On the Economy and Putting Sports in their Place

This weekend was the hundred-millionth* running of the Kentucky Derby... and the record 28th-straight year I haven't watched. I, first and foremost, have a problem even calling horse-racing a sport, since it is the horses who are doing all the work... and I refuse to acknowledge a different species as 'athletes'. Secondly, and most importantly, I have a problem with any spectacle surrounding a sporting event which is more in the spotlight than the actual event. The Derby has always been about the stupid hats, the ugly/expensive clothing, and mint juleps.

Outfits worn by people who obviously lost a bet

It's hard for me to take a 'sport' seriously when it seems that what is the most interesting is happening outside the lines. But what I have the biggest problem with about the Derby NOW is that the spectacle seems to have no economic perspective.

I fully understand that sports are a respite from reality, much like movies or gaming, and have a bit of leeway in economic status. But I would like my sports to start understanding their place in the economy... that they are NOT a true reflection of what is important... and that they're, basically, a hobby. And I don't think I'm alone in this thinking. This is why we've seen such a backlash against Matthew Stafford's deal with the Lions (reportedly six-year, $78 million contract, with $41.7 million in guarantees). Particularly in a state like Michigan, with the top four cities in terms of unemployment in the country, giving this kind of money to someone who hasn't even played yet seems ludicrous. I've heard the arguments about the free market and players getting whatever they can get... but I would like the owners of teams, and the people in charge of leagues, to start recognizing when the money involved is getting excessive. Common wisdom says that the only way to get owners to recognize your displeasure is to 'boycott,' and I'm not going to go to any games this year, but--truth be told--it's more because I can't afford to and not because I'm trying to send a message. Perhaps the message is that the common fan can no longer afford to go to games. Time to get some perspective, sports... and not flaunt luxuries in our face.

*Some facts included herein may not have been checked

Wang and Kumar go to Long Island

So I read an article today that Islanders owner Charles Wang regrets buying the NHL franchise nine years ago. Wang, a local boy made good, along with his partner Sanjay Kumar shelled out $170 million for the team in 2000 and has spent an additional $208 million out of his own pocket since then (a loss of 23 million dollars per season). If I had the money and could keep the team I grew up with from skipping town, I’d be hard pressed not to step in. But could I honestly say I know how to run a sports franchise? Who would I bring in to run operations for me? If it were a basketball franchise, I’d have to give Bill Simmons his shot, but in other sports, I haven’t really thought about it.

Wang says he knew going in that he was going to lose some money, but given another chance, “I wouldn’t do it again.” Bill Daly, NHL Deputy Commissioner, and Wang have both pointed to the need for a new arena as the Achilles’ heel of the Islanders. Thankfully, they aren’t counting on tax payer money to fund the project, but Wang is still held up in bureaucratic red tape in building the new arena himself. I’m just tired of hearing owners say a new stadium is going to solve everything. Joe Louis Arena is kind of a dump, that doesn’t stop the Red Wings from making money… I wonder what the difference is?

Oh that’s right, the Islanders suck. They have made it out of the first round of the playoffs a McGradian ZERO times in the last 15 years, failing to even make the playoffs in 11 of those seasons. Maybe if you didn’t dole out huge, long term contracts to likes of Alexei Yashin and Rick DiPietro. ( I suppose you could just avoid trading Zdeno Chara, Bill Muckalt and the second overall draft pick [Jason Spezza] for Yashin in the first place). Or maybe you could not trade Roberto Luongo and Olli Jokinen for Mark Parrish and Oleg Kvasha. Or send two previous 1st round picks and one future 1st round pick to have Ryan Smyth for a month. Of course, having Smyth did help the Islanders sneak into the 8th seed that year! (…where they were promptly dispatched in 5 games by the Sabres). Or maybe if you sought out better business partners -- Wang bought out Kumar in 2004 — he’s serving a 12-year prison term for a $400 million accounting fraud scandal.

So yes, clearly it’s the lack of a new stadium that is your main concern. Hey, instead of spending another $3.7 billion on a new arena, maybe you could use some of that money to hire a GM, or scouts, or a coaching staff that could find/develop talented players to put on the ice?

Sometimes, year after year of a lousy product turns consumers away -- no matter how shiny of a box you try to present it in.

In praise of boredom

This year's NBA playoffs were regarded, at least before Derrick Rose blew up in Game 1, turning Bulls-Celtics into a series for the ages, as essentially a giant waste of time. We knew the match-up that was ultimately decide the Larry O'Brien Trophy, and we still do, everything else is basically the sideshow as we wait for the main event, Lakers-Cavs. 

