Wherein I debate labor politics with mighty_man

[digitaldiscipline]

Mighty Man wrote:
[The labor deal, in the wake of NHL lockout] Sucks for who, I guess is the real question.

One, the fans, who got hosed out of a season's worth of entertainment by rich bastards fucking over other (slightly-less-rich) bastards.

Two, the players, who had nothing to do with ownership's inability to control their spending habits. Someone offers to double your salary, why would you say no? They lost a year of their careers, in addition to getting bent over and rammed up the ass by the new CBA.

The fact that ownership (management) has, essentially, punished the players (workers) for their own shortcomings (gross financial mismanagement) doesn't sit well with me.

The players tried to hardball and failed. Now they have to take what they were given and like it. The owners at least recognized that some of them fucked up and they were taking steps to fix it.

. . . at the expense of the players' salaries. You think for a minute that some billionaire got that way by being so incompetent that he'd consistently lose money on a business, as they claimed to be doing for years before this happend? Bullshit. They turned the tables on the players' union, all the while pocketing the extra monies they weren't reporting as team income ("Hey, I own the Sabres and Adelphia Cable. . . The ad revenue Adelphia earns during Sabres broadcasts is $20mil, but the Sabres' accounting department only shows $2mil in TV ad revenue. . . oh noes, the team is losing money!")

Ownership fucked the players. The fact that in the run-up to the lockout, NHL player's salaries were by far the highest percentage of team expenses of any of the major sports (75%, versus stuff in the mid 60's for MLB, NBA, and NFL) was absolutely the owners' fault, because they're the ones who were overpaying the players. If Joe Sakic said, "I want 10mil a year," and nobody said, "Okay," he'd have been paid what someone had been willing to offer that was less than that. But ownership was always overpaying for the big names, and when they finally realized it, they punitively locked out the players and fucked over the entire league.

They're going to level the playing field, but I have always hated how quickly the roster always turned over in capped sports.

The level playing field is the one bright spot to this. It keeps teams from buying their way to the cup, and it also keeps them from perennially fielding teams that suck (see also: the Montreal Expos, Milwaukee Brewers, and Los Angles Clippers) just so the owner can live off the teat of shared league revenue.

Frankly, I'm more interested in seeing the gameplay and rule changes, all of which could have been brought about without the lockout, and were/are sorely needed to rekindle interest in the league anyways.

Comments

[selkiesiren.livejournal.com]

This and more has caused me to never *ever* want to put any of my hard earned dollars to any major sporting franchise.

Add to all of what you said that they *TAX US* to build stadiums *for* professional sports teams.

Why???? Explain to me why *I* have to pay to build a stadium that I will *never* set foot in, that will only generate minimum wage level jobs, fuck up traffic for all of us who don't know when the games are being held, and that the *owners* can *obviously* afford to build on their goddam own?

Not that I have any strong feelings on it or anything...

[etcet.livejournal.com]

You know what's truly fucked up about the financials? League management -discourages- teams from building their own stadia! If a team owns a place to play, they're less likely to pick up stakes and relocate, where a new ownership group would be willing to pay beaucoup bucks (to to the previous owner, as well as to the league) for the right to play in a different publically-financed ballpark.

Put that in your bagpipe and smoke it for a while, eh?

Not all the team jobs are shite - there's a substantial operational infrastructure, plus the economic shot in the arm from the construction contracts.

[selkiesiren.livejournal.com]

The *few* high dollar jobs that gets spun off of a franchise, and the short term construction influx is, IMHO, *not* worth having to pay for shite I don't think benefit the area long term. Who it benefits is a bunch of overpaid grunts, and the mega-overpaid owners.

Feh

[megiddo-lj.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Total agreement.

It's not like taxing me for schools...even though I don't have kids, I recognize that schools are important.

Football teams?

Not so much.

Especially when you consider most families can't even AFFORD to go to professional sports anymore.

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

We've had this argument before, but I blame players & owners equally, & I have a bit less respect for the players bec. of their part in all this. The first part is rather chicken & egg -- did players ask for that high of salaries bec. they knew the owners would pay? or did owners pay bec. they knew the players would keep asking for higher salaries? They're both culpable, IMO.

The players started asking for big bucks, instead of going out & padding their income w/endorsements & stuff that NFL & NBA players do. They want more cash, they could work a little harder for it instead of just telling owners to pay up. Owners want big-name players, & some of them had the money to buy 'em. It was a stupid arms race between the top handful of teams.

Back to the players, they were pig-headed about a salary cap when they should have known they'd get one in the end. If they'd sucked it up last summer, the season wouldn't have been lost, & surely the players would have gotten a better deal for themselves.

See, I'm still a dumb idealist, in sports as in politics. I believe that sports players should want to play the game for, y'know, the *game*, money being a nifty perk for having a fucking cool job. Asking for huge salaries, refusing a salary cap, that just makes them look like money-grubbers who don't care about the actual sport. These guys have the dream job of millions, & sure, they should get fair compensation. But asking for buckets upon buckets of cash doesn't look very sportsman-like to me. I expect that kind of BS from owners, after all, they're just businessppl. But I'd like my athletes to show a little more passion for the game, not passion for money.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

MBI made a good counterpoint, that being that owners probably didn't manage things day-to-day, that it was players' agents and the team GMs who let/got things out of line.

NHL players had a more limited range of endorsement opportunities, I think, because the league was not the marquee attraction of the other big three (MLB, NFL, NBA), or even NASCAR or Golf, so there wasn't as much there for them to pursue.

My dad has a pretty good plan. "You make a thousand bucks a game. If you score a goal, you get paid for that. You make an assist, you get paid for that. You take a dumb penalty, or miss a wide-open net, that comes out of your paycheck."