Funny how issues get put on the back burner in today’s 24/7 warp-speed news cycle. One of those was Charlotte’s bid for a Major League Soccer franchise, complete with a government-funded $175 million downtown stadium.

In case you were wondering, here’s a little update— it’s dead.

City Council member James Mitchell, who chairs the city’s economic development committee, confirmed that an agreement on public-private financing on the proposed $175 million soccer facility cannot be reached in time to meet the MLS’s upcoming decision date.

“It will not make the December deadline,” Mitchell told the Observer Monday. “We won’t make December to be considered.”

The three problems the city couldn’t overcome were control of the Memorial Stadium site, the fact that city elections are coming up (making a controversial vote on a big incentives package difficult) and stiff competition from other cities such as Nashville.

Well so much for that, although Charlotte Motor Speedway CEO Marcus Smith, head of the proposed ownership group, told the Uptown Paper of Record he “is still interested in landing an MLS team, but that it would be hard to imagine doing so without public money.”

But here’s an interesting tidbit from the Observer’s story—the Carolina Panthers are also likely to want more upgrades to Bank of America Stadium, or possibly even a replacement stadium, as other teams around the league play in newer arenas.

Really? The Panthers just completed $47 million in renovations to Bank of America Stadium.