Worst commissioner of the three major (American) sports

not much Selig can do about incompetant management

The steroid scandal has wounded MLB very badly. Selig was instrumental in trying to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened.

competitive imbalance has been a part of baseball since day one
How did PEDs really wound MLB? Revenues, attendance and fantasy participation are higher than ever. It wounded baseball with useless sportswriters.

Seems like people always point to NFL ratings as proof of baseball's irrelevance and demise.

Well, yeah, there are 240 regular season NFL games every year. There are 2400 regular season MLB games.

The majority of the former on Sundays, making for perfect TV events.

There are 2400 regular season MLB games.

Part of the reason it's hard to give a fuck about the regular season. With the NFL, each week the tv audience congregates to watch a slate of games that have immediate implications toward division rankings. Nobody watches baseball on tv until the post-season because hardly any game during the regular season ever matters. Baseball (at least in the regular season) has become a sport you see played live rather than watch on tv.

Lots of people watch baseball on TV. That's why the Dodgers recently became the most valuable franchise in all of sports.

generally, the only times i pay attention during the baseball season are the 1st and last months, and when favored teams play hated rivals (phillies v. mutts, yankees v. red suxx).

bettman really deserves this

I'd rather listen to baseball on the radio than watch it (in part because my local team's radio crew has always been 1000x better than its TV crew), but I find football almost unwatchable on TV. It's boring as fuck, five seconds of action followed by 40 seconds of nothing followed by 2 minutes of commercials.

Bettman wins by default, given that it's his fault hockey is only barely a 'major' sport

The Dodgers just got bought for $2 bil, and the woeful Padres are about to get purchased for something like 700mil. Just because you dudes don't enjoy watching regular season baseball doesn't mean people aren't watching. The Giants fans in SF are like a virus. They're everywhere! GO AWAY

Nobody watches baseball on tv until the post-season

Well, nobody watches every game but tons of people watch on TV. You also have to consider radio listeners, as MLB is the only sport that really works on the radio

bettman really deserves this

yes yes yes

The Giants fans in SF are like a virus. They're everywhere! GO AWAY

lol. how dare there be fans of the hometown team?

selig with a bullet. mlb's flourished as a business but he's a repulsive old toad who consistently makes infuriating decisions

i like stern because of his cool gangster ass 'tude.

I will say MLB's technology/blackout policies drive me up a fuckin' wall, I really fail to understand how blocking Youtube videos and preventing mlb.tv customers from watching their OWN TEAMS could possibly increase revenue

I find football almost unwatchable on TV. It's boring as fuck, five seconds of action followed by 40 seconds of nothing followed by 2 minutes of commercials.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Saturday, April 14, 2012 2:20 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

go back to russia motherfucker

The latter seems to be hostility from decrepit old owners and the people they have TV contracts with. Regional television is where all the money comes from for now.

the existence of mlb.tv and being able to stream it via Boxee/etc. is still miles ahead of the NFL and NBA

I don't think Goodell is getting enough run here. The NFL would be number 1 in America with or without him. The players despise him. I guess he managed to avoid missing games this season but that lockout was ridiculous to begin with given that the league is awash in money.

football is the best tv sport because w/ so much going on at once you pretty much need replays

im cool with goodell after he came down hard on those cheating god damn saints. teach those animals a lesson rodge!!!!

poly otm, Goddell always struck me as a bully who wants the fans to believe that the only way to make the game safer is through a confusing, inconsistant system of fines and penalties that do little outside of increasing the league's revenue and baffling the players to that point where they have no idea what is a legal hit anymore

plus you got that 18-game schedule thing, christ

well his bigger problem is that there isn't really a way to make the game safer

Also the 18 game thing has been tabled for the foreseeable future.

Did the NFL player's union express an opinion about paying bounties for causing injuries? My guess is that there's no way in hell they could endorse that idea or even stay neutral on it.

right, so what the NFL needs is more money put into pensions for retired players and research into player safety and less of this "the game is unsafe because James Harrison is a cheating monster" mentality xp

I'm not a huge Goodell fan by any means, but given that about every aspect of the NFL game today is different than it's ever been with regard to popularity, player behavior, owner behavior, coach behavior, the rushing river of $$$, media spotlight, soap operas, etc he's doing an okay job despite going in blind.

Also the 18 game thing has been tabled for the foreseeable future.

still had to listen Goddell pretend he had no idea what the difference was between a preseason game and a regular season game

well his bigger problem is that there isn't really a way to make the game safer

― iatee, Saturday, April 14, 2012 2:38 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

knee-high grass on every field. boom. safer game.

Oh shit, I'd watch that!

Goddell always struck me as a bully who blah blah blah blah blah blah

Quit misspelling his name please, you're making me irrationally angry.

Nobody watches baseball on tv until the post-season because hardly any game during the regular season ever matters.

