The Indy 500 Isn’t The Indy 500 Anymore
By Evan Weiner
May 29, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) --- Once upon a time, the Indianapolis 500 was mentioned in the same breath as the World Series, the Boxing Heavyweight Champion and the Kentucky Derby as major, major events in America. The World Series is still a major event but has lost a lot of luster over the years. The Kentucky Derby is an event but thoroughbred horse racing has seen much better days. Boxing's heavyweight championship belt has been devalued over the decades.
The Indianapolis 500 was big and engrained in American popular culture. The Beach Boys song, Fun, Fun, Fun has a lyric about a girl and her love affair with her T-bird -- Well the girls can't stand her/Cause she walks, looks and drives like an ace now (You walk like an ace now, you walk like an ace)/She makes the Indy 500 look like a Roman chariot race now. The 1969 Paul Newman movie "Winning" is based loosely on the Indy 500. There were other TV shows, movies and songs that celebrated the Indy 500.
Today it can be argued that the Indy 500 is not even the most important race of the Memorial Day Weekend that a NASCAR event in Charlotte is more popular. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway can accommodate as many as 400,000 people for the event. The Indianapolis brickyard is as famous as the Ivy at Chicago's Wrigley Field or the Green Monster at Boston's Fenway Park yet the Indy 500 is now a ho hum event. How did that happen and can the Indy 500 capture the imagination again?
The Indy 500 is a huge deal in Japan, there will be two Japanese drivers in the field and the race will be televised on outdoor big screen TVs. It will be seen in South Africa and will be the prelude to the FIFA World Cup in that country as a premier sporting event.
The Indianapolis Speedway was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and was designated a National Historical Landmark in 1987. But trouble started in the 1970s with problems over prize money and regulations. In 1994, Speedway owner Tony George changed the paradigm by starting the Indy Racing League and changing the rules. The top 25 Indy Racing League drivers got 25 of the 33 spots in the 1995 race and that limited members of the Championship Auto Racing Team (CART) to just eight openings. CART eventually went bankrupt and now the Indy Racing League is trying to pick up the pieces and rebrand the Indy 500.
It will not be an easy task but one sponsor is making a push to put present day drivers into the limelight and it appears that they want present day drivers to appeal to those who are not into racing. The past stars, A. J. Foyt, Bobby Unser, Mario Andretti and others were portrayed as guys around the track and garage. The new effort is to make the drivers more appealing. Hélio Castroneves has won three Indy 500s since 2001 yet more people know him from the ABC television show, Dancing With the Stars. Danica Patrick has won races and has been a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and corporate spokesperson.
Still the Indy 500 has not reclaimed a top spot in American sporting events and that bothers Townsend Bell who will be behind the wheel in this year's event.
"I have been around the sport for over 10 years now, I came from the Champ-Car, CART side and I feel like for the first time since I have been around that there is a sense of reality that is grounded. Everybody knows who we are and where we are and what the climb ahead looks like and it is going to be a climb and it is one step at a time. You got to reach rock bottom or as much as a point of realty where the management is very honest with themselves, team owners are honest with themselves where everything really truly is, that makes it a lot easier to grow," he said.
"If you are living in a fantasy world still and pretend and convince yourself that things aren't the way they really are which is an area that I think we have been in for many years, how do you actually deal with progress. I feel like for the first time, we have established our reality, which is not glamorous in terms of level and we are building now."
So just where is the Indianapolis 500 today?
"One of the things that has been lost is the mystique of Indianapolis," said Bell. "There are two reasons for that. One is, the Indy 500, I went when I was 11 (in 1986), that was the first race I ever went to. I didn't know much about the history of the Indy 500 other than I knew it was the biggest race in the world. But later in life I learned that the history of the Indianapolis 500 was great for two reasons.
"Man and machine.
