With all the whining about FedEx Field in the story by Patrick T. Hand (“Disastro-Turf,” 12/13), the one point that was made far too lightly is that Jack Kent Cooke paid for that stadium out of his own pocket! That happens very rarely nowadays—owners usually threaten to move the team to extract public funding or else do move the team after a sweetheart offer.

See Art Modell’s welfare stadium in Baltimore, for example. That fact that FedEx wasn’t publicly funded gives it a leg up no matter how many small problems there are. No one forces anyone to go to a Redskins game.

Arlington, Va.