President Obama should consider creating a sports czar
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 02/18/10 at 4:02 am
http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/18/president-obama-should-consider-creating-a-sports-czar/3/
Should President Barack Obama seriously consider adding a new Cabinet post, creating a federal director of sports in the United States? Consider the sports initiatives that Obama has been involved with during his 13 months as President and a case can be made that sports in the United States deserves specific attention. Obama has suggested that college football have a championship game and there have been reports that his administration is thinking about investigating the Bowl Championship Series.
Obama went to Copenhagen last October under somebody’s pressure to lobby the International Olympic Committee to select Chicago as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics. The International Olympic Committee expected Obama to genuflect in front of them as in past years Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin begged the IOC for Olympic Games in 2005 and 2007. Blair got the 2012 Summer Olympics for London and Putin got on his hands and knees and secured the 2014 Winter Games for the Russian Black Sea resort in Sochi.
American Presidents have been involved in sports issues for more than a century. Theodore Roosevelt saved college football in 1905. Franklin Roosevelt decided baseball was too important for the country’s morale during World War II and kept the game going. Dwight Eisenhower tried to put a thaw in the Cold War in the 1950s by sending Americans to compete in the Soviet Union in sports events. John Kennedy signed the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act. Lyndon Johnson signed the NFL-AFL merger legislation that allowed football to grow in 1966. Richard Nixon used ping-pong or table tennis matches to open the door to China in the 1970s. Jimmy Carter ordered a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics in retaliation to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Bill Clinton was asked in 1995 to mediate the Major League Baseball Players Strike and George W. Bush included an anti-steroids statement in the State of the Union Address in 2004.
The United States Supreme Court granted the National and American Leagues of Baseball an antitrust exemption in 1922 because the court felt baseball was a game not a business. Because of that ruling, the Oakland A’s ownership cannot relocate their team to San Jose because San Jose, California is within San Francisco Giants territory and the New York City metropolitan area cannot go after a third Major League team as the New York Mets and New York Yankees control the New York territory.
Government is involved in every aspect of sports from stadium building to labor laws concerning collective bargaining that preclude 18-year olds from playing in the National Basketball Association.
The federal director of sports question was brought up by Osarose Isibor, a University of San Francisco Sports Business Management graduate student as part of an electronic blackboard discussion, which centered on Congressman Emanuel Cellar’s role in 1961, which gave the National Football League the right to sell the league’s 14 teams as a single entity to television networks.
Cellar, a Democrat from Brooklyn, N. Y., rammed legislation through the House in 1961 that ultimately became the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and changed the sports landscape. The 14 National Football League owners, after much arm twisting by Commissioner Pete Rozelle, agreed that a single entity model would be better for the league and with that piece of legislation signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on September 30, 1961, the National Football League was able to use the legislation as leverage to get a then big money network TV contact with CBS in 1962 and get additional operating capital. The TV deal helped expand the league’s American footprint.
The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 is not the only piece of federal legislation that helped build the National Football League or other sports but it is fairly significant. Take a look at the relationship between the federal government and sports or rather let’s let the University of San Francisco student lay it out.
“Sports is a multi-billion dollar business that crosses municipal, state, and even country lines. The revenue generated from sport related activities is so large that there should be a government correspondent that deals specifically with this subject. The government has a cabinet position that deals solely with monopolies and anti-trust issues,” said the grad student. “The four major sports leagues (Major League Baseball, the NFL, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League) today do not compete in a perfectly competitive market nor are they monopolies. There is really no classification for the type of market that these leagues compete in. For this reason, I believe that within the monopoly and anti-trust department of the government, there should be a position that monitors/studies/analyzes the business of national sports, maybe called the Federal Department of Sports Related Activities. This department would be responsible for things such as improving competition, regulating the sports market, calculating the Sports Domestic Gross Product, etc. If the authority needs to be delegated further down to the states and even cities that host professional teams, then so be it.”
The United States government has provided antitrust exemptions for college sports, approved a merger between the National Football League and the American Football League in 1966, and has given a non-profit status to the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) under the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. President Richard Nixon signed into law Title IX on June 23, 1972 and while the legislation was to guarantee women had a fair chance at being accepted into any college, the legislation has morphed into a sports issue with big time college sports programs having to make room for women and giving them scholarships sometimes at the expense of men’s sports programs.
The United States Government, with Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens playing an important role, took the power away from the Amateur Athletic Union in 1978 and the AAU’s fiefdom and created a national governing body for various sports organizations under the USOC banner.
Creating a federal cabinet position overseeing sports is not a novel idea. There are numerous countries across the globe that have a Ministry of Sport.
Russia, for example has a Ministry of Sport, Tourism and Youth Affairs, a “federal executive body with the functions of development and implementation of state policy and legal regulation in the field of physical culture, sports, tourism and youth politics.”
Sport Canada is part of the Department of Canadian Heritage and provides sports funding for Canadian athletes.
There is a lengthy list of countries with similar posts.
The United States government, along with state and city governments, is partners with sports, whether it is on the professional or college level. National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern freely admits that government is a sports partner.
According to Stern, there are three elements needed for sports teams to succeed. Government, cable TV and corporate support. Government has funded stadiums and arenas, provided tax breaks and incentives to build facilities and through the Cable TV Act of 1984 and the Tax Act of 1986 provided more revenues for sports owners. Without the Cable TV Act of 1984, ESPN might have folded, the tax act capped revenues that were generated inside a facility to pay off the debt of a publicly funded stadium or an arena at eight cents on a dollar. Neither New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan nor Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter could close the loophole that exists to this day. The 1986 Tax Act gives the lion’s share of revenues to sports owners even after stadium or arena leases are negotiated to give municipalities a slightly better deal for taxpayers.
The Super Bowl is designated as a special security event. The Bush Administration provided a great deal of security for the 2004 Athens Olympics. There were more American troops on the ground for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics than were in Afghanistan at the time.
Sports is a government partner although the fantasy is that sports is just a game and an entertainment forum. Given the wide scope of American government involvement in sports from the federal level to the local level and the billions of dollars invested in the sports industry, perhaps it is time that some thought is given to creating a sports cabinet post which doesn’t differ very much from other countries that have a Ministry of Sports position. Perhaps a sports czar will order a college football championship be played which will make everybody happy except some people in the college football industry who will lose their bowl fiefdoms.
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Vikings Stadium Plan? Obama vs. Pawlenty
http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/12/vikings-stadium-plan-obama-vs-pawlenty/
Vikings Stadium Plan? Obama vs. Pawlenty
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 02/12/10 at 9:36 am
Zygi Wilf’s National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings franchise didn’t win the big game this year, in fact Wilf’s team did not qualify for the big game in South Florida as Wilf’s Vikings lost to the finest team that Louisiana taxpayers could fund, Tom Benson’s New Orleans Saints.
Benson used some of the $23.5 million in state aid he got last July to, presumably, pay for players and could use some of the $23.5 million in state aid due next July to extend Drew Brees’ contract. The Louisiana handouts will be capped at $6 million starting in 2011.
Wilf is still in the hunt to play in the “Big Game” however. You see Wilf’s lease at the Metrodome in Minneapolis is done following the 2011 season and Wilf wants a new stadium somewhere in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market and is planning to pitch the Minnesota legislature in this session to get a stadium built or Wilf’s Vikings may have a new home out of state.
Wilf may come up big this time. Vikings ownership thinks the federal stimulus money might be available for the project, which would put Wilf at odds with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who is not a stimulus fan. Minnesota’s capital St. Paul would become a battleground in a way, President Obama’s stimulus plan, the Recovery Act of 2009, versus a lame duck governor who has Presidential aspirations in 2012 and would like to be the Republican nominee.
In December 2009, Pawlenty said there would be no new taxes to pay for a new Vikings stadium. Yet in the past week, Pawlenty seems to have changed his tune. Pawlenty may not like stimulus money but he has another idea that does involve taxpayers’ money.
Pawlenty thinks funds generated from a new Minnesota lottery could generate enough money to fund construction for a new football stadium. Pawlenty has also thrown out another idea, tax increment financing, which allows developers to pay less money than normal property taxes as long as that money is funneled back into the development project.
There are no proposals on the table though at this point.
Minnesota legislators have seen this act before and have responded in kind by finding public money for stadiums and arenas for more than a half century. The city of Minneapolis put up some $8.5 million in mid-1950s dollars to build Metropolitan Stadium for the minor league baseball team, the Minneapolis Millers. The stadium opened in 1956 as a minor league park but was upgraded when Calvin Griffith moved his Washington Senators to Minnesota after the 1961 season. “The Met” was enough of a lure for Lamar Hunt’s new American Football League that Hunt and his partners awarded an AFL franchise to Minnesota, but somehow the National Football League got to the Minnesota ownership and convinced them to jump leagues and start in 1961.
The National Football League and the American Football League merged on June 8, 1966 and one of the merger conditions was that every NFL stadium had to have a seating capacity of more than 50,000. Congress approved the merger in October 1966 and that started the clock ticking to get a new football facility built for the Vikings as “the Met” had just 48,700 chairs.
Minnesota ownership decided not to renew the lease at “the Met” and actively looked at other options including a move to Los Angeles when the lease ended in 1981.
In December 1979, construction started on the $68 million domed stadium in downtown Minneapolis that would house the Minnesota Twins and Vikings although neither team seemed too happy with the building. Twins ownership was unhappy with revenues generated inside the building but Griffith negotiated a bad deal in the 1970s, which allowed the Vikings ownership to keep a lion share of luxury box money. Additionally, Griffith didn’t get enough concession money. In the late 1990s, Don Beaver attempted to move the Twins franchise to a publicly funded stadium in Greensboro, N. C., if voters said yes.
The voters rejected the stadium plan in 1998.
On May 26 2006, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed legislation to build a new baseball park for the Twins. Hennepin County taxpayers would fund most of the costs for the new building through a 0.15 cent sales tax. The fiscally conservative Pawlenty gave the go ahead for the tax hike, which was designed to raise about $392 million; Minnesota’s ownership would pick up the rest of the tab which is about $140 million more.
On May 24, 2006, three days after the legislature said yes to spending $392 for a baseball park, Minnesota taxpayers were again asked to dig into their pockets to fund a football stadium for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers. The university is picking up 52 percent of the costs of the $288 million stadium while the state is paying for the rest.