"And we all think we are all great racing drivers, the best out there but we are driving machines that are the same damn thing we have been driving for eight years? So where is the sex appeal or the mystique or the innovation on the machine side? That is one thing and the second thing that disappeared is that we are driving the same speeds we have had for the last 10 years. It is the same car, the same tire, the same tire, we have been capped---limited in our ability to technically push the limit."
So the Indy 500 needs to be liberated. It needs speed. Speed sells and the Indy 500 isn't pushing the envelope for various reasons.
"We have to make sure we that we push the limits on the number (miles per hour)," Bell said. "We need to be going faster every year. The Speedway has mentioned liability issues but that is such a generic blanket term that in our society we have become used to excusing things like--liability issue--well this is auto racing and pushing the limits and so if we want this sport to grown, we need to haul ass and increase the limits."
The Indy 500 has some good markets globally. Japan is a racing hotbed, Brazil likes the sport and so does England. But Don Wheldon thinks getting interested in Indy racing globally is good but Indianapolis 500 is as American as apple pie. Wheldon is from England as is his wife but his children were born in America and he wants to see the Indy 500 revert to iconic status of the 1950 and 1960s.
"You got to remember, what makes this series is that it is American-based," said Wheldon. "I do think there is not the necessity to go to countries outside the US. I think it is important to do a race or two in Japan. But I think we have to really building this market. This is a very important market worldwide. Businesses want to be involved in America and I think it is important to have the majority of the series here (America). Like I say, we have to keep doing what we are doing, be patient and continue to explore a lot of avenues that have not been not been explored before and exploit the ones we have explored and make them bigger and better.”
The Indy 500, the Kentucky Derby, motherhood and apple pie. That’s Americana or was Americana in 1950. The Indy 500 has fallen off the pedestal in that equation. It isn’t even the biggest race of the weekend anymore.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on the “Politics of Sports Business” and is available for speaking at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Black athletes faced a very different America before Civil Rights Act of 1964
Black athletes faced a very different America before Civil Rights Act of 1964
WEDNESDAY, 26 MAY 2010 21:30
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/athletes-faced-a-very-different-america-before-civil-rights-act-of-1964
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Intentional or not, Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Dr. Rand Paul has opened the door to a new discussion over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This column is not about Dr. Paul, his candidacy and his beliefs. He will have a thorough chance between now and November's election to go over every issue. This though is about people who played sports before the legislation was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The names of two African-American basketball players, Lebron and Kobe, today rank right up there with the Babe as in Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees in the 1920s and 1930s. Lebron James is the focus of sports and business journalists everywhere as they try and figure out what National Basketball Association team is the perfect fit for him as he mulls what contract offers may come his way on July 1. Kobe Bryant and his Los Angeles Lakers teammates are trying to win another title. But back on the Fourth of July, 1947, when Larry Doby was heading up to the Major Leagues there was trepidation. Whether Doby liked it or not, he was going to be a civil rights trial blazer.
The then 23-year-old Doby from Paterson, New Jersey was about ready to join the Cleveland Indians and would break the color barrier in the American League just three months after Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Today, a 23-year-old African-American player joining a Major League Baseball team is not big news. It happens a lot but in 1947, Larry Doby made history.
Doby and a good many "Negro" or "black" or African-Americans who went through both the college and professional ranks have a lot of stories about their pre-Civil Rights Act of 1964 America and not being able to stay with their teammates in the same hotels or motels or eating in the same restaurants or even using the same water fountains. They may have been sports heroes but that didn't mean a thing off the field in some areas of the country, particularly the South. Major League Baseball though was not a "Southern" sport and a lot of the problems happened in the North as well. There was not much to distinguish between spring training in the South and playing in the North during the season.
Major League Baseball owners didn't want black players nor did the National Football League. Boston's George Preston Marshall entered the NFL in 1932 and moved the team to Washington five years later. Thirty-nine years later, 1961, Marshall still had not hired a black player.
