Gordon Monson: Here’s the most important thing the Millers can prove by owning RSL and the Royals now, an MLB team later

On the Miller family’s way to throwing a lasso around a Major League Baseball franchise, and with any luck actually reeling one in, the fam decided to go ahead and first buy in on Real Salt Lake and the Utah Royals, including purchasing those team’s facilities and stadiums, replacing Ryan Smith and continuing the team’s existing partnership with David Blitzer and his group.

Turns out, the Millers, despite selling their babies — the Jazz and the Delta Center — a few years ago to Smith, really do like owning pro sports franchises and are in a favorable position now to own them — and take advantage of adjacent real estate ventures — and also go on maintaining and pursuing other business interests.

But there’s something more.

As for baseball, they are front and center on MLB’s radar, waiting for the time when expansion comes into sharper view. They’ve done pretty much everything they can, they’ve promulgated as much as possible, to make themselves and Utah attractive to other Major League owners so as to be accepted. Without wanting to become an annoyance to MLB, they sit now in a holding pattern, practicing patience for positive moves to be made, for a glistening, brand-spanking-new club to be launched and developed right here in the shadow of the Wasatch. It is a green cathedral to be designed and built.

Real Salt Lake, on the other hand, is a reclamation project, or rather, a project in need of renovation. A fantastic concept, a spec home, that started with Dave Checketts’ forceful vision some 20 years ago, that won an MLS Cup 15 years back, that was subsequently owned and overseen by Dell Loy Hansen, and thereafter by Smith and Blitzer, has had bits and pieces of success through the seasons. But it hasn’t become what it might have been. The Royals, who have been here, then gone, then here again, also fit into that category.

Do not misunderstand. RSL and the Royals have and have had some smart, talented people on their practice pitches and involved in their front office operations. Just not enough of them. Some of the inner workings have been ugly, some of their results on the field have fallen short.

Enter the Millers.

Their task, of which they are fully aware, is to 2) make RSL and Royals games experiences worth having, which is to say, worth paying for and paying for again, and, most importantly, 1) win. Not just win, but try hard to win, show the fans that the effort/intention is there.

The soccer mix is complicated, we get it. Players come, players go, players flourish, players are sold off, players want a place to dream their dreams and develop their skills, players want to play in Europe. RSL wants to be seen as a place where those dreams can be made to come true. But how about, in the meantime, competing seriously for an MLS Cup?

Don’t be selling talented players, younger ones and veterans, who can help you win in return for a stack of cash — and then neglect to use that cash to promptly replace them with equal or better talent.

It’s an old cliche, that the best way to make a franchise successful in the eyes of the community and at the gate, the best way to make it draw the fixed attention of fans, the best way to lure in new fans, ones who live and die with — and buy tickets and gear from — the club is to build a winner.

Don’t mess around. Get it done.

The Millers know this. Their Jazz teams never won a title, but they were good and good again over a span in the NBA when top opponents were off-the-charts good. And maybe they know — have learned even more — that they have to pour resources into the cause and make smart, determined decisions to earn the allegiance and commitment of the fans.

They want, they say, to enrich lives. Now, enrich the lives of the fans. Make them winners.

In quiet, private, no-B.S. conversations with them, it’s clear that there’s one significant thing they know with exactness — there’s no fooling the paying customers who either fill the seats or leave them empty. They have their other business concerns that may help facilitate their real estate advancements and other concerns. They have a lot of money and can make a whole lot more of it in numerous other investments.

Sports, though, is something they love. And the only thing better in that realm than owning teams is owning teams that win and win big.

They can prove that now, that that’s their objective and their resolve, in the major leagues — with soccer, Real and the Royals first — and with baseball in the years to come.

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