Troubled Times in Team Sports
In the past couple weeks several issues have sprung up that are dragging the names of Americas top sports through the proverbial mud. From Michael Vick’s indictment showering new commissioner Roger Goodell with criticism to David Stern facing his toughest challenge ever with a referee connected to gambling and point shaving the issues are rather large and not limited to these two sports. Goodell really hopes that you only think of Michael Vick when you think of the NFL and criminals. Let us not forget PacMan Jones, Tank Johnson and the rest of the Cincinatti Bengals. This is a league that is soiling its reputation through its players and too many of them with criminal misconduct. The NFL has an image problem that might just hurt its ratings and ticket sales in the upcoming season. Goodell has talked about taking the SuperBowl international, and yet their foreign farm league folded this year.
Stern, and the whole NBA, are getting rocked by the gambling story, but it is overshadowing other issues as well. USA Basketball isn’t very good and hasn’t competed on the international stage for too long. Once the US was the gold standard for basketball around the world, lately though they just hope to medal, even in continental tournaments. Inside the USA the NBA has issues as three teams have stadium/attendance issues facing them. The Kings likely lost their Vegas trump card in negotiating with the city, but they still won’t talk Sacremento in funding a new stadium for billionaire casino owners. Oklahoma City will no longer host the Hornets, but seem quite likely to wind up with the Sonics as no city in the Puget Sound will build a stadium to host the 40 year old former champion SuperSonics. No one can know how successful the Hornets will be in their return to New Orleans after their two year absence, but the team ownership can’t be happy with the large challenge of marketing a corrupted league.
Who would have thought at the start of the baseball season that there wouldn’t be one, but two stories diminishing the controversy of Barry Bonds, steroids and Bud Selig? Selig took several months, but it seems he finally decided to follow Barry on the chase, yet we still are left to wonder how will he address the questions that shadow Bonds? Steroids isn’t the only issue facing baseball though. Mega contracts are on their way back, as Marlins’ President Samson says “It’ll take the sport down, that contract.” He also called it “the end of the world as we know it.” That was only about Ichiro signing a five year, 90 million dollar extension. Its not like that’s Scott Boras asserting that Alex Rodriguez will be signing a 35 Million dollar per year deal this offseason. What would Samson say about a single player making as much his entire team? It seems that the megacontracts are on their way back and as soon as Selig figures out the steroids issue he’ll have to face the MLBPA again about contracts.
The Big Three aren’t alone in their struggles, though they are the biggest targets. The second tier leagues all wish they had the kind of coverage that the NFL, MLB and NBA get and the NHL once did. But hockey has signed a poor television deal without rights fees, and actually had playoff ratings in the USA that were lower than regular season WNBA games. After the long lockout attendance was initially back, but this year the struggle extended beyond just the SunBelt into some more traditional markets (Chicago and Boston) as well. Almost two-thirds of hockey fans on Fanhome think that Bettman is doing a poor job, and it is quite obvious that most of America agrees.
I tried to delve deeper and find good news for even less followed sports to see how they are doing. In Major League Soccer Garber has attained a ton of press, but almost all of it is about David Beckham as an entertainment star, not the performance on the field. It isn’t that the performance is poor, it is just inconsistent. Recently lower table Real Salt Lake beat Everton and the All Stars beat Celtic, those are good wins versus quality teams, but what does it mean when in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup only three MLS clubs advance to the quarterfinals of the tourney? DC United lost to a second division team even. Soccer is stronger than ever in the MLS era expanding into San Jose and maybe even Philly within the next year, and yet it faces the same issues it has since the NASL.
So which commissioner has it easiest right now?
I’m voting none of the above, there hasn’t been a worse time for pro team sports in my 3+ decades.
As I’m reminded by sometime FanHomer and current Admin at The ScoreBoards, TestSubjekt, I left out a sport that is usually hot this time of the year, the Tour de France. Likely the most drug plagued sport in the world, the Tour collapsed in the past two years. No Lance Armstrong, its last winner accused and its current winner was just kicked off of the his team due to drug issues as well. The Tour might be dead in North America.
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