The state legislature also picked up the costs of Minneapolis’ arena that was constructed in the late 19880s through private money. The National Basketball Association gave Minneapolis a franchise in the late 1980s but the team owners, Marvin Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner could not swing the $32.5 million entry fee into the NBA and the cost of the building, which was over $100 million. The legislature gave the approval for the city of Minneapolis to take over the building in 1995.
In 1997, the National Hockey League was looking for expansion cities. St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman got a franchise by promising to build a new taxpayers funded arena in the city. The NHL granted St/ Paul a franchise as long as the arena was built. Minnesota taxpayers put up about half of the $130 million cost of the building.
In 1965, Minnesota taxpayers put up money to build an arena in Bloomington next to “the Met” and got an NHL expansion teamin 1967. That team, the North Stars left in 1993 for Dallas. One of the reasons the North Stars franchise moved? The arena was not adequate for an NHL team.
Minnesota has spent an enormous amount of public funds on athletic facilities, probably more than a billion dollars when infrastructure and debt service costs are added. That is the price for being a major league area.
The Obama versus Pawlenty 2012 President race may never play out, but a mini version of the 2012 Presidential campaign could be taking place this winter and spring in the St. Paul statehouses and at the end of the day, Zygi Wilf’s Minnesota Vikings, a team that has never won the Super Bowl, may finally win the big game, which in this case is a new stadium with all of the bells and whistles of revenue producing luxury boxes, club seats, in-stadium restaurants and stores and lots of concession money.
That is better than winning a Super Bowl.
Vikings Stadium Plan? Obama vs. Pawlenty
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 02/12/10 at 9:36 am
Zygi Wilf’s National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings franchise didn’t win the big game this year, in fact Wilf’s team did not qualify for the big game in South Florida as Wilf’s Vikings lost to the finest team that Louisiana taxpayers could fund, Tom Benson’s New Orleans Saints.
Benson used some of the $23.5 million in state aid he got last July to, presumably, pay for players and could use some of the $23.5 million in state aid due next July to extend Drew Brees’ contract. The Louisiana handouts will be capped at $6 million starting in 2011.
Wilf is still in the hunt to play in the “Big Game” however. You see Wilf’s lease at the Metrodome in Minneapolis is done following the 2011 season and Wilf wants a new stadium somewhere in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market and is planning to pitch the Minnesota legislature in this session to get a stadium built or Wilf’s Vikings may have a new home out of state.
Wilf may come up big this time. Vikings ownership thinks the federal stimulus money might be available for the project, which would put Wilf at odds with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who is not a stimulus fan. Minnesota’s capital St. Paul would become a battleground in a way, President Obama’s stimulus plan, the Recovery Act of 2009, versus a lame duck governor who has Presidential aspirations in 2012 and would like to be the Republican nominee.
In December 2009, Pawlenty said there would be no new taxes to pay for a new Vikings stadium. Yet in the past week, Pawlenty seems to have changed his tune. Pawlenty may not like stimulus money but he has another idea that does involve taxpayers’ money.
Pawlenty thinks funds generated from a new Minnesota lottery could generate enough money to fund construction for a new football stadium. Pawlenty has also thrown out another idea, tax increment financing, which allows developers to pay less money than normal property taxes as long as that money is funneled back into the development project.
There are no proposals on the table though at this point.
Minnesota legislators have seen this act before and have responded in kind by finding public money for stadiums and arenas for more than a half century. The city of Minneapolis put up some $8.5 million in mid-1950s dollars to build Metropolitan Stadium for the minor league baseball team, the Minneapolis Millers. The stadium opened in 1956 as a minor league park but was upgraded when Calvin Griffith moved his Washington Senators to Minnesota after the 1961 season. “The Met” was enough of a lure for Lamar Hunt’s new American Football League that Hunt and his partners awarded an AFL franchise to Minnesota, but somehow the National Football League got to the Minnesota ownership and convinced them to jump leagues and start in 1961.
The National Football League and the American Football League merged on June 8, 1966 and one of the merger conditions was that every NFL stadium had to have a seating capacity of more than 50,000. Congress approved the merger in October 1966 and that started the clock ticking to get a new football facility built for the Vikings as “the Met” had just 48,700 chairs.
Minnesota ownership decided not to renew the lease at “the Met” and actively looked at other options including a move to Los Angeles when the lease ended in 1981.
In December 1979, construction started on the $68 million domed stadium in downtown Minneapolis that would house the Minnesota Twins and Vikings although neither team seemed too happy with the building. Twins ownership was unhappy with revenues generated inside the building but Griffith negotiated a bad deal in the 1970s, which allowed the Vikings ownership to keep a lion share of luxury box money. Additionally, Griffith didn’t get enough concession money. In the late 1990s, Don Beaver attempted to move the Twins franchise to a publicly funded stadium in Greensboro, N. C., if voters said yes.
The voters rejected the stadium plan in 1998.
On May 26 2006, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signed legislation to build a new baseball park for the Twins. Hennepin County taxpayers would fund most of the costs for the new building through a 0.15 cent sales tax. The fiscally conservative Pawlenty gave the go ahead for the tax hike, which was designed to raise about $392 million; Minnesota’s ownership would pick up the rest of the tab which is about $140 million more.
On May 24, 2006, three days after the legislature said yes to spending $392 for a baseball park, Minnesota taxpayers were again asked to dig into their pockets to fund a football stadium for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers. The university is picking up 52 percent of the costs of the $288 million stadium while the state is paying for the rest.
The state legislature also picked up the costs of Minneapolis’ arena that was constructed in the late 19880s through private money. The National Basketball Association gave Minneapolis a franchise in the late 1980s but the team owners, Marvin Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner could not swing the $32.5 million entry fee into the NBA and the cost of the building, which was over $100 million. The legislature gave the approval for the city of Minneapolis to take over the building in 1995.
In 1997, the National Hockey League was looking for expansion cities. St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman got a franchise by promising to build a new taxpayers funded arena in the city. The NHL granted St/ Paul a franchise as long as the arena was built. Minnesota taxpayers put up about half of the $130 million cost of the building.
In 1965, Minnesota taxpayers put up money to build an arena in Bloomington next to “the Met” and got an NHL expansion teamin 1967. That team, the North Stars left in 1993 for Dallas. One of the reasons the North Stars franchise moved? The arena was not adequate for an NHL team.
Minnesota has spent an enormous amount of public funds on athletic facilities, probably more than a billion dollars when infrastructure and debt service costs are added. That is the price for being a major league area.
The Obama versus Pawlenty 2012 President race may never play out, but a mini version of the 2012 Presidential campaign could be taking place this winter and spring in the St. Paul statehouses and at the end of the day, Zygi Wilf’s Minnesota Vikings, a team that has never won the Super Bowl, may finally win the big game, which in this case is a new stadium with all of the bells and whistles of revenue producing luxury boxes, club seats, in-stadium restaurants and stores and lots of concession money.
That is better than winning a Super Bowl.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Is Obama more important than Favre in the Minnesota Vikings future?
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m1d24-Is-Obama-more-important-than-Favre-in-the-Minnesota-Vikings-future#
Is Obama more important than Favre in the Minnesota Vikings future?
By Evan Weiner
January 24, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- Will Brett Favre or Barack Obama, when all is said and done, be more important in both the short and long term future of Zygi Wilf’s Minnesota Vikings franchise? It is an intriguing question because Favre’s short term success with the Minneapolis-based team probably has no impact on the business of football and the business of football for Wilf and his predecessor Red McCombs (one of the people who owned the Clear Channel radio network in the halcyon days of that business that included among the stable of talent Rush Limbaugh, a carnival barker who stated publicly that he hoped Obama failed) whose goals is and were to get a new Vikings football stadium built.
So far, McCombs and now Wilf have struck out in their years of attempts in getting the Minnesota legislature to fund a football stadium project and what is more frustrating for both the Vikings ownership group and the National Football League is that the legislature has found more to build a new baseball park for the Twins in Minneapolis and a stadium for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team.
The Golden Gophers new digs opened last fall.
The debt on the Twins park will be paid down by various taxes and some money from the Twins ownership. The park will open in the spring.
The Golden Gophers stadium is also taxpayers funded and students, whether they use the facility or not, have to pay a $25 fee as part of the legislature’s agreement to fund the stadium.
The Twins and Golden Gophers formerly played at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, a facility which caused about $68 million of taxpayers’ money to build. The stadium opened in 1982 and apparently no one was pleased with the facility as Twins and Vikings ownership spent years trying to get out of the building.
Wilf still has two years to go on his Metrodome lease.
On Friday, two days before the National Football League’s NFC Conference Championship game, Wilf’s representatives came out with a new stadium plan. The timing of the announcement may have been a coincidence as the Minnesota governing bodies start their session in two weeks but Wilf and the Vikings have sneaked a new play into the stadium playbook.
Use federal stimulus money as help build a suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul football facility. Apparently Wilf has heard from a number of developers who want in on the Viking stadium and the Vikings stadium-planning team has figured out that a two cent on a dollar rise on hospitality taxes, motel and hotel taxes and maybe car rentals, would be a good thing as that would hit tourists not the locals pocketbook, and the usage of Build America Bonds could help swing the financing. The there is the Recovery Act or the Obama stimulus plan.
The Recovery Act, which was passed by Congress in February 2009 and signed into law by President Obama on February 17 of that year, was a $787 billion plan to get the economy which broke in September 2008 moving. The Recovery Act was targeted at infrastructure development and enhancement. For instance, the Act plans investment in the domestic renewable energy industry and the weatherizing of 75 percent of federal buildings as well as more than one million private homes around the country.
Construction and repair of roads and bridges as well as scientific research and the expansion of broadband and wireless service are also included among the many projects that the Recovery Act will fund.
Apparently Wilf and the Vikings ownership feel that a stadium qualifies as part of infrastructure development and enhancement.
Whether a football stadium qualifies for the Obama stimulus plan is something that needs to be researched. Another problem that Wilf faces is that the Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is a lame duck and is not running for re-election in the fall. Pawlenty, a Republican, has other ideas and may be running for President. Pawlenty is a critic of the Obama federal stimulus plan and that should make for an interesting time for Wilf knowing that Minnesota has a lame duck governor who seems more intent on running for President than working at his job which is at least look the Governor of the State of Minnesota.
