Worst commissioner of the three major (American) sports

I've talked about this with friends - I'd rather my kid boxed up through Golden Gloves than played high school football. Football and rugby would be last on the list of things I'd want progeny to play.

now that ownership groups are paying 2b for franchises (in a bad economy!) I think you'll see MLB have a financial crisis and an ensuing salary cap pretty soon even with their PLAYERS UNION

hs and college football are even more problematic than the nfl. espn and nike making money from an unpaid 15 y/o getting concussions is not a long-term biz model really

the NHL and NBA were in dire straits when the got capped, the NFL has all teams coming close to the cap so players agreed (I think it involved the move to free agency as well). MLB teams are rolling in the dough and has the strongest union. Hard to foresee them working out a cap.

Competitive balance has far less to do with the NFL's popularity than it being the perfect TV event sport. People like dynasties - the 49ers in the '80s, Cowboys of the early '90s, Patriots of the '00s

one ownership group paid $2b because they bought a team in the second-largest media market in the country and will make metric fuck-tons of money with a regional sports network

The Rangers hadn't won a playoff game until two years ago and signed a TV deal for $1.6bn. Imagine what successful teams are going to get over the next decade!

I am skeptical of baseball teams all of a sudden discovering billions of dollars each in a revenue stream based on cable TV.

uh... why? Cable revenues are precisely why the Yankees and Red Sox have more money than anyone else. Texas and the Angels just signed billion-plus deals. The Dodgers will probably rival the Yankees/Sox in cable revenue with a new deal.

Stern not even close.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Saturday, April 14, 2012 10:50 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My hatred of Bettman is mostly legacy @ this point. He seems to not be as in the public eye as he used to be and that's a good thing. I still would love to see him in front of a firing line but...

Selig is basically Don Knotts. Grossly incompetent but benign at his core and the worst things he's done (All-Star Game; God Bless America) are p easily undoable. Interleague was something that was going to happen as soon as they gathered AL and NL under one banner anyway.

Goddell's track record is too short compared to the other guys.

Which laves Stern, who is pretty clearly crooked, talks to much and integrity of the game blah blah blah

Are teams still doing God Bless America? The Rangers are back to singing Deep In the Heart of Texas.

So for years and years cable companies were just letting baseball teams skate by with small broadcast fees? I don't get where the explosion in money is. It seems like a bubble to me.

NYY and Miami to name two. I'm sure others do as well. IIRC in houston you get GBA, TMOTTBG AND DITHOT

selig has the power to do something about length of games and (maybe) umpiring which are the things that will sink baseball eventually imo

but he couldn't be bothered i guess

My favourite incompetent commissioner was of course Bowie Kuhn. Bumbled through the '70s--an amazing decade on the field, and I'm pretty sure financially, too--making one bad decision after another. On the other hand, he laid the groundwork for all the labour acrimony of the '80s and into 1994.

It seems like a bubble to me.

I disagree, I think people will pay top dollar for their own anesthesia.

"lol, the NFL, NHL and NBA have players unions too."

Largely broken, power-less players unions.

the nhl players have hired donald fehr, but the league just doesn't make the kind of money that nfl/mlb do.

Largely broken, power-less players unions.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Saturday, April 14, 2012 8:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not buying the myth of the unstoppable, unbreakable MLB players union. They haven't hit on some secret solidarity that NBA and NFL players can't find.

I'm not saying they are unstoppable or unbreakable. I'm just saying this idea that Selig could unilaterally establish a floor/cap is nonsense. Also baseball would probably lose an entire season if they even tried it right now.

I said "they" could enforce a salary cap. And they could, based on what other sports have done. But they don't seem to care about competitive balance.

what need is there for a salary cap when they're raking in money and no one seems to care about wastelands like the Royals? It's all just a farm system for the 8 or 9 teams that are trying to compete.

"And they could, based on what other sports have done."

They could IF they were willing to lose a season at the very least and quite probably destroy the sport for a decade. But I guess that's less important to you than "competitive balance".

ewwww, Bowie Kuhn.

They could IF they were willing to lose a season at the very least and quite probably destroy the sport for a decade. But I guess that's less important to you than "competitive balance".

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Saturday, April 14, 2012 8:43 PM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why the quotes

and yes I would be willing to lose a season of MLB for a league that has competitive balance.

Well thankfully so far the owners haven't been as short-sighted as you are.