Doby was "selected" by Indians owner Bill Veeck to join the Cleveland team because he was a good Negro League player and attended Brooklyn College. Veeck saw Doby as more than just a talented player and Veeck ended up having a lifelong baseball relationship with Doby as a player in Cleveland then in Chicago and eventually Doby coached and managed Veeck's White Sox in the 1970s.
Doby might have been a great baseball prospect when he was 18 in 1942 but both the American and National League and a predecessor called the American Association along with minor leagues like the International League had a color barrier between 1890 and 1946. There was never any formal decree banning African-Americans from "Organized Baseball" but African-Americans were clearly not wanted on the field or in the stands. African-Americans ended up in the Negro League or barnstorming or in Mexico or Cuba. Officially the American Association's Toledo Blue Stockings catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker was the last African-American to be in the "Major Leagues' in 1884. It was Toledo's only season in the American Association.
In 1945, the Brooklyn Dodgers' President and General Manager signed Jackie Robinson and assigned him to Montreal of the International League. In 1946, Robinson officially became the first African-American player in "Organized Baseball" since 1890 although there were whispers that some players were of "mixed" race. Baseball wasn't the only sport denying opportunities. The National Football League stopped hiring black players after the 1933 season. A new football league, the All-America Football Conference, signed black players in 1946, the same year as the NFL but the only reason black players were allowed in the NFL had nothing to do with the league.
When the Cleveland Rams moved to the Los Angeles Coliseum, the lease agreement between the team and the stadium required the Rams to hire Negro players. The new Los Angeles Rams signed Woody Strode and Kenny Washington. The AAFC's Cleveland Browns signed Marion Motley and Bill Ford because Coach Paul Brown wanted football players.
There was a professional basketball league in the Midwest, the National Basketball League, which employed African-Americans but the new Basketball Association of America that started in 1946 did not. The merged National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America became the National Basketball Association in 1949 and did not hire black players until 1950.
College football teams like Penn State and the University of San Francisco turned down games and bowl bids because they were asked to leave their black players home. Penn State did play SMU in the 1948 Cotton Bowl and brought with them two African-American players, Wally Triplett and Dennie Hoggard played in that game but the team stayed at a naval air base near Dallas because local hotels refused to accommodate the Penn State squad if Triplett and Hoggard were part of the team.
It was in this environment that Doby made his debut.
Doby was a Negro League player with the Newark Eagles. He hit .341 in 1946. Veeck bought his contract from Newark and he was the first player to go straight from the Negro League to Major League Baseball.
"Mr. Rickey, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Veeck gave me an opportunity to be in the American League," said Doby in an interview in March 1997. "So I have to say that Jackie had not made it, I probably would have not been given the opportunity. When you talk about what goes through your mind 50 years ago, you first have to think of Mr. Rickey, who had the courage to do it and you think about Mr. Robinson, who had the courage to do it, and you the think about Mr. Veeck, who had the courage to do it and me who had the opportunity to do it."
It seem rather strange that Doby used the word courage three times in describing his chance at playing in "Organized Baseball" yet from all accounts it seemed to take a lot of courage to play a simple game back in the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s.
"A lot of people ask me, Jack gets a lot of the headlines and you don't get too much headlines," said Doby in the 1997 interview on the pressures he had to succeed. Both Robinson and Doby were in the same boat. They both were verbally abused and had to live a separate life on the road from their teammates, almost always in the poorer side of town in certain cities.
"When the guy is first, he should get the headlines," he said. "I know myself, my friends, my friends know I was involved in the same type of thing he was involved in. I am not going to be going around asking for publicity, politicking for publicity but I know what I have done and I know I have helped some people to accomplish what they have done in terms of coming into the American League and it makes you feel good being a part of it, that is one thing nobody can take away from me.