The Minnesota legislature goes back to work on February 4, which is three days before the Super Bowl, a game that could feature Favre and the Vikings. In terms of being success on the field and whether that leads to politicians opening the coffers for sports teams to build new stadiums and arenas, there seems to be no linkage between the two. Bad teams also get new facilities.
Wilf’s real football season starts on February 4 as that is when he takes the field against Minnesota politicians with cash for a stadium on the line.
evanjweiner@yahoo
Is Obama more important than Favre in the Minnesota Vikings future?
By Evan Weiner
January 24, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- Will Brett Favre or Barack Obama, when all is said and done, be more important in both the short and long term future of Zygi Wilf’s Minnesota Vikings franchise? It is an intriguing question because Favre’s short term success with the Minneapolis-based team probably has no impact on the business of football and the business of football for Wilf and his predecessor Red McCombs (one of the people who owned the Clear Channel radio network in the halcyon days of that business that included among the stable of talent Rush Limbaugh, a carnival barker who stated publicly that he hoped Obama failed) whose goals is and were to get a new Vikings football stadium built.
So far, McCombs and now Wilf have struck out in their years of attempts in getting the Minnesota legislature to fund a football stadium project and what is more frustrating for both the Vikings ownership group and the National Football League is that the legislature has found more to build a new baseball park for the Twins in Minneapolis and a stadium for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team.
The Golden Gophers new digs opened last fall.
The debt on the Twins park will be paid down by various taxes and some money from the Twins ownership. The park will open in the spring.
The Golden Gophers stadium is also taxpayers funded and students, whether they use the facility or not, have to pay a $25 fee as part of the legislature’s agreement to fund the stadium.
The Twins and Golden Gophers formerly played at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, a facility which caused about $68 million of taxpayers’ money to build. The stadium opened in 1982 and apparently no one was pleased with the facility as Twins and Vikings ownership spent years trying to get out of the building.
Wilf still has two years to go on his Metrodome lease.
On Friday, two days before the National Football League’s NFC Conference Championship game, Wilf’s representatives came out with a new stadium plan. The timing of the announcement may have been a coincidence as the Minnesota governing bodies start their session in two weeks but Wilf and the Vikings have sneaked a new play into the stadium playbook.
Use federal stimulus money as help build a suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul football facility. Apparently Wilf has heard from a number of developers who want in on the Viking stadium and the Vikings stadium-planning team has figured out that a two cent on a dollar rise on hospitality taxes, motel and hotel taxes and maybe car rentals, would be a good thing as that would hit tourists not the locals pocketbook, and the usage of Build America Bonds could help swing the financing. The there is the Recovery Act or the Obama stimulus plan.
The Recovery Act, which was passed by Congress in February 2009 and signed into law by President Obama on February 17 of that year, was a $787 billion plan to get the economy which broke in September 2008 moving. The Recovery Act was targeted at infrastructure development and enhancement. For instance, the Act plans investment in the domestic renewable energy industry and the weatherizing of 75 percent of federal buildings as well as more than one million private homes around the country.
Construction and repair of roads and bridges as well as scientific research and the expansion of broadband and wireless service are also included among the many projects that the Recovery Act will fund.
Apparently Wilf and the Vikings ownership feel that a stadium qualifies as part of infrastructure development and enhancement.
Whether a football stadium qualifies for the Obama stimulus plan is something that needs to be researched. Another problem that Wilf faces is that the Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is a lame duck and is not running for re-election in the fall. Pawlenty, a Republican, has other ideas and may be running for President. Pawlenty is a critic of the Obama federal stimulus plan and that should make for an interesting time for Wilf knowing that Minnesota has a lame duck governor who seems more intent on running for President than working at his job which is at least look the Governor of the State of Minnesota.
The Minnesota legislature goes back to work on February 4, which is three days before the Super Bowl, a game that could feature Favre and the Vikings. In terms of being success on the field and whether that leads to politicians opening the coffers for sports teams to build new stadiums and arenas, there seems to be no linkage between the two. Bad teams also get new facilities.
Wilf’s real football season starts on February 4 as that is when he takes the field against Minnesota politicians with cash for a stadium on the line.
evanjweiner@yahoo
Friday, October 2, 2009
What Would Happen to the Olympics Without US Dollars?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7549
What Would Happen to the Olympics Without US Dollars?
By Evan Weiner
October 2, 2009
10:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- I wonder how many of the International Olympic Committee delegates have ever watched the 1968 movie, The Producers, especially the scene where Max Bialystock is conning Leo Bloom into some creative accounting (the term creative accounting came out of Mel Brooks' wonderful screenplay). Bialystock would find backers to come up with money and then the pair would search for a bad script and produce a Broadway play which is destined to be a flop. Max and Leo would pocket the investors’ money and then flee to Rio. Bialystock croons "Max and Leo in Rio, oh me oh, oh my oh."
Max and Leo would live the good life in Rio. Rio by the sea-o.
Max Bialystock probably had more in common with the International Olympic Committee than his creator Mel Brooks ever could imagine. Like the IOC, Max was deceitful, in the world of bribery, Max was a briber while the IOC delegates of the past had no problem taking bribes and both Max and the IOC, particularly Avery Brundage had dealings with the Third Reich. Max also didn't care about stealing money from his backers, little old ladies, and the IOC doesn't care that its demands left Greece in financial ruins after the 2004 Summer Games and caused financial hardships in Montreal and Quebec and probably will produce disastrous results in Vancouver, British Columbia in 2010, London, England in 2012 and Sochi, Russia in 2014.
The IOC delegates have done President Barack Obama and the United States along with King Carlos of Spain and the new Japanese government a favor by awarding what is sure to be a money losing venture, the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The United States President went to Copenhagen, Denmark where the vote was held along with the leaders of Brazil, Japan and Spain to lobby what is still one of the most corrupt organizations that is in business in the world, the International Olympic Committee. The president has a lot bigger fish on the table like reforming the Health Care system in the U. S., dealing with North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, Russia, the broken economy and high employment and did waste his time on appearing before the delegates.
But the 2005 vote for the 2012 Olympics started a new traditional. Bidding countries sent their leader to genuflect before the IOC. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was there, United States President George W. Bush was not but even if the sitting US President was there it was highly unlikely New York would have won the bid. New York lacked an Olympic Stadium and that killed the bid. Tony Blair’s appearance helped London and having Vladimir Putin lobbying the IOC to award the 2014 to Sochi, Russia didn’t hurt Sochi’s cause.
Spain's King Juan Carlos has about a 20 percent unemployment rate and Rio has a major crime problem and the Japanese economy died in the 1990s and remains a problem. The IOC blissfully ignores the day-to-day realities and goes about making demands such as the host city better have a slush fund to cover operating losses. That is the IOC.
Obama is from Chicago and a President, Prime Minister or a King also is required to sell his country. The IOC, a group that likes American television money and American security to protect their Games, listened and then dumped Chicago in the first round of the playoff voting. Of course the noise crowd led by the never done anything in my life but bark behind a microphone crowd like Rush Limbaugh pronounced Obama a failure which should make the oxycontin dependant carnival barker happy because he wants Obama to fail. On cable TV news, the xenophobic, jingoistic CNN presenter Lou Dobbs had a rather embarrassing discussion with political consultants, columnists, and a newspaper/magazine owner Mort Zuckerman with the gist being whether Obama wasted much needed political capital by going to Copenhagen.
"Mr. Independent" Dobbs was in a tough spot in that he had no knowledge of how the International Olympic Committee operates because had the xenophobic, jingoistic Dobbs understood the process, he would have been extremely happy knowing that the IOC delegates are not pleased with the United States tougher rules since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for entering the country.
Of course the radio talk show noise and the food fighting cable TV news presenters will not address a side issue that will be coming up for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics that does have an impact on American consumers. It appears the Walt Disney Company will make a big push to buy the American TV rights for the two week sports extravaganza for the ESPN cable TV network. There is a real question of who will actually pay for those rights? The TV network or will it be Americans who are totally unaware that their money will go into Rio?
For the pencil-neck geeks, rodeo cowboys and windbags with a microphone, here is the answer. The American public who subscribe to basic expanded cable TV will reach into their pockets, unknowingly, and pay for the Rio Games if Disney wins the bid and gives the IOC billions for the rights. You see, Disney's subsidiary ESPN has lived in a world of Cable TV socialism since 1984 when the Congress allowed various cable TV networks like ESPN, CNN and The Weather Channel to be bundled by cable operators and collect fees as one instead of being bought by consumers on an a la carte basis. The President who signed the legislation into law was Ronald Reagan; the same Reagan who blasted socialized health care in 1961.
Americans like their socialized Cable TV even though they probably are not aware that ESPN is a product of government socialism and a flagrant violation of American antitrust. But thanks to Congress and Reagan, they is no problem.
Will Disney's CEO and President Bob Iger grow a backbone or be a spineless jelly fish when it comes to bidding on the Olympics? The International Olympic Committee was supposed to wrap up the American TV deal for 2014 in Sochi and now 2016 in Rio last year but the broken economy has stalled American TV negotiations. The American TV contract is one of the major sources of revenue for the Olympics. Iger should stiff IOC President Jacques Rogge and his gang and make Rogge find other countries pay for the boondoggle.
If Real Madrid can get more than $105 million euros annually for their football rights globally, then Rogge should be able to get the UK, other Europeans, the Chinese and other Asians to fund his little athletic tournament. Iger should just say no as should NBC CEO and President Jeff Zucker. By 2016, NBC, whoever owns the NBCUniversal entity, will also be pulling money out of cable consumers. Ruppert Murdoch and his global News Corp will not bid on the 2014 and 2016 Games.
If the American TV networks pull their billions from the IOC coffers, what will happen? It would certainly knock the IOC delegates off of their pedestal and it would put the whole Olympic spectacular in a world of major financial hurt. But then again the IOC knows something about financial hurt. Montreal, Sydney, Australia, Athens, Greece, Turin, Italy and the next three sites, Vancouver, B. C., London and Sochi, Russia have and will be saddled with huge financial liabilities because of their dealings with the IOC.
If American TV turned away from the Games, the IOC would crumple. Congress has never really tackled the cable TV problem and give consumers a choice. Why should 90-95 million American cable TV subscribers pick up the bills for Sochi or Rio?