There's lots of things I hate about baseball (high ticket prices, gouging taxpayers for stadiums, a generally terrible TV product) but I'm perfectly happy with how the league is structured right now. Most of the teams that are not competitive are not competitive because they are run badly (Blue Jays might be the one exception). I don't see how a salary cap changes that. It just reduces the salaries of the best players and forces the Yankees and the Red Sox to spend less (or pay a hefty luxury tax to shits like Jeffrey Loria.)

there are 6 teams that have less than a third of the yankees' payroll. This isn't because they are "run badly," it's because their owners are cheap/lack the cashflow.

I mean if you want to fold all those teams that's ok too

one of those teams is the rays

they are an anomaly, tho

The people who think there isn't any competitive balance in baseball obviously haven't noticed that about 25 of the 30 teams have made the playoffs in the past decade. Also the past eleven World Series have been won by nine different teams.

And before you complain that Selig has ruined the game and baseball doesn't matter any more, consider that the LA Dodgers, who were a horribly-run team with disastrous finances and the shittiest baseball owner we've seen in our lifetimes, were just sold for two fucking billion dollars. I never liked Selig but you can't dispute that baseball have never been healthier financially. Attendance has been through the roof on his watch too.

Another write-in vote for Bettman.

Look at what the Yankees have spent that payroll on though! It's not like overspending is some guarantee to success. You still have to scout, build a farm system, actually have a real organization. Also since you'll never see those teams balance sheets... well let's say I'm kinda dubious about the poverty of baseball team owners. And I think baseball is good for having a team as easily despicable as the Yankees (just like it benefits the NBA and the Premier League). Star teams are a big draw. That's comparatively lacking in the parity of the NFL for the most part.

The people who think there isn't any competitive balance in baseball obviously haven't noticed that about 25 of the 30 teams have made the playoffs in the past decade. Also the past eleven World Series have been won by nine different teams.

well the playoffs are partly crapshooty and the correlation is a lot more clearcut if you only look at regular season results

I mean you can really put a lot of the 'competitive balance' on the playoff system of these sports that allows worse teams the chance to 'win the season'

At one point the KC Royals had an outfield of Beltran, Sweeney, Dye and Damon. Farm system.

btw, being willing to give up an entire season to restore competitive balance is the opposite of short-sighted.

It's mostly just moronic.

You do realize that teams generally have to field players other than outfielders, right?

dude they ended up keeping only one of them because they didn't spend the money

what do you think the yankees would have done?

Probably overpaid for them.

Signing Jermaine Dye didn't do the A's much good.

well the playoffs are partly crapshooty and the correlation is a lot more clearcut if you only look at regular season results

Outside of the Yankees and Red Sox (each of whom have missed the playoffs recently), the playoffs have largely been a revolving door of teams over the past few years.

And yeah, using the Royals as a counterexample to "prove" something about competitive balance in MLB is silly, it's like pointing at the LA Clippers and saying that some NBA teams aren't getting a fair shake.

the yankees have missed the playoffs once in the last, what, 16 years? it certainly helps that they're well-run and god knows the mets/cubs/etc. have not done well despite financial advantages (though there's still a significant gap between the yankees and second). but it means that the yanks can absorb a fuckup like carl pavano or aj burnett that would bury other teams.

fwiw aj burnett is, i believe, the highest-paid player in pittsburgh sports history, although much of it is coming from the yankees.

i'm not saying that there should be a hard cap, but let's not brush over the fact that spending $200m will almost certainly get you into the playoffs.

The Clippers for decades failed to draft good talent. The Royals drafted good talent and let them go.

the royals have the best farm system in baseball right now, what do you think is gonna happen?

the royals have only dimly understood what talent is until v. recently, tbh

jeff francoeur's a great guy tho

toronto, baltimore, kc, washington, and pittsburgh are the five mlb teams that have basically been out of it come playoff time, but tbh i think toronto and wash are heading back to the postseason soon. so there are three teams that are perpetual losers and may be for years to come, though KC has obv promise. w/all those teams i think a lot of it has come down to terrible decision-making more than revenue.

but it means that the yanks can absorb a fuckup like carl pavano or aj burnett that would bury other teams

To me, this is the key. Once you cross some hard-to-define line, you may take forever coming back. Conceding the Jays are in a tough division, they've been stuck at the same impasse for 21 years now: they can't compete for Albert Pujols because they don't draw enough, they don't draw enough because they're never in pennant races anymore, and they're never in pennant races anymore because they can't compete for the Albert Pujols's of the world. They let a wildly successful team get a little too old at one point, and they haven't come back since. I have to believe that the luxury of over-spending in the off-season would have got them back on the right side of that line years ago.

Tampa Bay is a heartening exception right now. We'll see how long they can stay where they are.