Aside from robbing the playoffs of a certain amount of joy, this ultimately gives certain series the shaft. Now I'm going to do something I really never would have imagined anyone doing... I'm going to defend the Hawks-Heat series.

 

Not that the series was good basketball mind you, because God knows it was awful, awful stuff. 

 

And do I think that the Hawks have much of a shot against the Cavs? I do not. 

 

But here's the thing. Because of the fait accompli of the Finals, barring injury, we need something either unexpectedly dramatic, like the greatest first round series ever, or absurd, like a 58-point blowout, to drive the conversation, however briefly. But the prospect of Heat-Cavs offered something different, something we wouldn't otherwise get until the finals, a series between two of the top three players in the league. I know of at least a few people, like Bill Simmons and Jay Marriotti, talking about the spectacle of a game 5 in Cleveland tied 2-2, after Wade had gone for 50+ two straight games to even the series. That would be compelling television.

 

Instead, we get the Hawks, a fine, rising team, but a team devoid of a telegenic superstar. Instead, it’s a team that was solidly the best of the rest of the East for nearly the entire season, after the Billups trade, a team whose best player who's signing resulted in a lawsuit between ownership. But here's the thing. I think the Hawks at least provide a better matchup than the Heat, who, we learned over the course of that series, consist solely of Wade, the zombified corpse of Jermaine O'Neal, an infuriatingly disappointing Michael Beasley and a coach no older, I think, than myself. Josh Smith is infuriating, but talented enough, I think, that he might actually be called upon to check LeBron on occasion, and Joe Johnson could prove to be an issue for the Cavs, now that he's out of his slump. The Hawks probably are going to be more of a challenge, and they'll need that testing as they move forward.

 

This, I believe, is not the matchup we wanted but its the matchup we, and ultimately the Cavaliers, needed. 

Dave's 1st Tirade

Today in Washington, your highly esteemed elected officials spent the day confronting one of the most critical issues facing our nation. The continuing downward spiral of the world economy? The second coming of the Bubonic plague? American troops fighting two wars on foreign soil? Rising unemployment, plunging housing market, health care reform, the collapse of social security, global warming, Somali pirates?????

No sir. A college football playoff system.

Thanks congressmen. I’m glad our priorities are in line.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a sports FANATIC. I believe the BCS is often a beauty contest and a great big fraud. But is this really what we want the leaders of our country to be spending their time on?

In the words of Rep Gene Green of Texas (who btw proudly displayed a University of Houston helmet in front of him during the hearings) “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Ok then. But can you ride a unicycle across a tight rope while juggling live hand grenades, hula hooping, and providing a proof for the quadratic equation? I guess that’s why we have 435 of you to distribute the work load.

And yes, in this time of global recession, the millions of dollars that a bowl game is capable of bringing to the local economy is surely of some significance. But even if Congress is able to break the Power Conference commissioners and bowl game CEOs, I can’t imagine them instituting a system that doesn’t incorporate the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls. So that money is not moving anywhere. Where it would come into play, is bringing some of the revenue to smaller schools that have been shut out of the championship game to date – schools like Boise St., Utah, and Hawaii who have had legitimate claims to at least a chance at a national title. Those schools are publicly funded institutions, so I suppose the tax payers in those (less than populous) states will be appreciative.

We can debate the relative merits of a playoff system vs. the current BCS championship game, and the impact it would have on the meaningfulness of the regular season. Do I want a playoff system? Of course, but I also believe that crowning an undisputed champion on the field of play would actually be detrimental to college football by taking away the hours of debate on ESPN, radio talk shows, and internet message boards that the current system creates. But that’s neither here nor there. What I’m thinking about today is congress’s involvement.

Do we really want the federal government stepping in and governing sports in this manner? Previous attempts by similar committees have after days of testimony concluded that “Congress Won’t Legislate after BCS Hearings.” Is this anything more than a photo op, so that a few representatives can show their football loving constituents how they’ve got their backs? At least this has some impact on the lives of Americans – unlike the cluster of steroids related hearings, which you know I couldn’t honestly give a damn if some grown men decided to inject their asses with chemicals in order to hit a few more four-baggers. If they want to risk liver damage and shrunken testicles to put on a show at the homerun derby and turn the record books into a sham thus invalidating their entire era, go right ahead. And don’t give me the 14 year olds are going to emulate their heroes argument – any 14 year old who is driven enough to want that and dumb enough to not do a little research, gets what they deserve. Ok, I’m way off topic at this point. I guess the point is that MLB should’ve taken care of the mess that they created when they looked the other way during the summer of McGwire/Sosa love. The BCS system is not likely to be changed without an outside force compelling the current powers that be (Div I presidents, conference commissioners, bowl game presidents, the CEOs of All State, Tostitos, Fed Ex, etc…) to make a change. College football is big business. The BCS bowl games are big business. $125 million per year for the TV rights for four games starting in 2011. It just seems like the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee could be doing more good – like looking into how CEO’s that run their corporations into the ground, (and worse helped to create a worldwide recession) walk away with severance packages worth more than I will ever see in my lifetime. Because, honestly, whether Florida deserved to be crowned the mythical national champion last year over Texas, Utah, or USC, probably doesn’t matter very much today to 39,000 Chrysler employees or the over 500,000 employees of auto parts suppliers wondering how long before the trickle down effect might shut down their plant.