The IOC loves seeing portraits of dead presidents on little green pieces of paper from the US come their way. But they don’t like America.
Here is another Olympics problem.
Does Brazil have the security force that can protect the Games from terrorism? The answer is, of course, not. Guess what military force will be asked to help out? Obama might still be the American President or someone else could be in the Oval Office. No matter, the American show of force will be there. The IOC doesn't particularly like America but the IOC cannot love without US TV dollars and America's protection. Perhaps it is time that Iger and Zucker to not spend other people's money on Rio. Perhaps it is time America's military take a rest and let someone else protect Rio. What would happen to the IOC and the 2016 Rio Olympics? It is a thought that probably frightens IOC head Jacques Rogge and his merry band of IOC delegates.
eweiner@mcn.tv
What Would Happen to the Olympics Without US Dollars?
By Evan Weiner
October 2, 2009
10:00 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- I wonder how many of the International Olympic Committee delegates have ever watched the 1968 movie, The Producers, especially the scene where Max Bialystock is conning Leo Bloom into some creative accounting (the term creative accounting came out of Mel Brooks' wonderful screenplay). Bialystock would find backers to come up with money and then the pair would search for a bad script and produce a Broadway play which is destined to be a flop. Max and Leo would pocket the investors’ money and then flee to Rio. Bialystock croons "Max and Leo in Rio, oh me oh, oh my oh."
Max and Leo would live the good life in Rio. Rio by the sea-o.
Max Bialystock probably had more in common with the International Olympic Committee than his creator Mel Brooks ever could imagine. Like the IOC, Max was deceitful, in the world of bribery, Max was a briber while the IOC delegates of the past had no problem taking bribes and both Max and the IOC, particularly Avery Brundage had dealings with the Third Reich. Max also didn't care about stealing money from his backers, little old ladies, and the IOC doesn't care that its demands left Greece in financial ruins after the 2004 Summer Games and caused financial hardships in Montreal and Quebec and probably will produce disastrous results in Vancouver, British Columbia in 2010, London, England in 2012 and Sochi, Russia in 2014.
The IOC delegates have done President Barack Obama and the United States along with King Carlos of Spain and the new Japanese government a favor by awarding what is sure to be a money losing venture, the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The United States President went to Copenhagen, Denmark where the vote was held along with the leaders of Brazil, Japan and Spain to lobby what is still one of the most corrupt organizations that is in business in the world, the International Olympic Committee. The president has a lot bigger fish on the table like reforming the Health Care system in the U. S., dealing with North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, Russia, the broken economy and high employment and did waste his time on appearing before the delegates.
But the 2005 vote for the 2012 Olympics started a new traditional. Bidding countries sent their leader to genuflect before the IOC. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was there, United States President George W. Bush was not but even if the sitting US President was there it was highly unlikely New York would have won the bid. New York lacked an Olympic Stadium and that killed the bid. Tony Blair’s appearance helped London and having Vladimir Putin lobbying the IOC to award the 2014 to Sochi, Russia didn’t hurt Sochi’s cause.
Spain's King Juan Carlos has about a 20 percent unemployment rate and Rio has a major crime problem and the Japanese economy died in the 1990s and remains a problem. The IOC blissfully ignores the day-to-day realities and goes about making demands such as the host city better have a slush fund to cover operating losses. That is the IOC.
Obama is from Chicago and a President, Prime Minister or a King also is required to sell his country. The IOC, a group that likes American television money and American security to protect their Games, listened and then dumped Chicago in the first round of the playoff voting. Of course the noise crowd led by the never done anything in my life but bark behind a microphone crowd like Rush Limbaugh pronounced Obama a failure which should make the oxycontin dependant carnival barker happy because he wants Obama to fail. On cable TV news, the xenophobic, jingoistic CNN presenter Lou Dobbs had a rather embarrassing discussion with political consultants, columnists, and a newspaper/magazine owner Mort Zuckerman with the gist being whether Obama wasted much needed political capital by going to Copenhagen.
"Mr. Independent" Dobbs was in a tough spot in that he had no knowledge of how the International Olympic Committee operates because had the xenophobic, jingoistic Dobbs understood the process, he would have been extremely happy knowing that the IOC delegates are not pleased with the United States tougher rules since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for entering the country.
Of course the radio talk show noise and the food fighting cable TV news presenters will not address a side issue that will be coming up for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics that does have an impact on American consumers. It appears the Walt Disney Company will make a big push to buy the American TV rights for the two week sports extravaganza for the ESPN cable TV network. There is a real question of who will actually pay for those rights? The TV network or will it be Americans who are totally unaware that their money will go into Rio?
For the pencil-neck geeks, rodeo cowboys and windbags with a microphone, here is the answer. The American public who subscribe to basic expanded cable TV will reach into their pockets, unknowingly, and pay for the Rio Games if Disney wins the bid and gives the IOC billions for the rights. You see, Disney's subsidiary ESPN has lived in a world of Cable TV socialism since 1984 when the Congress allowed various cable TV networks like ESPN, CNN and The Weather Channel to be bundled by cable operators and collect fees as one instead of being bought by consumers on an a la carte basis. The President who signed the legislation into law was Ronald Reagan; the same Reagan who blasted socialized health care in 1961.
Americans like their socialized Cable TV even though they probably are not aware that ESPN is a product of government socialism and a flagrant violation of American antitrust. But thanks to Congress and Reagan, they is no problem.
Will Disney's CEO and President Bob Iger grow a backbone or be a spineless jelly fish when it comes to bidding on the Olympics? The International Olympic Committee was supposed to wrap up the American TV deal for 2014 in Sochi and now 2016 in Rio last year but the broken economy has stalled American TV negotiations. The American TV contract is one of the major sources of revenue for the Olympics. Iger should stiff IOC President Jacques Rogge and his gang and make Rogge find other countries pay for the boondoggle.
If Real Madrid can get more than $105 million euros annually for their football rights globally, then Rogge should be able to get the UK, other Europeans, the Chinese and other Asians to fund his little athletic tournament. Iger should just say no as should NBC CEO and President Jeff Zucker. By 2016, NBC, whoever owns the NBCUniversal entity, will also be pulling money out of cable consumers. Ruppert Murdoch and his global News Corp will not bid on the 2014 and 2016 Games.
If the American TV networks pull their billions from the IOC coffers, what will happen? It would certainly knock the IOC delegates off of their pedestal and it would put the whole Olympic spectacular in a world of major financial hurt. But then again the IOC knows something about financial hurt. Montreal, Sydney, Australia, Athens, Greece, Turin, Italy and the next three sites, Vancouver, B. C., London and Sochi, Russia have and will be saddled with huge financial liabilities because of their dealings with the IOC.
If American TV turned away from the Games, the IOC would crumple. Congress has never really tackled the cable TV problem and give consumers a choice. Why should 90-95 million American cable TV subscribers pick up the bills for Sochi or Rio?
The IOC loves seeing portraits of dead presidents on little green pieces of paper from the US come their way. But they don’t like America.
Here is another Olympics problem.
Does Brazil have the security force that can protect the Games from terrorism? The answer is, of course, not. Guess what military force will be asked to help out? Obama might still be the American President or someone else could be in the Oval Office. No matter, the American show of force will be there. The IOC doesn't particularly like America but the IOC cannot love without US TV dollars and America's protection. Perhaps it is time that Iger and Zucker to not spend other people's money on Rio. Perhaps it is time America's military take a rest and let someone else protect Rio. What would happen to the IOC and the 2016 Rio Olympics? It is a thought that probably frightens IOC head Jacques Rogge and his merry band of IOC delegates.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Thursday, September 17, 2009
IOC Delegate Dick Pound Asks: Where’s Obama?
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7535
IOC Delegate Dick Pound Asks: Where’s Obama?
By Evan Weiner
September 17, 2009
11:30 AM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) – In the real world, Dick Pound would be largely dismissed as someone who just opens his mouth and comes up with astonishing statements without facts to back them up. Pound should know better since he is a lawyer but Pound does not live in the real world. You see Pound, a Montreal barrister and jock sniffer, is an International Olympic Committee delegate from Canada and a member of a select group that doesn’t want to abide to the tenets of civilization, laws of countries or care about the financial ruin they leave behind after the International Olympic Committee’s two week sports bazaar is concluded.
Pound is now suggesting that United States President Barack Obama drop everything and get to Copenhagen, Denmark on October 2 and perhaps genuflect or possibly have IOC delegates drool all over him so that Chicago can secure the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The IOC will announce the winning bid that day.
Chicago is in a four-city race to secure the games. Tokyo, Japan, Madrid, Spain and Rio de Janeiro are also bidding for the right to host the 2016 games. Pound wants Barack Obama in Copenhagen, Michelle Obama won’t do.
“Olympic bids are so important these days to the countries that it would be surprising for a country not to send its biggest hitter. If the U. S. doesn’t match the others, that is something will be noticed,” Pound recently said.
Apparently these IOC delegates, whose predecessors could be bribed in exchange for a yes vote for a city that wanted the prestige of the Olympics, are more interested in star power. These IOC delegates can no longer visit bid cities because of the little problem with some bribery that took place in the selection of Salt Lake City as an Olympic venue in 2002. So now it is more Entertainment Tonight or E! than fact finding (or money grabbing) missions. It is widely thought that British Prime Minister Tony Blair put London’s bid for the 2012 Summer Games over the top when he genuflected before the ever powerful IOC delegation in 2005 when they picked the 2012 Olympics site.
United States President George W. Bush did not attend the 2005 IOC vote but New York didn’t live up to Olympic expectations and did not have a shiny, new, expensive, taxpayers supported main stadium on the drawing board so even if he did show up, New York wasn’t going to be the choice. The IOC wants everything new, everything state of the art, everything supported by taxpayers money. The IOC believes it is a global entity like no other and they snooker politicians, business leaders and media companies into believing them. The IOC also wants to feel love from local governments in terms of getting governments to create a slush fund to cover the cost of the financial losses as Olympic Organizing Committees generally underestimate the cost of hosting these affairs and someone, not the IOC, has to pick up the tab.
But IOC delegates may get an honest to goodness 24-karat American celebrity as Oprah Winfrey is threatening to go to Copenhagen. It is a good thing that the National Enquirer is available in Europe as Oprah partially owes her career to the constant drumbeat of publicity the Enquirer has offered her for well over two decades.
