The time is approaching in professional sports where all four major sports could face a work stoppage. In the case of the NHL and NBA, possibly a very long stoppage. It is sad to me as a professional sports fan. My opinion of how salaries for athletes in professional sports should be handled is that it should be left up to the owners of the teams. In American sports, I like Major league Baseball's system the best, no restrictions on salary, a tax paid by the biggest spenders to the lowest spenders. I don't even believe that there should be a luxury tax. Here is my rough plan for MLB:
- No salary restrictions
- No luxury tax
- If the same four or five teams spend the big money on free agents... that's tough luck for everyone else. The market for professional sports franchises is pretty steep, meaning everyone has deep pockets and a market to harvest a season ticket fan base. I don't buy baseball or football owners crying poor. The beauty of this system is that you can sink a ton of money into salaries, but if you don't sink an equal amount of money into player development, odds are the results will not help the bottom line. The smart teams win, the smart teams with big pockets win easily.
- Geographical divisions should be replaced by performance affected divisions, like in European Soccer. I like the use of three divisions, same season length, schedule weighted towards competition between teams of similar talent levels. Every season the bottom two or three teams of the top two divisions and the top two or three teams of the bottom two or three divisions would switch divisions.
- Playoffs would have to change, but I still like eight teams: Three division winners, three second place teams, third and fourth best team in the Premier Division. Here's the big change, World Series shares for players should increase to one million dollars per player. Look at last season's World Series, would the Cardinals have rolled over and died if each player had a million dollars at stake? There needs to be incentive to win, and with ridiculous salaries, the incentive has to be ridiculous as well. The shares could easily be taken from ad revenue from the World Series alone, as part of a television rights contract.
That is what I would like to see in Major League Baseball. It is the NHL, however, that moved me to write. I am now mad at the lack of hockey. I love hockey, I love the NHL, I love the Flyers. I think that it is moronic for the players union to think that anything good is going to come out of rejecting a salary cap. The NHL was already in pretty bad shape before the lockout, now the future of the league itself begins to come into question.
I'm underinformed about the specifics of the collective bargaining agreement, but not about the generalities that have plagued the NHL over the last 12 years. I have mentioned before that the degree of difficulty and amount of money needed to play hockey hurts accessibility and makes the sport less popular, but thinking recently I've decided that more kids are playing hockey in the United States now than ever, so I am going to throw that point in the trash. I also said that the lack of minority stars in a market that is increasingly diverse hurts accessibility. I still stand by that point.
I think that the increasing price of tickets to NHL games has really hurt accessibility and cut out a lot of the diehard fan base of some teams. Overexpansion has diluted the talent pool and the unwillingness of some owners to pay increasing salaries has hurt levels of competition. The major difference between the NHL and MLB in this respect is that while neither league has a cap, MLB teams play most of their games free of competition from the other major sports, have much higher seating capacities and much lower average ticket prices, and share revenue from a gigantic television, radio and internet rights contract(s). The NHL owners do not mind canceling the season because while some franchises, like my Flyers, will lose money as opposed to making money, other teams will lose less money than if they operated for a full season.
This sad state of the NHL is not the players' fault. The players have played by the rules and made a market for salaries that skyrocketed over the last 12 years. A salary cap, to me, might be the emergency device needed to save the league. I don't like salary caps, especially a hard cap. This year's Super Bowl, kicking off in 15 hours as I write these words, pits two franchises that are run by smart people. Franchises that gambled on the right coaching staff, player development, contracts and victory is the fruit of their labor, profit is the fruit of their labor. A hard cap makes it harder to compete for franchises that are poorly run, but in the case of the NFL, there is enough money shared by all the teams to allow for a high basic level of competition. That is to say, every team can meet the entry price for building a winner. A hard cap in the NHL would not guarantee anything like that. Salary minimums will not make the difference in the NHL.
Look at the Pittsburgh Penguins, winner of two Stanley Cups before the most recent CBA went into effect. The Penguins were outbid for the great players that their organization drafted and put out once their main draw, Mario Lemieux, retired. The Penguins couldn't pay all of their players, were probably struggling with the rent at the Igloo, had to sell off players basically for cash (prospects to wear uniforms until their next contract, when they could sign somewhere else) and the team plummeted in the standings and in attendance. Add a hard cap into the mix, what does it do? The Penguins easily meet the requirements of the salary cap, possibly having to add salary to hit minimum but I doubt it. The Penguins can not get themselves in good position to sign any of the veterans that get dumped by the former big spenders. Competition gets slightly easier, the age for free agency drops and young talent continues to leave Pittsburgh, but at younger ages.
The first move for the NHL, in my opinion, is contraction. There is not enough seed money for every team to have in place the part necessary to win a Cup. Another example: the Chicago Blackhawks. During the last CBA, the Blackhawks didn't even have a local TV contract. Ticket prices rose based partially on the fact that the only way to see the Hawks at home was live. Incredible! At no point in the last eight years have the Chicago Blackhawks had even a remote shot at winning the Stanley Cup, and that include one or two playoff teams, if I am remembering correctly ( I am not fact checking this late). The Blackhawks are a disgrace to their fans, their sport, and professional sports in general. Contraction is the only way, and while it is harsh to take a team out of the number three sized market in the US, another franchise will relocate to Chicago in a good amount of time. My choice would be Tampa Bay or Florida. I think well run organizations in cities that draw should keep their teams.
My immediate emergency plan for the NHL:
- Salary cap with luxury tax charged to teams over a 45-50 million dollar cap. The tax becomes shared revenue.
- An organized method (draft, or something) to reassign the high paid veterans who will no longer be able to be afforded by their teams, or a set renegotiaion level to lower salaries initially (here the 24% rollback brought to the table by the players is a nice idea, but I like a layered rollback based on service time, with youngsters giving less back)
- I don't care how they play out this season: tournament, limited season with playoff, as long as playoff revenues are split with the players in a fair way.
- For next season: contract Chicago, Atlanta, Florida, Washington, Tampa, Los Angeles, Carolina, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, New Jersey, Anaheim (am I forgetting anyone?)
- New Divisions: East 1: Philadelphia, Boston, NY Isles, NY Rangers, Columbus, Montreal
- Midwest: Detroit, Dallas, Nashville, Columbus, Minnesota, Toronto
- West: Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, San Jose, Phoenix, Colorado
I've got more, but it's late and time to take a Super Snooze before cheering my Eagles on in the biggest game in sports. For the record, I have spent three years saying how I don't care what happens in the Super Bowl as long as the Eagles make it, and I stand by it. I don't care if its Pats 55- Birds 10 tomorrow, I am happy they made it and happy for all the hype, which I will better be able to put into perspective after the game. If the Eagles win, I don't know, I will be elated and all will be right with the world for a little while. If they lose, the goal immediately becomes to make it back next season and build on the progress already made. I wont offer a prediction because it will be worthless, I am a biased Eagles fan that refuses to look at the game with any sense of objectivity. I feel that way about pretty much any Eagles game when they are a genuine title contender.
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