little wimpy. Neither the sketch nor the idea was strong enough to merit further exploration.
I knew I wanted to do a cartoon about the retrial of Ray Tensing. Specifically, I wanted to comment on Judge Leslie Ghiz's restrictions on the media. I'm an ardent defender of the First Amendment -- I wouldn't be in this job if I wasn't -- and I firmly believe if the press is kept in the dark, so is the public.
I started out just exploring ideas. At first I had the image of Judge Ghiz covering her eyes and asking everyone else to do the same until the trial was over, but once I scribbled it down I knew that wasn't the right way to go. However, I liked the idea of the media being blinded, and thought immediately of Lady Justice and her blindfold. (Y'know the old saying: "Justice is blind.")
I refined the idea further, changing the design so that it was a close-up on Lady Justice. But the impact still wasn't there. That's when I had the idea of a fictitious bailiff coming out of the courtroom to ask a statue of Lady Justice if Ghiz could borrow her blindfold. The image worked, and I had my cartoon for the day.
