My Corner of the Interweb

Here Begins 2005

Mood: Happy.
Music: Nothing. Especially not Auld Lang Syne.

Let's start by saying Happy New Year to everyone who reads this blog!

Then, let's continue by pointing out that my fookus, who visited me for the New Year, told me that she reads my blog...which didn't really surprise me. What kind of DID surprise me is that she told me in no uncertain terms that my Return of the King blog, while she empathized, was factually incorrect. It turns out that on the last page of Return of the King, Frodo does, in fact, get on a boat with Gandalf and Galadriel. It happens some years after the events...but it happens. This leaves me ranting and raving about the fact that Saruman dies by falling off a tower onto a big spiky wheel, and that the hobbits don't save the Shire from Saruman and his minions. Oh well. Life's tough. Leave it to my fookus to put me back in my place.

Next, I got some cool t-shirts and a new coat and a bag and some books and a few DVDs for the holiday season. And it was very cool.

I also wanted to respond to Pete's comment on my last blog entry. He's siding with the owners. And last night, while on Ventrilo with the fellas, they were all pretty adamant about needing a salary cap in professional sports. So I'd kinda like to address all that.

My fundamental problem with a salary cap is that it is completely contrary to basic capitalism. I also note that a salary cap does not, in any way, restrict the amount of money a team or their owners can make, doesn't limit ticket prices, and doesn't limit the costs of concessions or parking or going to the game. It doesn't limit the amount of money received from merchandising, television rights, or even using the likenesses of its players wearing uniforms. It doesn't limit the amount of money they receive due to videogame sales, presence in movies, or game replays and/or archive/DVD sales.

In short, the owners and the league can make as much money as they like, but the players are restricted by an arbitrary number that the league decides.

As far as I'm concerned, this is bullshit. With no players, you have no league, no merchandising, and no TV rights. The fact that the owners want to artificially restrict the amount of money they pay players only ends up with them finding ways to circumvent it when it suits them, and provides a convenient excuse not to pay players a higher percentage of their profits.

I do not believe that the NHL didn't make money. I don't believe that the majority of teams lost money last year...or in the preceding 10 years. Did some teams lose money? Sure they did. Because they were new teams (see Carolina), they were poorly run (see Chicago), or they were in a market that they shouldn't have been in in the first place (see Phoenix.) Owning an NHL team, or any sports team for that matter, is not a license to print money. It is a business opportunity, and curiously enough, you need to be good at it to make money. This is the way it works in ALL business ventures. Just because you were able to cough up the 40-200 million dollars to buy the team does not in any way guarantee you that you'll make money. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why these owners believe otherwise.

If you think a salary cap in the NHL will translate to lower ticket prices, you're crazy. The NHL has lower average prices than football or basketball, and has increased their ticket prices the least (30% over the last 10 years) of all sports leagues. Football and basketball, which have salary caps, have increased their ticket prices by over 300% in the same timeframe.

In short, the ticket prices are going to reflect whatever the market can support. Which will result in higher profits for the teams and owners...but not for players, because they'll be restricted by a cap.

If you're saying that players can always go to another team that will pay them more money...well, no, they can't. The amount of money in the salary pool of the NHL will remain fixed. For you to make more money, someone else must make less money. If the raise the cap, the amount they raise it is the total amount that the LEAGUE can offer in regards to salary increases. If they raise the cap by a million dollars, across 700 players, that means that they can offer each player a raise of about 1500 dollars. Now, I don't know about you, but if I got a raise of 1500 bucks, and I was making about 200k, I'd be more than a little insulted.

Hockey, and all sports, are a game...and they should be grateful that they get to play a game for a living and get paid for it, right? Nonsense. It's a game, yes...for us. For them, it's a physically difficult job that requires that they play hurt, day in and day out...for decades. They start when they're young, and they work and they train to be good enough to play professionally. And when they get there, they play against the best that world has to offer. And if they're really lucky, they get to play for 10 years, and make some money, and stay healthy enough to spend or whatever.