The big guns are supposed to be out in Copenhagen on October 2 when the IOC delegates vote on the 2016 Olympics venue. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will be there championing the Rio bid, Spain’s King Juan Carlos will not miss this event either as he pushes for Madrid. Japan has a new government and the plans call for Crown Prince Naruhito to be in the Danish’s capital as Tokyo’s representative. The Japan Olympic Committee is hoping the new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will show up. Japan’s problem is that the former government may not have supported sports as a priority, which is not what Rogge and his band want to hear. France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, another political celebrity on the world stage partially because of his wife, singer Carla Bruni, is throwing his support behind Lula and Rio.
But where is President Obama?
Perhaps Barack Obama has better things to do than play around with the IOC. Let’s see, Obama will still be wrestling with bringing Americans a new health care system, there is still that pesky war in Iraq, and action in Afghanistan seems to be heating up. The Middle East remains the Middle East, North Korea is still high on the docket with possible talks there and Iran has signaled that it wants in on the talks action and there also is an 800-pound elephant in the room that is dragging down the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the 2012 London Summer Games. Something called the recession or maybe more appropriately the world wide economic abyss.
Pound should know something about that, his country is about to find out just how much debt future generations of Canadians are about to absorb with Vancouver’s games. Pound, the Montreal barrister, also knows that Montreal and Quebec and Canada finally paid off the 1976 Montreal Olympics debt in 2006.
But Pound should have no fear that Chicago might turn turtle about the idea of funding a money-losing venture. Pound knows what turning turtle means, in hockey parlance, it means someone in a fight goes into a defensive position and hopes the fight will go away. Pound knows a lot about hockey, he once said that about one-third of the NHL’s 700 or so players were using performance enhancing drugs.
He provided no evidence and according to NHL drug testing results, Pound was far, far off the mark as just a handful of players failed tests. No matter Pound continues to talk.
The Chicago city council has given the International Olympic Committee an open check to cover whatever cost overruns are incurred should the Illinois city get the 2016 Games. Apparently the Chicago elected officials were not swayed by the 2004 Athens debacle that lost billions upon billions of dollars or that a good number of the sites used in the 2000 Sydney Games are unused and that Australian officials are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain facilities that sit empty.
Nor is the Chicago council upset that America’s past time, Baseball, is not an Olympic sport because the IOC in a fit of pique threw baseball out of the games because Major League Baseball would not sent the game’s biggest names to compete in a tournament that coincided with Major League Baseball’s regular season. The IOC got into a squabble with Major League Baseball and started to complain to the United States Congress that Major League Baseball’s drug testing policy wasn’t good enough for them.
That’s pretty funny considering the IOC President Jacques Rogge was begging Italian officials to let the IOC take care of any illegal drug problems during the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics because the use of banned performance enhancing drugs, while illegal, is really cheating. The IOC should hand out punishment, not law enforcement officials.
The Chicago city council apparently also overlooked the absence of another population American game, softball. The prevailing feeling is that IOC delegates cut softball in retaliation because Major League Baseball would not play by IOC rules and also that the American women were just too good for their own good. The American women did not bring home the gold in the 2008 Beijing Games so they is a world of softball players who can not show off their skills because a bunch of IOC delegates for whatever reason dropped softball from the Games. (Rogge will not mess with football, the global game not the American version, as the want for major stars to compete is not the same as it was for baseball. Football’s World Cup is bigger than the Olympics. The World Cup qualifier in 1969 sparked a war between Honduras and El Salvador)
Baseball and softball have been replaced by rugby (Rogge is a former rugby player) and golf. The possibility of Tiger Woods competing in the 2016 Games and bringing his money making machine to the Olympics was just too good to be true for Rogge and his gang.
The IOC is all about money and IOC delegates should be on their hands and knees kissing up to Obama not the other way around. In fact the delegates should be singing the Star Spangled Banner and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because without American TV money, American corporate dollars and the American military, there would not be an Olympics on a grand scale. The IOC offices in Lausanne, Switzerland would not be as grand.
It was the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and Roone Arledge that created the financial stability for the International Olympic Committee. ABC’s money funded the Olympics, American corporations bought sponsorships and the US Military protected Greece in 2004 and will no doubt have a presence in Vancouver early next year.
Here is another reason why the IOC delegates should be saluting Obama, his predecessors, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. None of them tried to change the Cable TV Act of 1984, which was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. The IOC does not have a deal on the table with an American broadcasting partner for the 2014 Sochi (Russia) Winter Games or the 2016 Summer Games and is waiting for improving economic conditions before they sell off the rights.
Rupert Murdoch has said his American FOX TV operation will not bid for future Games because the Olympics lose money. It is unknown whether CBS will go after the Games but two American TV units will go after the Games, General Electric’s NBCUniversal unit and the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN. The ESPN did is intriguing because it depends on what is American cable TV socialism.
Americans don’t get this notion but there is a government sanctioned cable TV socialism that President Reagan approved in 1984 which goes against antitrust laws that allows cable TV networks to bundle their products and is sold to consumers by a cable TV operator on a basic expanded tier. The Cable TV operator and the networks cut the deal and the consumer either accepts the package or turns it down. ESPN is the most profitable part of the Disney company because of cable TV socialism where 100 percent of those buying basic expanded services are paying for what a tiny fraction watch. ESPN is the most expensive channel on the tier but consumers don’t know that because cable TV companies do not have to itemize bills for their consumers.
Disney will submit a bid and most of the money behind that bid will come from people who never watch ESPN.
If the Olympics creed contains anything about fair and honest competition, which at some point might have been true, it is certainly not the case today. Pound wants Obama in Copenhagen and what the IOC wants is far more important than health care in America, or talks with North Korea, or Iran, or the economy, or Wall Street, or the Middle East, or Iraq or Afghanistan. After all, the Olympics are the Olympics and you just cannot slag off the Olympics even if it is true that the IOC has a proven history as a gang of thieves that have been run in the past by fascists and is above the law. It is still the Olympics, the pinnacle of competition, at least that is what Pound wants people to believe.
eweiner@mcn.tv
IOC Delegate Dick Pound Asks: Where’s Obama?
By Evan Weiner
September 17, 2009
11:30 AM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) – In the real world, Dick Pound would be largely dismissed as someone who just opens his mouth and comes up with astonishing statements without facts to back them up. Pound should know better since he is a lawyer but Pound does not live in the real world. You see Pound, a Montreal barrister and jock sniffer, is an International Olympic Committee delegate from Canada and a member of a select group that doesn’t want to abide to the tenets of civilization, laws of countries or care about the financial ruin they leave behind after the International Olympic Committee’s two week sports bazaar is concluded.
Pound is now suggesting that United States President Barack Obama drop everything and get to Copenhagen, Denmark on October 2 and perhaps genuflect or possibly have IOC delegates drool all over him so that Chicago can secure the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The IOC will announce the winning bid that day.
Chicago is in a four-city race to secure the games. Tokyo, Japan, Madrid, Spain and Rio de Janeiro are also bidding for the right to host the 2016 games. Pound wants Barack Obama in Copenhagen, Michelle Obama won’t do.
“Olympic bids are so important these days to the countries that it would be surprising for a country not to send its biggest hitter. If the U. S. doesn’t match the others, that is something will be noticed,” Pound recently said.
Apparently these IOC delegates, whose predecessors could be bribed in exchange for a yes vote for a city that wanted the prestige of the Olympics, are more interested in star power. These IOC delegates can no longer visit bid cities because of the little problem with some bribery that took place in the selection of Salt Lake City as an Olympic venue in 2002. So now it is more Entertainment Tonight or E! than fact finding (or money grabbing) missions. It is widely thought that British Prime Minister Tony Blair put London’s bid for the 2012 Summer Games over the top when he genuflected before the ever powerful IOC delegation in 2005 when they picked the 2012 Olympics site.
United States President George W. Bush did not attend the 2005 IOC vote but New York didn’t live up to Olympic expectations and did not have a shiny, new, expensive, taxpayers supported main stadium on the drawing board so even if he did show up, New York wasn’t going to be the choice. The IOC wants everything new, everything state of the art, everything supported by taxpayers money. The IOC believes it is a global entity like no other and they snooker politicians, business leaders and media companies into believing them. The IOC also wants to feel love from local governments in terms of getting governments to create a slush fund to cover the cost of the financial losses as Olympic Organizing Committees generally underestimate the cost of hosting these affairs and someone, not the IOC, has to pick up the tab.
But IOC delegates may get an honest to goodness 24-karat American celebrity as Oprah Winfrey is threatening to go to Copenhagen. It is a good thing that the National Enquirer is available in Europe as Oprah partially owes her career to the constant drumbeat of publicity the Enquirer has offered her for well over two decades.
The big guns are supposed to be out in Copenhagen on October 2 when the IOC delegates vote on the 2016 Olympics venue. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will be there championing the Rio bid, Spain’s King Juan Carlos will not miss this event either as he pushes for Madrid. Japan has a new government and the plans call for Crown Prince Naruhito to be in the Danish’s capital as Tokyo’s representative. The Japan Olympic Committee is hoping the new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will show up. Japan’s problem is that the former government may not have supported sports as a priority, which is not what Rogge and his band want to hear. France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, another political celebrity on the world stage partially because of his wife, singer Carla Bruni, is throwing his support behind Lula and Rio.
But where is President Obama?
Perhaps Barack Obama has better things to do than play around with the IOC. Let’s see, Obama will still be wrestling with bringing Americans a new health care system, there is still that pesky war in Iraq, and action in Afghanistan seems to be heating up. The Middle East remains the Middle East, North Korea is still high on the docket with possible talks there and Iran has signaled that it wants in on the talks action and there also is an 800-pound elephant in the room that is dragging down the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the 2012 London Summer Games. Something called the recession or maybe more appropriately the world wide economic abyss.
Pound should know something about that, his country is about to find out just how much debt future generations of Canadians are about to absorb with Vancouver’s games. Pound, the Montreal barrister, also knows that Montreal and Quebec and Canada finally paid off the 1976 Montreal Olympics debt in 2006.
But Pound should have no fear that Chicago might turn turtle about the idea of funding a money-losing venture. Pound knows what turning turtle means, in hockey parlance, it means someone in a fight goes into a defensive position and hopes the fight will go away. Pound knows a lot about hockey, he once said that about one-third of the NHL’s 700 or so players were using performance enhancing drugs.