"I think a lot of people think because I was 11 weeks behind Jackie, it made it easier for me and that is not true. We (Robinson and Doby) talked about it. I would not say we were close from a social standpoint but we barnstormed for about four years for 30 days, I would see him at certain functions but we stayed away from the negatives. The only thing we talked about there were certain guys who gave him a tough time and I had certain guys in the American League that gave me a tough time. You see the focus was trying to be the best ballplayer you can be and you had to be because when you are talking about eight teams (eight in the American League and eight in the National), you know, you get hurt and you might get back. You had to concentrate on playing the game as well as you can.
"And one of the other things and I think he felt the same way I felt. Why stir up things, it is tough enough going through the summer going through what you are going to go through you don't want to go through to talk about the same thing during the winter. Let's talk about something positive, let's be comfortable, let's be happy."
Robinson and Doby faced segregation.
"They say Mr. Robinson and you were picked because you could deal with the segregation. I had a situation growing up in a town where there were mixed neighborhoods. I know that on that side of the track, it was better than my side of the track to a certain degree, people say could I deal with it better or could Jackie? Of course we had both been to college and we were never separated from our teammates during the college time we played," Doby stated. "When you say that he could or I could handle it better than Satchel (Paige) or Josh (Gibson), I sometimes question that because I feel this way about that.
"If you have never been on the other side, you don't know what it is like. But once you have been on the other side and you see it is more comfortable over there than it is over here and all of a sudden you are going to transfer from that side other here while the guy who has never been over there and doesn't know what it is over there. So it was just as easy for him to deal with the situation as have as segregation is concerned."
Doby, a member of Baseball's Hall of Fame, passed away in 2003 six years after this interview. He said nothing changed in baseball during the 11 weeks between Jackie Robinson's April 15, 1947 debut and Doby's first game on July 5 and that in his opinion, there were still racial problems that existed 50 years after Robinson's debut.
Dr. Paul gave recent two interviews on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one in a Louisville newspaper and another on a cable TV news channel. The dialogue has opened up a new discussion on an old subject that was supposed to have been settled 46 years ago. The issue has not faded from the American conscience. In July 2009, the college sports' Atlantic Coast Conference pulled the 2011, 2012 and 2013 conference baseball championships from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina because the Confederate flag flies at a soldier's monuments near the state capital in Columbia.
The NCAA has had a moratorium on awarding predetermined championships to South Carolina since 2001, the year after the NAACP began a boycott of the state because of the Confederate flag flying issue. Both the Atlantic Coast Conference and the South East Conference have followed the NCAA's lead over the years. Sports and politics go hand in hand even if people view sports as the sandbox of society.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, lecturer on the "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( THURSDAY, 27 MAY 2010 07:22 )
WEDNESDAY, 26 MAY 2010 21:30
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/athletes-faced-a-very-different-america-before-civil-rights-act-of-1964
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Intentional or not, Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Dr. Rand Paul has opened the door to a new discussion over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This column is not about Dr. Paul, his candidacy and his beliefs. He will have a thorough chance between now and November's election to go over every issue. This though is about people who played sports before the legislation was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The names of two African-American basketball players, Lebron and Kobe, today rank right up there with the Babe as in Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees in the 1920s and 1930s. Lebron James is the focus of sports and business journalists everywhere as they try and figure out what National Basketball Association team is the perfect fit for him as he mulls what contract offers may come his way on July 1. Kobe Bryant and his Los Angeles Lakers teammates are trying to win another title. But back on the Fourth of July, 1947, when Larry Doby was heading up to the Major Leagues there was trepidation. Whether Doby liked it or not, he was going to be a civil rights trial blazer.
The then 23-year-old Doby from Paterson, New Jersey was about ready to join the Cleveland Indians and would break the color barrier in the American League just three months after Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Today, a 23-year-old African-American player joining a Major League Baseball team is not big news. It happens a lot but in 1947, Larry Doby made history.
Doby and a good many "Negro" or "black" or African-Americans who went through both the college and professional ranks have a lot of stories about their pre-Civil Rights Act of 1964 America and not being able to stay with their teammates in the same hotels or motels or eating in the same restaurants or even using the same water fountains. They may have been sports heroes but that didn't mean a thing off the field in some areas of the country, particularly the South. Major League Baseball though was not a "Southern" sport and a lot of the problems happened in the North as well. There was not much to distinguish between spring training in the South and playing in the North during the season.
