Watchdog

If I stopped blogging, watching sports on TV, listening to the radio and sleeping, I could do a bang-up job covering the financial nuances of the new sports palaces going up around Big Town . . . which theoretically is part of my beat. I think.

Absent that, I just try to keep tabs on this stuff. Here is an interesting story about the potential impact an IRS ruling on tax-exempt bonds could have on various projects, notably the Barclays Center.

I visited the showroom suite in Midtown Wednesday, a picture of which appears here. (I did not see any of these creepy people when I was there.)

It looked nice to me, and costs only $300,000 or so per suite (regular), $540,000 (courtside).

I have mixed emotions about the Barclays Center. I think it would add to the quality of life in downtown Brooklyn - as long as everyone takes the train! - and that the "Brooklyn" brand will be a powerful draw, and that a lot more Long Islanders will venture to Nets games there than they do to the dump in East Rutherford.

On the other hand, it's a shame there is a nice new arena in Newark that is home to a hockey team and not the NBA.

I don't know. It's all very complicated. Too complicated for a guy who posts all day about calls to talk radio stations and interviews with guys in space shuttles.

Click below for info from the Nets about the Barclays Center. I'm done for the week.

Sorry about the blogging gap this afternoon.

I was deep inside enemy territory, in The New York Times building, which I climbed using an elevator rather than the convenient, ladder-like structure outside its windows.

No, I wasn't there to make a Gary Carter-like offering of my services should they decide Richard Sandomir has outlived his usefulness.

I was checking out the model suite for the Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn, which the Nets still hope to open during the 2010-11 season.

The cheapest model averages around $300,000 per season. If everyone in WatchDog Nation throws in a dollar for each page view over the next month or so, we can do this together, people.

It will be crowded, but we are all friends.

This is a letter about which I wrote an item for my Friday newspaper column.

It's the back side of a letter Harry Dickran, now 47, of Babylon wrote to Nets trainer Fritz Massman in 1974 asking for autographs of Nets players.

Massman responded with the signature of every player on the eventual championship team other than Brian Taylor.

The letter is to go on display in the fan section of the new Sports Museum of America, opening on lower Broadway Wednesday.

Whoa, the Devils' owner and the Newark mayor are trying to get together a group to buy the Nets? And move them into the Prudential Center?

That would be very interesting. And save a lot of construction material in Brooklyn in these difficult economic and environmental times.

But who would get custody of the Nets dancers?

If the Nets ever do move to Brooklyn, I will be able to justify writing more about them than I do now, which in turn would open up all sorts of possibilities given their wacky marketing maneuvers.

For example: Last summer, they signed a sponsor for their offseason. That was strange enough, but now they have a sponsor for the playoffs . . . even though they're not in them!

The lucky company is T-Mobile USA, which along with the team will host a series of events through May 15 featuring players, former players, the team mascot and, most importantly, the Nets Dancers.

Click below for the can't-make-this-stuff-up news release.

There will be no repeat of Tuesday's 20-blog day. Sorry.

But I will leave you with this, which is amusing enough to hold you at least through the rest of the morning:

The Nets' season finale got bumped from YES because of the Yankees-Red Sox game and bumped from possible relocation to Ch. 9 due to the big premiere of Flavor Flav's new show, "Under One Roof," which features as a guest star . . . Terrell Owens!

(This is kind of weird: According to Wikipedia, Mr. Flav is 18 months older than I am!)

Click below for the stations on which you can find the Nets tonight depending on your TV provider, should you prefer watching that to the Yankees, the Mets, Devils-Rangers, the end of the Isiah Thomas era and/or "Under One Roof."

I don't know whether the Devils' owner - a very nice guy, by the way - is being honest here or cynically trying to scare the Nets into abandoning Brooklyn and joining him in downtown Newark.

But it's an interesting story regardless.

And probably hints at one more step in the direction of the seemingly inevitable announcement that the Jets/Giants will resort to PSLs to finance their new playpen.

The Nets are hosting a "carbon neutral" NBA game tonight.

All of this sounds noble but some of it is over my head.

(This game was going to be on YES, but now it's not, thanks to Monday's Yankees mist-out.)

(By the way, four Nets games will be on Ch. 9 in April:

Friday, April 4 at Detroit, 8 p.m.
Wednesday, April 9 at Cleveland, 7 p.m.
Friday, April 11 at Toronto, 7 p.m.
Tuesday, April 15 vs. Charlotte at IZOD CENTER, 7:30 p.m.)

