JACKSONVILLE – The joy was as real as the celebration.
It has been that sort of week around the Jaguars, with President Mark Lamping experiencing the good feeling of accomplishment and the satisfaction of a high-profile – and ultra-important – job very well done. Lamping said he experienced something else this week, too.
"I think it's a sense of relief, and that relief comes from certainty," he said. "We all know where we're going to be working for the next 30 years."
Lamping, the Jaguars' president since 2012, joined senior writer John Oehser for this week's O-Zone Podcast. The primary topic: This week's Jacksonville City Council vote that approved an agreement between the City of Jacksonville and the Jaguars for the “Stadium of the Future.”
"We know that the one thing that could have created the biggest issues for this franchise has now been taken off the table," Lamping said. "We're anxious to get to work to deliver on what should be a very, very special project – not only for the Jaguars, but for Jacksonville."
Lamping was hired in his current position by Jaguars Owner Shad Khan shortly after Khan purchased the team. Tuesday's vote is expected to at last silence a national narrative that that has surrounded the franchise since before their tenures – that the Jaguars would relocate to another city, or even to London.
"What we always said during that process was, 'Please judge Shad on what he actually does as opposed to what you speculate he might do in the future,' " Lamping said. "Shad has done nothing other than be committed to Jacksonville from the first day he bought the franchise. His goal and his assignment at the very beginning was to make sure we did everything we could to make sure that the Jaguars were secure here in Northeast Florida for generations to come.
"That process started with identifying those things we need to avoid. What we needed to avoid, No. 1, was getting to the end of our lease and not having a long-term stadium solution. So we've been working on it for quite some time – in earnest for the last four years and we actually started the discussion back in 2016, eight years ago.
"We're pleased we were able to get to the finish line and do it without a lot of angst."
Lamping, as he did following Tuesday's vote, spoke on the podcast of the collaborative nature of the negotiations with the City over the past year.
"Both parties had the same goal," Lamping said. "When your interests are aligned to begin with, it makes it a lot easier. It's not to suggest that we didn't have issues along the way. We did. We had plenty of them. But we had a lot of mutual respect."
To listen to the entire O-Zone Podcast with Lamping, please click HERE.
