NAU says no to one-year deal with Cardinals

Arizona Sports News online

If you’re wondering what the future holds for the Arizona Cardinals and their training camp moving forward, it seems like it won’t involve Northern Arizona University.

On Thursday, the Arizona Daily Sun reported that NAU rejected a proposal to host the Cardinals for one year instead of three.

With that in mind, it seems more and more likely that the team will host its training camp in Glendale, breaking a 25-year relationship with the university.

The Cardinals have said they’re getting closer to signing a long-term deal with Glendale to host training camp, which would seem to work well for the cash-strapped city.

Arizona has offered to build a $10 million air-conditioned practice bubble on the fields outside of University of Phoenix Stadium.

Per XTRA 910’s Mike Jurecki, one of the sticking points to the deal was the fact that NAU wanted to charge for parking, and they wanted a percentage of all team merchandise sold at camp.

Jurecki says the university also wanted to place restrictions on the amount of signage that surrounded the practice fields (i.e. marketing and advertising).

Earlier in the month, NAU announced that they would look into renting out the campus facilities that’s normally reserved for the team, should a deal not come together.

NAU President John Haeger rejected the proposal on Monday, saying he had to look out for the university’s best interests in the matter, according to an NAU spokesperson.

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