On Playoff Excitement and Rivalries

It has been years since I regularly felt the soft caress of a blog--fingers expertly intertwined with binary in an explosion of mental voyeurism... as such, please be gentle.

Sex with computers aside, I wanted to start off with a playoff series that has been recently occupying my time. Let's talk about the Boston Celtics/Chicago Bulls first round NBA playoff series, arguably one of the best first-round playoff series of all time. What makes it so good? Well, there is the great skill shown by the competitors... Ben Gordon proving himself to be a deadly, clutch shooter; Ray Allen, aka Jesus Shuttlesworth, cementing himself as a Hall-of-Famer; Paul Pierce putting the Kilts on his back and essentially carrying them through long sections of games; and newcomers to the spotlight like John Salmons, Glen "I refuse to refer to a grown man as 'Big Baby' " Davis, and Derrick Rose playing out of their minds. There is also the fact that, in 6 playoff games, 4 have gone to AT LEAST 1 overtime... the overtimes adding almost an entire extra game worth of time to the series.

However, I think the part of this series that makes it so compelling is good old fashioned hate. These two teams flat out don't like each other... which, as far as I can tell, is a recent phenomena for these particular rosters. Yes, the Bird Celtics and Jordan Bulls has a few good series, but I can't recall these players hating each other so much. And I also can't recall another NBA series in recent memory with more stitches: Hinrich as stitches; Miller has stitches; hell, Pierce has stitches IN HIS NOSE. It's been about two decades since the Bad Boy Pistons traded punches with almost every team in the league... and since then there have been very few basketball rivalries as emotional and violent as this one.

Perhaps it's my youth watching mostly football and hockey, but I love this level of hate in my sports. When I think of great rivalries from my youth, one of the first and best ones that comes to my mind is the Red Wings/Avalanche rivalry of the mid-to-late nineties. Yes, they were both talented teams, but it wasn't a Wings/Avs series unless there was AT LEAST one full-ice, goalie-on-goalie brawl. And, at the time, I don't think there was a single fan who didn't want in on those fights. The emotions were so high for fans that the mere mention of Colorado or anyone on the Avs roster to me, a Wings fan, and my teeth clenched, knuckles turned white. I was ready to go. If you and I were having a conversation, and you mentioned that you liked the Avalanche, the conversation was OVER. Not only was the conversation over, but if you wanted to fight about it, I would have been up for it.

And that's the level of pure, unadulterated hatred we're talking about with the Bulls/Celtics right now. Both Boston and Chicago are great sports towns, and the intensity and ferocity of this series is great for the NBA. This is the kind of rivalry that transcends fan-dom and engrosses the casual fan or, better yet, fans of other teams. It's only the best rivalries that makes fans say, "Sure I want to watch my own team, but I CAN'T MISS this game." Yankees/Red Sox, Ohio State/Michigan, Duke/North Carolina, Colts/Patriots... the kind of rivalries that you watch regardless of which team you root for or where you live. I think that THIS SERIES (Bulls/Celtics) is the kind of series that moves a rivalry into that elite category. If you're not doing anything tomorrow (Saturday) night, I encourage you to check out game seven of this series... if nothing else, to see who will need stitches.

Another thing I want to talk about is those idiots in the stands of games who, on the phone with their 'buddies', stand up and wave to the camera. We get it... you're at the game. Good for you. Now sit down, dumbass... you're in the way.

Introductions

For anyone who listened to Tony Kornheiser's late, lamented ESPN Radio show, or his later shows in Washington, you know that it was a hell of a lot of fun and to be quite frank, very enjoyable. Why? Because it was a sports show that didn't just focus on sports. It was as much about television, his dog or politics with a general outline of a sports show. That's what we mean to provide.

I'm hoping, along with those who've been good enough to agree to contribute, to provide a fan's perspective on things. We make no claims of any particular expertise, but each of us is a passionate sports fan, each from a different area of the country, with diverse interests outside the sporting world.  

So, here's to a start of something fun, something we certainly hope you'll enjoy.