He provided no evidence and according to NHL drug testing results, Pound was far, far off the mark as just a handful of players failed tests. No matter Pound continues to talk.
The Chicago city council has given the International Olympic Committee an open check to cover whatever cost overruns are incurred should the Illinois city get the 2016 Games. Apparently the Chicago elected officials were not swayed by the 2004 Athens debacle that lost billions upon billions of dollars or that a good number of the sites used in the 2000 Sydney Games are unused and that Australian officials are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain facilities that sit empty.
Nor is the Chicago council upset that America’s past time, Baseball, is not an Olympic sport because the IOC in a fit of pique threw baseball out of the games because Major League Baseball would not sent the game’s biggest names to compete in a tournament that coincided with Major League Baseball’s regular season. The IOC got into a squabble with Major League Baseball and started to complain to the United States Congress that Major League Baseball’s drug testing policy wasn’t good enough for them.
That’s pretty funny considering the IOC President Jacques Rogge was begging Italian officials to let the IOC take care of any illegal drug problems during the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics because the use of banned performance enhancing drugs, while illegal, is really cheating. The IOC should hand out punishment, not law enforcement officials.
The Chicago city council apparently also overlooked the absence of another population American game, softball. The prevailing feeling is that IOC delegates cut softball in retaliation because Major League Baseball would not play by IOC rules and also that the American women were just too good for their own good. The American women did not bring home the gold in the 2008 Beijing Games so they is a world of softball players who can not show off their skills because a bunch of IOC delegates for whatever reason dropped softball from the Games. (Rogge will not mess with football, the global game not the American version, as the want for major stars to compete is not the same as it was for baseball. Football’s World Cup is bigger than the Olympics. The World Cup qualifier in 1969 sparked a war between Honduras and El Salvador)
Baseball and softball have been replaced by rugby (Rogge is a former rugby player) and golf. The possibility of Tiger Woods competing in the 2016 Games and bringing his money making machine to the Olympics was just too good to be true for Rogge and his gang.
The IOC is all about money and IOC delegates should be on their hands and knees kissing up to Obama not the other way around. In fact the delegates should be singing the Star Spangled Banner and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because without American TV money, American corporate dollars and the American military, there would not be an Olympics on a grand scale. The IOC offices in Lausanne, Switzerland would not be as grand.
It was the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and Roone Arledge that created the financial stability for the International Olympic Committee. ABC’s money funded the Olympics, American corporations bought sponsorships and the US Military protected Greece in 2004 and will no doubt have a presence in Vancouver early next year.
Here is another reason why the IOC delegates should be saluting Obama, his predecessors, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. None of them tried to change the Cable TV Act of 1984, which was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. The IOC does not have a deal on the table with an American broadcasting partner for the 2014 Sochi (Russia) Winter Games or the 2016 Summer Games and is waiting for improving economic conditions before they sell off the rights.
Rupert Murdoch has said his American FOX TV operation will not bid for future Games because the Olympics lose money. It is unknown whether CBS will go after the Games but two American TV units will go after the Games, General Electric’s NBCUniversal unit and the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN. The ESPN did is intriguing because it depends on what is American cable TV socialism.
Americans don’t get this notion but there is a government sanctioned cable TV socialism that President Reagan approved in 1984 which goes against antitrust laws that allows cable TV networks to bundle their products and is sold to consumers by a cable TV operator on a basic expanded tier. The Cable TV operator and the networks cut the deal and the consumer either accepts the package or turns it down. ESPN is the most profitable part of the Disney company because of cable TV socialism where 100 percent of those buying basic expanded services are paying for what a tiny fraction watch. ESPN is the most expensive channel on the tier but consumers don’t know that because cable TV companies do not have to itemize bills for their consumers.
Disney will submit a bid and most of the money behind that bid will come from people who never watch ESPN.
If the Olympics creed contains anything about fair and honest competition, which at some point might have been true, it is certainly not the case today. Pound wants Obama in Copenhagen and what the IOC wants is far more important than health care in America, or talks with North Korea, or Iran, or the economy, or Wall Street, or the Middle East, or Iraq or Afghanistan. After all, the Olympics are the Olympics and you just cannot slag off the Olympics even if it is true that the IOC has a proven history as a gang of thieves that have been run in the past by fascists and is above the law. It is still the Olympics, the pinnacle of competition, at least that is what Pound wants people to believe.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Is the NFL Draft really representative of American business values?
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m4d22-Is-the-NFL-Draft-really-representative-of-American-business-valuesIs the NFL Draft really representative of American business values?
April 22, 4:57 PM · Add a Comment
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You hear a lot of about how that President Barack Obama is a socialist, how he wants to share the wealth or how he wants to cap the salaries of say bank executives or automaker execs which is against all free market principles according to certain segments of the chatter society, but here is a question for those shrill voices and writers. How many of you will be celebrating this Saturday when National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell steps to the podium at Radio City Music Hall over on 6th Avenue in midtown Manhattan, not far from Wall Street which is the heart of the capitalist society, and announces that the Detroit Lions are "on the clock" as Goodell kicks off the 2009 NFL Draft?
Probably a good many of them who are rooting that their favorite NFL team picks up some valuable new employees to help their team advance in the regular season and the playoffs.
You see the members of the radio and cable TV noise chamber and their followers who vehemently despise socialism and salary caps are cheering for the very thing they cannot stand. The National Football League has a cap on player salaries, practices something called "leaguethink" which is really socialism as the 32 owners share the wealth from TV and other revenue sources equally and the NFL Draft itself keeps most of the qualified applicants from shopping their services to the 32 NFL teams. There is no free market for the players ranked from #2 to about #230 in the pool of people qualified to work as a player in the National Football League. The draft also rewards failure; the best of the new employees end up with bad teams like William Clay Ford’s Detroit Lions. The poorly managed teams like Ford’s Lions which was winless in 16 games last year get a bailout, a potential great player.
The conservative columnist and TV pundit George Will is a baseball fan and a free market advocate until it comes to baseball and sports. A number of years ago when Will was a member of the Baseball Blue Ribbon Committee looking at ways of keeping all teams on a level financail playing field, he told me that baseball should and could not be subjected to free market principles. Will had been on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Padres and the Baltimore Orioles so he knew what he was talking about in the sports industry. Sports needs to be regulated by Congress and sports owners need a willing players association that allows what amounts to an illegal business practice. An annual draft of players which takes away an individual player's right to negotiate with multiple potential employers instead one just one.
Think of what the noise chamber would sound like if a college graduate in normal economic times was drafted by a company and sent to an area of the country far from home and was told this is the only job opportunity that you are allowed at a slotted salary. There would be huge cries of that is not fair. This is how it is with the NFL Draft. NFL fans are rooting for something that is against American principles. A legal restraint of trade. But it is only football and why should people care when these college grads, although most of them are not graduating, are offered millions of dollars to play a game?
George Will is, of course, a hypocrite. Free market proponents claim that people should let the market dictate the value of an employee or a business. An entry draft like this Saturday's NFL event is choreographed. Players are slotted into a pay scale based on where they are chosen in the draft. The players except for a very select few at the top of the draft cannot necessarily get their ideal job in their ideal part of the country. They cannot shop around their services and the owners are very happy about that because the players cannot initiate a bidding war between the owners, a good many of whom are free market supporters in their other businesses. It is all legal too under the United States labor laws which allow two parties in collective bargaining, in this case the owners and a willing players association, to cut a deal allowing the draft even though a third party, the draftees, lose the right to sell their services to 32 prospect employers.
The number 1 pick is the only player that has some leverage to chose his team like John Elway tried to do in 1983. Elway did not want to be taken by the Baltimore Colts with the first pick 26 years ago. Elway told Colts owner Robert Irsay not to bother and if Irsay choose him, he would continue his baseball career as a minor league player in George Steinbrenner's New York Yankees organization. Irsay took Elway but ended up trading him to Denver. Elway accepted Denver's offer.
Bo Jackson did not necessarily want to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1986 even though Tampa Bay selected him as the top pick in the 1986 draft. Jackson decided to play baseball instead with the Kansas City Royals organization. He had leverage and used it. In 1987, Los Angeles Raiders owner Al Davis took Jackson in the seventh round and that started Jackson's dual baseball-football career.
In 2004, Eli Manning told San Diego Chargers officials not to bother drafting him. But San Diego worked the phones and found an attractive trade package and took Manning anyway. San Diego then sent the quarterback to the New York Giants which was fine with Manning. If Elway, Jackson or Manning were rated lower, they would not have had any leverage.
Potential NFL players coming out of college who are drafted have few choices if they want to make the NFL a career. They could sit out a year and hope they get drafted elsewhere, they can play in Canada or they can go home and find another line of work. Or they can sign a contract with the proposed United Football League and hope the league lasts. Oddly enough the undrafted players have some leverage as they can negotiate with multiple teams and perhaps get bonuses that are better than those drafted in the seventh and final round of annual NFL grab bag.
The NFL owners have a salary cap, which keeps players salaries from skyrocketing and on top of that, NFL players contracts are not guaranteed. A player who gets cut, a fancy word for being fired, keeps his bonus and gets a severance package. NFL owners share enormous national TV revenues although some bigger markets raise more capital than smaller markets because of how much the market will bear for tickets and marketing partnerships. That causes a divide between rich and poorer financed teams but that doesn't affect players as there is a salary cap and a salary floor in the league. Owners have to spend a minimum amount for players and that is a substantial number. The divide is in how much an owner spends on football staff and marketing.
The NFL Draft is now a slice of Americana. Countless hours of TV and radio shows are devoted to this event, numerous stories fill newspapers, blogs and magazines. This is a huge day for football fans and for those fans in the chattering society who decry socialism, spreading the wealth and salary caps. They hope their team gets better but overlook how the draft is so anti-free market capitalism. As the noted philosopher Don King once said. "Only in America."
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
April 22, 4:57 PM · Add a Comment
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You hear a lot of about how that President Barack Obama is a socialist, how he wants to share the wealth or how he wants to cap the salaries of say bank executives or automaker execs which is against all free market principles according to certain segments of the chatter society, but here is a question for those shrill voices and writers. How many of you will be celebrating this Saturday when National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell steps to the podium at Radio City Music Hall over on 6th Avenue in midtown Manhattan, not far from Wall Street which is the heart of the capitalist society, and announces that the Detroit Lions are "on the clock" as Goodell kicks off the 2009 NFL Draft?