Click below for the news release about the carbon stuff.

Twin brothers Brett (CEO of the Nets) and Michael (COO of the Florida Panthers) Yormark are scheduled to appear in a feature on CNBC's “High Net Worth” at 8:30 (and 11:30) Friday.

The Nets still insist the Brooklyn arena thing is going to happen.

In many ways it would be cool having an NBA team in downtown Brooklyn, but on the other hand it seems like it would be more efficient to play in Newark with the Devils or Uniondale with the Isles. But I digress.

The Nets now officially have conceded they will not move into their new Brooklyn arena until sometime in 2010.

If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the Jets and Giants beating them to it, sometime in the late summer of that year. Maybe the Nets can start the 2010-11 season in their new facility.

If not . . . there always is the Prudential Center in Newark or better yet, give me a call and I'll hook you up with a Mr. Charles Wang, who might be interested in new friends to join him in a refurbished arena on Long Island.

I have to write my Friday newspaper column now. See ya.

Enjoy the Iowa Caucus coverage. WatchDog officially is apolitical and thus rooting for four-way ties in each party, just because that would be amusing.

The official attendance of 15,233 for Wednesday night's Knicks-Nets game - there were fewer people than that actually in the seats - was a shocker that speaks to both the declining fortunes of the Knicks and the challenges that face the Nets in the Jersey swamps.

They're not the only ones. The Devils are averaging under 15,000 fans for their games at the new Prudential Center, where an official crowd of only 4,327 - many disguised as empty seats - showed up for the final of a college basketball tournament featuring Tennessee and Texas Nov. 24.

That same night at Madison Square Garden, 18,200 showed up for a hockey game between Cornell and Boston University, and scalpers were commanding some nice premiums outside the arena.

I have to write my Friday newspaper column now.

The Nets deserve credit for their aggressive, creating marketing stunts. It will be even better when they move to Brooklyn and Long Islanders can take advantage of said gimmicks without crossing any rivers.

Anyway, here's the latest: The team is offering 50 percent discounts to two games Friday and Saturday night to would-be theatergoers who were shut out of Broadway by the stagehands strike. They need only show their unused theater tickets at the Izod Center box office.

The team also will offer 50 percent discounts to fans who present used theater tickets.

Does my stub from "Pippin'' in 1974 count?

A WatchDog post Tuesday reporting that Nets radio play-by-play man Chris Carrino had signed a contract extension misspelled Carrino's name.

Why? I have no idea.

There is no excuse or explanation, so I won't offer one. Maybe in the future I shouldn't do 20 posts in one day.

My apologies to a solidly professional local basketball voice.

The Nets announced a multi-year contract extension for radio play-by-play man Chris Carrino, a member of the long, proud list of WFUV alums from Fordham populating the local and national sports airwaves.

Carinno is entering his seventh season with the future Brooklyns.

The picture to the right is of Laura Torres, a Dix Hills dental assistant who on May 9 had the honor of being the first person ever to have his or her picture on WatchDog. Keep that in mind when the first edition of WatchDog Trivial Pursuit comes out, just in time for the holidays.

The arena formerly known as Continental Airlines Arena will be known as the Izod Center, effective Oct. 31.

I'm too busy to think of a clever nickname for the newly named building. (Alligator Alley?) So please feel free to post suggestions below and I'll pass it along to my friends in East Rutherford.

The Nets worked closely with the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority to sell the naming rights. They'll be playing there until their new building in Brooklyn is completed.

Izod signed for five years. The Nets do not intend to be in the Meadowlands that long.

Speaking of arenas across the Hudson, I happened to be in downtown Newark at noon Wednesday, 47 years to the minute after I first arrived in the world in that very town.

I saw the new Prudential Center, home of the Devils, for the first time. From the outside it looks like a typical modern mega-palace of the type sprouting up all over America. But then you remember it's in downtown Newark, of all places.

Strange. But true.

(Update: According to reader "flubby,'' Izod and Lacoste split a while back - 1993! - and this no longer is the Izod logo. Whatever. I don't know. I'm old and I'm busy answering e-mails from Imus fans.)

It's not as, um, juicy as the news coming out of the Knicks these days, but the always sponsor-aggressive Nets this week announced another innovative deal:

Wrigley's, which sponsored the team's offseason, now is sponsoring its preseason, henceforth officially known as "Before the Buzzer.”

"The Nets are always looking to provide marketing platforms for our best partners and to activate Nets’ basketball year-round,'' Nets CEO Brett Yormark said in a news release.