George Shinn People Quotations

We're going to have national exposure here; you don't want to have only 1,500 people in the seats.

We need to make sure everything is ready so we can sell tickets and promote it. We don't want to embarrass the city and have only 1,500 people show up.

If we sell out that game. That's a loud message. We're just trying to find out if these people are serious or not.

The people in Oklahoma City ... have stepped up and proved to the whole world that they are a major-league city. We are very blessed to be here, very fortunate to be here. We're looking forward to next year with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of excitement.

I was in New Orleans just this past week. It is a terrible, terrible feeling to see all the homes that, to me, look destroyed. It's not just the arena. If the arena is in playing condition, will there be fans there? I don't know how many people will come back and how quickly they'll come back.

This whole thing is somewhat bittersweet. I've got a fine line to walk. I want to be enthusiastic to the people here and let them know I'm proud and that we're going to make this thing work. I also want to make sure that people in New Orleans have hope because they've gone through a lot.

Some people have asked, particularly from New Orleans, do I think that the fact that it's going to be a sellout is reason enough to go back there? My feeling is that these three games couldn't be like a referendum. Supporting one, two or three games is not akin to the whole season.

I've got a fine line and I've got to be very careful because if these people have no hope, they don't want to support it. If the people in New Orleans have no hope, then they're not going to come. So it's a situation that I've got a very delicate balancing act here to try to make it work.

These people deserve something with the money they're guaranteeing,

If I don't generate money, I'm I trouble. These people have stepped up to try to keep us whole. I couldn't ask for anything else. I was seeing myself going to the bank borrowing lots of money. I don't see that happening now. It's bittersweet. We've got a place to land and a lot of support, which is positive. But you know, I don't know how the hell to explain it. It's not home. We've got to come back home to help with all the suffering there . . . . it's just hard to describe.

If everything was back now, we wouldn't be going through this thing. It's unfortunate, but this is a tragedy we're trying to deal with. We've got to do what a lot of other people have done with their lives and businesses. And that's go somewhere else. It's temporary. But we don't have a choice.

I believe it's going to come back. I feel its going to come back bigger and stronger. We're here (Oklahoma City) for this year. New Orleans has a lot do to get back and when they come back, we're coming back. I want the people there to have hope. In a lot of ways that's all some of them have, and I'm not going to take that away from them.