This is hooey, JF -- I watch about 5-6 games a week and listen to another 3-5 on Gameday Audio or with the tv on in the background. (Working from home

Yeah, i'll cop to that being hooey. I'm working with a very small sample size (me, my immediate family, and my own perceptions). lol

I'm enjoying the Yankees getting mashed into tomato paste right now!

god i can't choose all of these guys are terrible

stern is prob my fave for sentimental reasons but he should have hung it up a while ago

goodell seems like the worst on a personal level, like one of the few human beings i would be unwilling to have a conversation with

Worst of these 3, I'd say Stern>Goodell>Selig, which is not to praise Selig at all.

sometimes you hear fans of mlb/nba/nhl muttering darkly about conspiracies that give big-market/popular television teams an edge through officiating or whatever.

the nba is the only one i actually believe this about.

isn't there some evidence for this happening w/ stars? vaguely remember reading about it

I don't think it's a conspiracy, I just think Stern is happy to let officiating suck until fans start turning away from the game because of it.

sometimes its subconscious even

favorite part of basketball games is when a star has obviously committed a foul, but one of his lesser teammates immediately raises their hand to take credit

i don't watch much nba, but i saw game six of the kings-lakers series live in 2002.

also didn't stern once decree -- in the middle of the season -- that the first round of that year's playoffs would suddenly be best-of-7 rather than best-of-5?

not much Selig can do about incompetant management

― you can expect punches, kicks and even worse (frogbs), Saturday, April 14, 2012 6:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they could enforce a salary floor and a salary cap. But apparently the baseball public likes the competitive imbalance (I don't necessarily disagree with them.)

it's still amazingly balanced compared to euro sports

the NFL's competitive balance seems to have made the game bigger than ever though, so I dunno what would happen

I have a hard time considering the NFL to be facing serious problems. Like 40 of the 50 most valuable sports franchises on earth are NFL teams. Injuries are just something people idly worry about during the 8 hours a day they're thinking about the NFL.

COMEDY FOR EVERYONE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6TXMsvgQg

the refs havent screwed my team yet so im still enjoying it all. would happily vote for selig again

I know it's football and all but that gif is kind of worrisome; his slip comes out of nowhere, he puts a lot pressure on his left knee and ankle and lands awkwardly on his left leg with a lot of opportunity to screw that ankle, too.

http://data.whicdn.com/images/35360075/283_large.gif

Occupy Wall Street has a Facebook post today about how the NFL debacle shows "all our issues are connected" through the hiring of scabs.

anyway, best football season ever

Haha, yeah, this happened: As NFL Referees Lockout Continues, Gov. Scott Walker Calls For Return Of Unionized Refs

I know it's football and all but that gif is kind of worrisome; his slip comes out of nowhere, he puts a lot pressure on his left knee and ankle and lands awkwardly on his left leg with a lot of opportunity to screw that ankle, too.

― The windiest militant trash (Michael White), Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:40 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agree. If that guy had gotten hurt, the players probably would have seriously considering walking out until the real refs were back due to unsafe working conditions. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

I'm still kinda hoping for a players walk-out.

Pretty sure I wound up a Goodell voter.

Players should just start calling the game themselves like pick-up basketball.

At the commissioner's press conference today, he appeared caught off guard by a question from 49ers tight end Vernon Davis: Why doesn't the league take care of its former players?

Goodell's scattershot answer included the notion that the healthcare benefits for current NFL players are "the best in the world." Past players? Not so much. Every NBA player who played from 2000-01 on receives some post-career benefits, and in MLB, all it takes is one day on an active roster to get lifetime coverage. But in the sport where they need it the most, NFL players (if they played three seasons) receive five years of healthcare after retirement, and then they're cut off.

the nfl players union deserves a lot of blame for this state of affairs, but man roger goodell is a prick

yeah i hate him way more than i hate selig

yeah seeing goodell finish a very distant third up there just looks ridiculous now. just a complete joke of a man, almost wonder if tagliabue set goodell up to provide a long term argument to the 'he was no pete rozelle' talk he got when he retired. the problems baseball has - loss of viewers, relevance, aging of market - are things you can't really blame him for. cancelling the world series hurt the sport's popularity more than steroids but its effects were shaken off pretty quickly. stern's obv the most important historically to his sport and deserves alot of credit but should've retired years ago, there are alot of black marks on that record and most of them came in the past ten years or so.

Selig is a putz

“If you look at the numbers, including in the Native American community, in a Native American community poll nine out of 10 supported the name. Eight out of 10 Americans in the general population would not like us to change the name. So we’re listening and being respectful for people who disagree, but let’s not forget this is the name of a football team.”

lmao

i watched the goodell thing and there was this amazing cringe comedy moment where he goes 'i can't control the weather--' and then fake snow starts coming down around him while hes giving this aint i a stinker grin

"Native American" community? Why not just say R</I>edskins community?

Whoops, almost gave away the secret to that.