Major League Baseball owners didn't want black players nor did the National Football League. Boston's George Preston Marshall entered the NFL in 1932 and moved the team to Washington five years later. Thirty-nine years later, 1961, Marshall still had not hired a black player.
Doby was "selected" by Indians owner Bill Veeck to join the Cleveland team because he was a good Negro League player and attended Brooklyn College. Veeck saw Doby as more than just a talented player and Veeck ended up having a lifelong baseball relationship with Doby as a player in Cleveland then in Chicago and eventually Doby coached and managed Veeck's White Sox in the 1970s.
Doby might have been a great baseball prospect when he was 18 in 1942 but both the American and National League and a predecessor called the American Association along with minor leagues like the International League had a color barrier between 1890 and 1946. There was never any formal decree banning African-Americans from "Organized Baseball" but African-Americans were clearly not wanted on the field or in the stands. African-Americans ended up in the Negro League or barnstorming or in Mexico or Cuba. Officially the American Association's Toledo Blue Stockings catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker was the last African-American to be in the "Major Leagues' in 1884. It was Toledo's only season in the American Association.
In 1945, the Brooklyn Dodgers' President and General Manager signed Jackie Robinson and assigned him to Montreal of the International League. In 1946, Robinson officially became the first African-American player in "Organized Baseball" since 1890 although there were whispers that some players were of "mixed" race. Baseball wasn't the only sport denying opportunities. The National Football League stopped hiring black players after the 1933 season. A new football league, the All-America Football Conference, signed black players in 1946, the same year as the NFL but the only reason black players were allowed in the NFL had nothing to do with the league.
When the Cleveland Rams moved to the Los Angeles Coliseum, the lease agreement between the team and the stadium required the Rams to hire Negro players. The new Los Angeles Rams signed Woody Strode and Kenny Washington. The AAFC's Cleveland Browns signed Marion Motley and Bill Ford because Coach Paul Brown wanted football players.
There was a professional basketball league in the Midwest, the National Basketball League, which employed African-Americans but the new Basketball Association of America that started in 1946 did not. The merged National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America became the National Basketball Association in 1949 and did not hire black players until 1950.
College football teams like Penn State and the University of San Francisco turned down games and bowl bids because they were asked to leave their black players home. Penn State did play SMU in the 1948 Cotton Bowl and brought with them two African-American players, Wally Triplett and Dennie Hoggard played in that game but the team stayed at a naval air base near Dallas because local hotels refused to accommodate the Penn State squad if Triplett and Hoggard were part of the team.
It was in this environment that Doby made his debut.
Doby was a Negro League player with the Newark Eagles. He hit .341 in 1946. Veeck bought his contract from Newark and he was the first player to go straight from the Negro League to Major League Baseball.
"Mr. Rickey, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Veeck gave me an opportunity to be in the American League," said Doby in an interview in March 1997. "So I have to say that Jackie had not made it, I probably would have not been given the opportunity. When you talk about what goes through your mind 50 years ago, you first have to think of Mr. Rickey, who had the courage to do it and you think about Mr. Robinson, who had the courage to do it, and you the think about Mr. Veeck, who had the courage to do it and me who had the opportunity to do it."
It seem rather strange that Doby used the word courage three times in describing his chance at playing in "Organized Baseball" yet from all accounts it seemed to take a lot of courage to play a simple game back in the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s.
"A lot of people ask me, Jack gets a lot of the headlines and you don't get too much headlines," said Doby in the 1997 interview on the pressures he had to succeed. Both Robinson and Doby were in the same boat. They both were verbally abused and had to live a separate life on the road from their teammates, almost always in the poorer side of town in certain cities.
