Loverro: 'No way' Redskins get fully government-financed D.C. stadium

ESPN 980 AM personality and Washington Examiner columnist Thom Loverro said there is "no way" the Washington Redskins will get a predominantly government-financed stadium in an effort to move back to the District.

Addressing the Young Members Committee's "Media: On Tap" April 18 in the First Amendment Lounge, Loverro was asked if he could see the Redskins returning to the District in a decade and how the District's financial relationship with the federal government could play a role in that.

Loverro said he could see Redskins owner Dan Snyder working a deal to privately build a stadium at the RFK Stadium site in exchange for developmental rights for potentially valuable land along the Anacostia River.

But a fully government financed stadium like Nationals Park? No.

"It's still very active because they'd like to host a Super Bowl here, a Final Four here, so people are looking for creative ways (to finance a stadium)," Loverro said. "(But) I don't think it will ever be a government-financed stadium. It could be partially."

A Columbia, Md., resident, Loverro spent the first half of his journalism career as a news reporter and editor for the Baltimore Sun, covering the western suburbs, before taking a buyout from the paper and accepting a sports reporting job at the Washington Times in the early 1990s.

Until the late 2000s, when the Times eliminated its sports and metro sections, Loverro covered Major League Baseball, the National Football League and local clubs in the Washington-Baltimore corridor and wrote several books -- ranging from chronicles of the Orioles and Redskins to women's Olympic hockey and Negro League baseball.

Loverro said he feels fortunate to be able to both work for a newspaper and continue his radio career at the same time.

"I didn't think after the Times folded their sports section I'd ever be writing for a newspaper again . . . and still (be) back on the radio," he said.

A big proponent of boxing, Loverro discussed the decline of the sport, citing the lack of an American heavyweight title contender and the changing economic demographics of other professional sports.

"If a young man in America -- in the 50s and 60s and even to a certain extent the early 70s -- a big, strong, athletic kid was growing up then, he could make more money as a fighter than as an NFL player or NBA player," Loverro said. "Well that changed in the 70s."

The rise of mixed martial arts, "which appeal to a younger generation," also has had an impact.

You can catch Loverro weekdays on 980 AM co-hosting "The Sports Fix" from 12-2 p.m. and making appearances on "The Sports Reporters" weekdays from 4-7 pm.