Probably a good many of them who are rooting that their favorite NFL team picks up some valuable new employees to help their team advance in the regular season and the playoffs.
You see the members of the radio and cable TV noise chamber and their followers who vehemently despise socialism and salary caps are cheering for the very thing they cannot stand. The National Football League has a cap on player salaries, practices something called "leaguethink" which is really socialism as the 32 owners share the wealth from TV and other revenue sources equally and the NFL Draft itself keeps most of the qualified applicants from shopping their services to the 32 NFL teams. There is no free market for the players ranked from #2 to about #230 in the pool of people qualified to work as a player in the National Football League. The draft also rewards failure; the best of the new employees end up with bad teams like William Clay Ford’s Detroit Lions. The poorly managed teams like Ford’s Lions which was winless in 16 games last year get a bailout, a potential great player.
The conservative columnist and TV pundit George Will is a baseball fan and a free market advocate until it comes to baseball and sports. A number of years ago when Will was a member of the Baseball Blue Ribbon Committee looking at ways of keeping all teams on a level financail playing field, he told me that baseball should and could not be subjected to free market principles. Will had been on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Padres and the Baltimore Orioles so he knew what he was talking about in the sports industry. Sports needs to be regulated by Congress and sports owners need a willing players association that allows what amounts to an illegal business practice. An annual draft of players which takes away an individual player's right to negotiate with multiple potential employers instead one just one.
Think of what the noise chamber would sound like if a college graduate in normal economic times was drafted by a company and sent to an area of the country far from home and was told this is the only job opportunity that you are allowed at a slotted salary. There would be huge cries of that is not fair. This is how it is with the NFL Draft. NFL fans are rooting for something that is against American principles. A legal restraint of trade. But it is only football and why should people care when these college grads, although most of them are not graduating, are offered millions of dollars to play a game?
George Will is, of course, a hypocrite. Free market proponents claim that people should let the market dictate the value of an employee or a business. An entry draft like this Saturday's NFL event is choreographed. Players are slotted into a pay scale based on where they are chosen in the draft. The players except for a very select few at the top of the draft cannot necessarily get their ideal job in their ideal part of the country. They cannot shop around their services and the owners are very happy about that because the players cannot initiate a bidding war between the owners, a good many of whom are free market supporters in their other businesses. It is all legal too under the United States labor laws which allow two parties in collective bargaining, in this case the owners and a willing players association, to cut a deal allowing the draft even though a third party, the draftees, lose the right to sell their services to 32 prospect employers.
The number 1 pick is the only player that has some leverage to chose his team like John Elway tried to do in 1983. Elway did not want to be taken by the Baltimore Colts with the first pick 26 years ago. Elway told Colts owner Robert Irsay not to bother and if Irsay choose him, he would continue his baseball career as a minor league player in George Steinbrenner's New York Yankees organization. Irsay took Elway but ended up trading him to Denver. Elway accepted Denver's offer.
Bo Jackson did not necessarily want to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1986 even though Tampa Bay selected him as the top pick in the 1986 draft. Jackson decided to play baseball instead with the Kansas City Royals organization. He had leverage and used it. In 1987, Los Angeles Raiders owner Al Davis took Jackson in the seventh round and that started Jackson's dual baseball-football career.
In 2004, Eli Manning told San Diego Chargers officials not to bother drafting him. But San Diego worked the phones and found an attractive trade package and took Manning anyway. San Diego then sent the quarterback to the New York Giants which was fine with Manning. If Elway, Jackson or Manning were rated lower, they would not have had any leverage.
Potential NFL players coming out of college who are drafted have few choices if they want to make the NFL a career. They could sit out a year and hope they get drafted elsewhere, they can play in Canada or they can go home and find another line of work. Or they can sign a contract with the proposed United Football League and hope the league lasts. Oddly enough the undrafted players have some leverage as they can negotiate with multiple teams and perhaps get bonuses that are better than those drafted in the seventh and final round of annual NFL grab bag.
The NFL owners have a salary cap, which keeps players salaries from skyrocketing and on top of that, NFL players contracts are not guaranteed. A player who gets cut, a fancy word for being fired, keeps his bonus and gets a severance package. NFL owners share enormous national TV revenues although some bigger markets raise more capital than smaller markets because of how much the market will bear for tickets and marketing partnerships. That causes a divide between rich and poorer financed teams but that doesn't affect players as there is a salary cap and a salary floor in the league. Owners have to spend a minimum amount for players and that is a substantial number. The divide is in how much an owner spends on football staff and marketing.
The NFL Draft is now a slice of Americana. Countless hours of TV and radio shows are devoted to this event, numerous stories fill newspapers, blogs and magazines. This is a huge day for football fans and for those fans in the chattering society who decry socialism, spreading the wealth and salary caps. They hope their team gets better but overlook how the draft is so anti-free market capitalism. As the noted philosopher Don King once said. "Only in America."
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m2d17-All-Sports-Business-Eyes-Turn-to-Florida-Arizona-and-Detroit
All sports business eyes turn to Florida, Arizona and Detroit
Add a Comment
February 17, 12:21 PM
by Evan Weiner, Business of Sports Examiner
Today is the day President Barack Obama signs the stimulus bill into law with the hope that pouring billions of dollars into numerous projects nationally will create jobs and get Americans spending again.
In sports, owners have not yet felt the effects of the economic downturn because tickets for National Football League, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League contests were sold prior to the September-October meltdown and the leagues were locked into long term over-the-air and cable/satellite TV contracts along with marketing partnerships which were signed months before the economic crisis started.
But the calendar has caught up to sports, particularly Major League Baseball. Tickets need to be sold, marketing deals need to be signed and commercials need to be in place to pay for bills. Within the next two weeks, Major League Baseball teams will find out just how difficult the economy is as games will be played in two of the states hit hardest by home foreclosures, Florida and Arizona. If attendance is below normal in the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues, that might be a sign that some franchises may be in for some difficult times, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Florida Marlins and the Tampa Bay Rays.
The franchise that seems to be in for the toughest season economically is the Detroit Tigers. No reorganization plans that General Motors and Chrysler submit to the White House and Congress today so they can accept government loans will help the Tigers in the near term.
The Big 3 automakers have laid off tens of thousands of workers, both blue- and white-collar workers, and the home foreclosure rate in the Detroit area is skyrocketing. A good portion of the Detroit consumer base comes from Windsor, Ontario, and other parts of Canada. The fall of the Canadian dollar has made going to baseball, hockey, football and basketball games along with college sports in the Detroit and Auburn Hills area much more expensive as Canadians are paying $1.26 Canadian per every U.S. dollar to cross the river and head into Michigan.
Even if U.S. and Canadian government loans help the Michigan-Ontario auto industry, the business will be forever changed in Michigan/Ontario and that will impact the Tigers as well as the NBA Pistons and the NHL Red Wings beginning this spring - and the NFL’s Lions and college sports next fall.
The stimulus package is designed to pump money into states, cities, towns, villages and municipalities for infrastructure development and repairs. Things like energy projects, road reconstruction which would create jobs. There also could be stadium/arena construction although that would seem to be on the low priority end behind building and repairing bridges and retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient. In New York, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner, a political operative under New York City Mayors John V. Lindsay and Ed Koch in the 1970s, is turning to former New York Senator Al D'Amato's lobbying firm to help him get stimulus money in an attempt to get the stalled Atlantic Yards-Brooklyn Arena project moving.
Getting federal money for stadiums and arenas is nothing new. In the 1930s, the President Franklin Roosevelt's depression-era recovery plan included stadium and arena building under the umbrella of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Public Works Administration (PWA) agencies. Among those projects included the Aud and the War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati and other venues used in major league, minor league and college sports.
President Obama's signature on the stimulus bill could help sports owners in a variety of ways but it may take a while before the economy shows signs of recovering. In Florida, Arizona and Michigan, sports owners can only help that the economy comes back a lot sooner than hoped.
Contact the author at this address.
Add a Comment
February 17, 12:21 PM
by Evan Weiner, Business of Sports Examiner
Today is the day President Barack Obama signs the stimulus bill into law with the hope that pouring billions of dollars into numerous projects nationally will create jobs and get Americans spending again.
In sports, owners have not yet felt the effects of the economic downturn because tickets for National Football League, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League contests were sold prior to the September-October meltdown and the leagues were locked into long term over-the-air and cable/satellite TV contracts along with marketing partnerships which were signed months before the economic crisis started.
But the calendar has caught up to sports, particularly Major League Baseball. Tickets need to be sold, marketing deals need to be signed and commercials need to be in place to pay for bills. Within the next two weeks, Major League Baseball teams will find out just how difficult the economy is as games will be played in two of the states hit hardest by home foreclosures, Florida and Arizona. If attendance is below normal in the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues, that might be a sign that some franchises may be in for some difficult times, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Florida Marlins and the Tampa Bay Rays.
The franchise that seems to be in for the toughest season economically is the Detroit Tigers. No reorganization plans that General Motors and Chrysler submit to the White House and Congress today so they can accept government loans will help the Tigers in the near term.
The Big 3 automakers have laid off tens of thousands of workers, both blue- and white-collar workers, and the home foreclosure rate in the Detroit area is skyrocketing. A good portion of the Detroit consumer base comes from Windsor, Ontario, and other parts of Canada. The fall of the Canadian dollar has made going to baseball, hockey, football and basketball games along with college sports in the Detroit and Auburn Hills area much more expensive as Canadians are paying $1.26 Canadian per every U.S. dollar to cross the river and head into Michigan.
Even if U.S. and Canadian government loans help the Michigan-Ontario auto industry, the business will be forever changed in Michigan/Ontario and that will impact the Tigers as well as the NBA Pistons and the NHL Red Wings beginning this spring - and the NFL’s Lions and college sports next fall.
The stimulus package is designed to pump money into states, cities, towns, villages and municipalities for infrastructure development and repairs. Things like energy projects, road reconstruction which would create jobs. There also could be stadium/arena construction although that would seem to be on the low priority end behind building and repairing bridges and retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient. In New York, New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner, a political operative under New York City Mayors John V. Lindsay and Ed Koch in the 1970s, is turning to former New York Senator Al D'Amato's lobbying firm to help him get stimulus money in an attempt to get the stalled Atlantic Yards-Brooklyn Arena project moving.
