Career tip for Young: Move on, cash in

I love Phil Wood. I wish he still had a sports talk show in Baltimore. (You can catch him on WTEM, 570 AM, in Washington on Saturday mornings and some weeknights.) He called to chide me about my parting shot at the Cap Centre. (I know, I know. It's the US Airways Arena.) Phil agrees the now-abandoned place wasn't much architecturally and, yes, it was probably obsolete within 10 years of its opening in 1973. "But look at the Baltimore Arena (nee Civic Center, circa 1962)," he says. "That was obsolete about two weeks after it opened." The Cap Centre wasn't much, he says, but it was the only decent indoor facility in Maryland, and Abe Pollin paid for it with his own money. (Of course, he could have paid for one that had lasting architectural integrity, and in an urban setting, as he's done with the new MCI Center.) "The 1970s were architecturally, aesthetically bankrupt!" Phil says. "My God, look at what we were wearing!"

Don't remind me.

Phil has an idea for the old Cap Centre: Let the Terps play there. Landover is just a zip trip from the University of Maryland, and paying rent in Pollin's abandoned palace is bound to be cheaper than building a new arena at College Park.

Hmmm. Not bad, Phil.

Contact Dan Rodricks at TJIDAN

aol.com; by post at 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21278; or by voice mail at 410-332-6166.

Pub Date: 12/05/97