Tonight’s entertaining clash between the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers, fueled by the controversy surrounding quarterback Brett Favre’s path to the Vikings, has been a boon for the Vikings franchise. The team desperately wants a new stadium and almost as desperately wants someone else – presumably Minnesota taxpayers – to pick up some of the tab. So it is no surprise that this week’s burst of publicity and popularity have coincided with new rumblings about the need for a Vikings stadium. We hope that Minnesotans don’t let an excess of Purple Pride blind them to the reality that it is not in the state’s best interests to spend millions on a new football stadium.

The Vikings, like the Twins before them, say that they need a new place to play – a place where they can sell access to luxury skyboxes and create a host of other profit-generating amenities. We do not doubt that these would be good things for the Vikes. The question, however, is whether Minnesota taxpayers should foot the bill. Our belief is that they should not.

Pro sports teams make many claims that new stadiums generate economic benefits. We view those claims with skepticism. And we view them with a certainty that those benefits do not extend beyond the metropolitan area. Our community would get absolutely zero gain from a new Vikings stadium. Thus, it would be a bad investment of tax dollars.

Others claim that our state needs a pro football team, presumably for pride’s sake. We don’t agree. The quality of the average Minnesotans’ life would not change in the slightest if we didn’t have a pro football team.

None of which is to say that we don’t think the Vikes need or deserve a new stadium. They probably do. We just don’t think that Minnesotans at large should have to pay for it. We hope the Vikings can successfully build a stadium with private capital and we hope they play there for many, many years to come.

If it’s a good investment, there will be no shortage of individuals and businesses eager to join in such a project. But we do know that it is neither fair nor wise to create any stadium financing system that pulls dollars from taxpayers’ pockets.