Getting federal money for stadiums and arenas is nothing new. In the 1930s, the President Franklin Roosevelt's depression-era recovery plan included stadium and arena building under the umbrella of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Public Works Administration (PWA) agencies. Among those projects included the Aud and the War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati and other venues used in major league, minor league and college sports.
President Obama's signature on the stimulus bill could help sports owners in a variety of ways but it may take a while before the economy shows signs of recovering. In Florida, Arizona and Michigan, sports owners can only help that the economy comes back a lot sooner than hoped.
Contact the author at this address.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Big Game Isn't Always on the Field
The Big Game Isn't Always on the Field
By Evan Weiner
9:30 PM EST
January 7, 2009
(New York, NY) -- It is time to crown a new US college football champion or is it time to crown a new US college football champion? Oklahoma is playing Florida for the Bowl Championship Series title but there are a whole lot of people including President-elect Barack Obama and the Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff who believe that the college football champion needs to be decided in a different way. President-elect Obama would like to see a college football playoff while Shurtleff plans to take his gripes to court.
The BCS is college football's championship caretaker. How teams get to the championship game may be construed as convoluted. The BCS uses a complicated formula based on polls and computer rankings to determine who plays in that game. The winner of the game is college football's champion but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone recognizes that team as college football's best. The Associated Press also hands out a championship based on a poll of sportswriters. Sportswriters probably are not qualified to pick college football's best team for a variety of reasons including that fact they can't watch a lot of games, also sportswriters should be disqualified from voting on any awards because it is a conflict of interest, you simply can not vote on something you cover professionally. It is unethical.
Shurtleff plans to take a closer look at the BCS to determine whether the Bowl Championship Series is violating American antitrust laws after the undefeated Utah Utes football team failed to qualify for national title game for the second time in five years.
Utah is a member of the Mountain West Conference and that grouping does not get an automatic bid to the "big" bowl games and that could put Utah and many other schools at a competitive and financial disadvantage.
Obama has not signaled to Congress that he would like a House or Senate hearing on the BCS and with the US economy in shambles, with the US fighting two wars and other problems like the Israeli-Hamas fighting, Obama cannot afford to use any political capital to look into what is really at best a trivial issue, the college football championship.
However, as trivial as the game might seem to most Americans who will not bother watching the contest, the US government is deeply involved in the BCS and as recently as last April, House members Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) introduced a resolution claiming that the BCS was an illegal restriction on trade because only the largest football playing universities compete in most of the major bowl games. The bill went nowhere, after Obama's comments that he would like to see a college football playoff, Abercrombie decided that perhaps the new Congress should take up his bill.
College football may be a game to some, but to a lot of people connected to the industry, it is a big money maker. Six conferences, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big East, the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pacific Athletic Conference and the South East Conference all get automatic bids to the big bowl games and about $18 million that is split among the conference schools and if there is a second team from any of those conferences that ends up in a bowl game, more money flows into those conferences.
Non BCS conference members from Conference USA, the Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Western Athletic Conferences get about $9.5 million. If a school from one of those conferences gets a BCS invite for a bowl game, they get a certain percent of revenues.
People like the three Congressman and the Utah Attorney General look at how the money is distributed to the big time schools and how the big time schools can pay big sums of money to schools thanks to the BCS but what they aren’t addressing is how boosters, marketing partners, TV networks and others also contribute to the coffers through tax loop holes. The BCS dollars, while substantial, are just a piece of the money pie.
In 2005, the US House of Representatives held a hearing on the BCS but nothing came of it.
The American government gives tax exempt status to big time college sports programs. In 2006, Rep. Bill Thomas, a California Republican, brought up the question of whether the NCAA should retain its tax-exempt status given the amount of money it receives from TV contracts and championship events. He also wondered whether the federal government should subsidize college athletics when money helps pay for escalating coaching salaries. Thomas, who was the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, decided not to run for re-election in 2006 and the tax exempt status has not been questioned since.
Believe it or not, the BCS and college sports can bring in money and not have to worry about paying taxes because of a tax loophole as it qualifies for a 501(c)3 charities exemption, people buying luxury boxes for bowl games are giving to education, and it is tax deductible.
The college football system for deciding a championship will not be changed by the bully pulpit of the President although Barack Obama could lean on college presidents and chancellors and athletic directors, boosters, cable and over the air TV networks to accept a college football playoff after Congress takes a serious look at college football. But Congress has shown absolutely no inclination to address college sports issues and there are a whole range of issues that can be addressed from the 501(c)3 charities exemption to the rights of college athletes including the "voluntary" practices to outside work to whether or not an athlete is really pursuing an education. They could also look into a college basketball problem that Bobby Knight has brought up in the past. Are talented freshman players attending second semester classes knowing that they are leaving for the NBA? There is also a question of compensation for playing in big time college football or basketball games and also whether a big time athlete whose jersey is being sold to fans is entitled to get some of those dollars.
If Congress was serious, they could address those issues because of the tax breaks given to big time football/basketball schools. A college football playoff pales in comparison to the economic woes and growing unemployment, two wars, a standoff in the Middle East and far more serious issues but college sports leaders can be summoned to appear before Congress and if they want to change the way a football champion is crowned, they could.
Shurtleff is reviewing the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Utah Attorney General can also cause some major problems for the college establishment if he decides to go ahead with a lawsuit. Oklahoma and Florida are playing for a championship but there is far more to this football game that meets the eye.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
9:30 PM EST
January 7, 2009
(New York, NY) -- It is time to crown a new US college football champion or is it time to crown a new US college football champion? Oklahoma is playing Florida for the Bowl Championship Series title but there are a whole lot of people including President-elect Barack Obama and the Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff who believe that the college football champion needs to be decided in a different way. President-elect Obama would like to see a college football playoff while Shurtleff plans to take his gripes to court.
The BCS is college football's championship caretaker. How teams get to the championship game may be construed as convoluted. The BCS uses a complicated formula based on polls and computer rankings to determine who plays in that game. The winner of the game is college football's champion but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone recognizes that team as college football's best. The Associated Press also hands out a championship based on a poll of sportswriters. Sportswriters probably are not qualified to pick college football's best team for a variety of reasons including that fact they can't watch a lot of games, also sportswriters should be disqualified from voting on any awards because it is a conflict of interest, you simply can not vote on something you cover professionally. It is unethical.
Shurtleff plans to take a closer look at the BCS to determine whether the Bowl Championship Series is violating American antitrust laws after the undefeated Utah Utes football team failed to qualify for national title game for the second time in five years.
Utah is a member of the Mountain West Conference and that grouping does not get an automatic bid to the "big" bowl games and that could put Utah and many other schools at a competitive and financial disadvantage.
Obama has not signaled to Congress that he would like a House or Senate hearing on the BCS and with the US economy in shambles, with the US fighting two wars and other problems like the Israeli-Hamas fighting, Obama cannot afford to use any political capital to look into what is really at best a trivial issue, the college football championship.
However, as trivial as the game might seem to most Americans who will not bother watching the contest, the US government is deeply involved in the BCS and as recently as last April, House members Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) introduced a resolution claiming that the BCS was an illegal restriction on trade because only the largest football playing universities compete in most of the major bowl games. The bill went nowhere, after Obama's comments that he would like to see a college football playoff, Abercrombie decided that perhaps the new Congress should take up his bill.
College football may be a game to some, but to a lot of people connected to the industry, it is a big money maker. Six conferences, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big East, the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pacific Athletic Conference and the South East Conference all get automatic bids to the big bowl games and about $18 million that is split among the conference schools and if there is a second team from any of those conferences that ends up in a bowl game, more money flows into those conferences.
Non BCS conference members from Conference USA, the Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Western Athletic Conferences get about $9.5 million. If a school from one of those conferences gets a BCS invite for a bowl game, they get a certain percent of revenues.
People like the three Congressman and the Utah Attorney General look at how the money is distributed to the big time schools and how the big time schools can pay big sums of money to schools thanks to the BCS but what they aren’t addressing is how boosters, marketing partners, TV networks and others also contribute to the coffers through tax loop holes. The BCS dollars, while substantial, are just a piece of the money pie.
In 2005, the US House of Representatives held a hearing on the BCS but nothing came of it.
The American government gives tax exempt status to big time college sports programs. In 2006, Rep. Bill Thomas, a California Republican, brought up the question of whether the NCAA should retain its tax-exempt status given the amount of money it receives from TV contracts and championship events. He also wondered whether the federal government should subsidize college athletics when money helps pay for escalating coaching salaries. Thomas, who was the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, decided not to run for re-election in 2006 and the tax exempt status has not been questioned since.
Believe it or not, the BCS and college sports can bring in money and not have to worry about paying taxes because of a tax loophole as it qualifies for a 501(c)3 charities exemption, people buying luxury boxes for bowl games are giving to education, and it is tax deductible.
The college football system for deciding a championship will not be changed by the bully pulpit of the President although Barack Obama could lean on college presidents and chancellors and athletic directors, boosters, cable and over the air TV networks to accept a college football playoff after Congress takes a serious look at college football. But Congress has shown absolutely no inclination to address college sports issues and there are a whole range of issues that can be addressed from the 501(c)3 charities exemption to the rights of college athletes including the "voluntary" practices to outside work to whether or not an athlete is really pursuing an education. They could also look into a college basketball problem that Bobby Knight has brought up in the past. Are talented freshman players attending second semester classes knowing that they are leaving for the NBA? There is also a question of compensation for playing in big time college football or basketball games and also whether a big time athlete whose jersey is being sold to fans is entitled to get some of those dollars.
If Congress was serious, they could address those issues because of the tax breaks given to big time football/basketball schools. A college football playoff pales in comparison to the economic woes and growing unemployment, two wars, a standoff in the Middle East and far more serious issues but college sports leaders can be summoned to appear before Congress and if they want to change the way a football champion is crowned, they could.
Shurtleff is reviewing the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Utah Attorney General can also cause some major problems for the college establishment if he decides to go ahead with a lawsuit. Oklahoma and Florida are playing for a championship but there is far more to this football game that meets the eye.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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