I don't begrudge them this money. They earned it. They gave me the moment the NY Rangers won the Stanley Cup. I know it sounds crazy, but it's probably one of the single most defining moments of my life. My father was born, lived, and died without ever seeing his beloved Rangers win the Stanley Cup. He took me to games, playoff games, practices...all in the hopes of seeing the Cup raised in the Garden. And when they won the Cup, I felt...I don't know. I felt happy that they had finally won it for my father, for me, for every fan that had ever sat there watching them, hoping, yelling, praying, wishing that it would happen. And it did. And Mark Messier raised the cup over his head and the place exploded with fifty-four years of waiting and relief. And I'm sure I'm not the only one of the 18,200 in there who had a story just like that one.

And when you get right down to it, the players do that. The owners don't. The NHL doesn't. Mark Messier did. Brian Leetch did. Esa Tikkanen did. Stephane Matteau did. They gave me that moment with decades of hard work and pain and effort. And because some owner decides that it's too hard to keep an eye on his own finances, he needs some rules or contracts to keep him from spending money he earns almost completely from the work of his players.

The primary argument from the fellas over at ijsmp is that the ability for a team to spend whatever they want imbalances the playing field. If you buy a team full of all-stars, like the Yankees and Rangers and Lakers, it gives you a better chance of a championship.

Of course, the Yankees, Rangers, nor Lakers actually WON a championship this year (or last year...)...but you get the point.

No, actually, I don't get the point. You can argue that attracting the best players will increase your chances of a championship...perhaps even significantly so. But nothing will guarantee a championship. Not player nor coach, not money nor love. Nothing. And I will argue, strenuously, that all a cap will do is reward the people who are best at circumventing it...see also the NBA. Deferred monies, signing bonuses, benefits, agreed leaves of absence, contracts that extend past the length of the career. Or the NFL, where a contract means nothing...because the player will play for the first year or two of a multi-year contract, then the team will release them, avoiding the heavier parts of the contract...but allowing the player to keep the "signing bonuses."

If the argument is that the teams ought to be fair...that the teams should start from some equal footing, and then compete...that's ridiculous. You don't draft players thinking they're equal. You don't pay coaches more or less money, figuring they're equal. If you go with that whole "Any given Sunday" mentality...well, on any given day, any team CAN beat any team. In ANY sport. In any league. They're all professionals. Yes, Kobe Bryant is a pretty amazing basketball player...but while he may be knocking down 40 any given night, his teammates aren't exactly keeping up. And it isn't money that's kept the Lakers from winning. The Yankees have arguably the best team player for player that money can buy. But it didn't save them this past year...or the year before. The Rangers bought Lindros, Bure, Messier, Holik, Kasparitis...and it got them a bunch of draft picks. If you check the champions and runners up of each league for the last 10 years, I would bet that both the winner and runner-up weren't the highest paid, nor the lowest paid, in their league.

Lastly, the NHL has only three teams in the league that haven't made the Stanley Cup finals. THREE. Of thirty. The teams that haven't made it are all expansion teams, recent of the last 10 years. The rest have made the finals, and a vast majority have won the cup at least once. The last champion in the NHL? Tampa Bay. Carolina made the finals. Anaheim made the finals. This says disparity?

Can you say that about the NFL? The NBA? MLB?

Parity already exists in the NHL...why mess with it?

You don't need a cap in professional sports to allow for parity. You just need a bunch of people who are committed to being competitive. The owners in Chicago have destroyed the Chicago Blackhawks...one of the grand old franchises in the NHL...because they won't spend any money. They won't televise the games. They won't draft good players. They won't trade for decent players for fear of having to pay them, and cut into their profits. Their ticket prices are huge. It's not helping them win. At all. And their fan base is now completely gone. But at least they're not losing money hand over fist...which, I would argue, they're now doing because they refused to invest in the team, which would pay them back.

At the end of the day, whether you need a cap or not, right now, there's no hockey. And THAT is the worst problem of all.

Happy New Year, all. Have a great year! I know I will.

Posted by Glenn at January 3, 2005 09:52 AM