"When the guy is first, he should get the headlines," he said. "I know myself, my friends, my friends know I was involved in the same type of thing he was involved in. I am not going to be going around asking for publicity, politicking for publicity but I know what I have done and I know I have helped some people to accomplish what they have done in terms of coming into the American League and it makes you feel good being a part of it, that is one thing nobody can take away from me.
"I think a lot of people think because I was 11 weeks behind Jackie, it made it easier for me and that is not true. We (Robinson and Doby) talked about it. I would not say we were close from a social standpoint but we barnstormed for about four years for 30 days, I would see him at certain functions but we stayed away from the negatives. The only thing we talked about there were certain guys who gave him a tough time and I had certain guys in the American League that gave me a tough time. You see the focus was trying to be the best ballplayer you can be and you had to be because when you are talking about eight teams (eight in the American League and eight in the National), you know, you get hurt and you might get back. You had to concentrate on playing the game as well as you can.
"And one of the other things and I think he felt the same way I felt. Why stir up things, it is tough enough going through the summer going through what you are going to go through you don't want to go through to talk about the same thing during the winter. Let's talk about something positive, let's be comfortable, let's be happy."
Robinson and Doby faced segregation.
"They say Mr. Robinson and you were picked because you could deal with the segregation. I had a situation growing up in a town where there were mixed neighborhoods. I know that on that side of the track, it was better than my side of the track to a certain degree, people say could I deal with it better or could Jackie? Of course we had both been to college and we were never separated from our teammates during the college time we played," Doby stated. "When you say that he could or I could handle it better than Satchel (Paige) or Josh (Gibson), I sometimes question that because I feel this way about that.
"If you have never been on the other side, you don't know what it is like. But once you have been on the other side and you see it is more comfortable over there than it is over here and all of a sudden you are going to transfer from that side other here while the guy who has never been over there and doesn't know what it is over there. So it was just as easy for him to deal with the situation as have as segregation is concerned."
Doby, a member of Baseball's Hall of Fame, passed away in 2003 six years after this interview. He said nothing changed in baseball during the 11 weeks between Jackie Robinson's April 15, 1947 debut and Doby's first game on July 5 and that in his opinion, there were still racial problems that existed 50 years after Robinson's debut.
Dr. Paul gave recent two interviews on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one in a Louisville newspaper and another on a cable TV news channel. The dialogue has opened up a new discussion on an old subject that was supposed to have been settled 46 years ago. The issue has not faded from the American conscience. In July 2009, the college sports' Atlantic Coast Conference pulled the 2011, 2012 and 2013 conference baseball championships from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina because the Confederate flag flies at a soldier's monuments near the state capital in Columbia.
The NCAA has had a moratorium on awarding predetermined championships to South Carolina since 2001, the year after the NAACP began a boycott of the state because of the Confederate flag flying issue. Both the Atlantic Coast Conference and the South East Conference have followed the NCAA's lead over the years. Sports and politics go hand in hand even if people view sports as the sandbox of society.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, lecturer on the "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( THURSDAY, 27 MAY 2010 07:22 )
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Meadowlands Super Bowl the worst-kept secret in sports
Meadowlands Super Bowl the worst-kept secret in sports
TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2010 21:16
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
If you understand how National Football League owners operate, then it is really no surprise that the 2014 Super Bowl will be played in the Meadowlands. The NFL has been targeting a New York/New Jersey Super Bowl for years, first as part of a Manhattan west side Olympics/football stadium and then after that project failed in 2005, East Rutherford, N.J., at the new football stadium that would eventually replace Giants Stadium.
The new place didn't have a roof, but that was no big deal, even though the NFL likes warm weather sites for the extravaganza. The NFL uses the Super Bowl for leverage in getting new facilities and rewarded Houston, Detroit and Glendale, Arizona for building new stadiums with the Super Bowl. Next February's Super Bowl is at Jerry Jones' new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. If there is a 2011 NFL season, the big game will be played in Indianapolis in 2012. Indianapolis, despite the dome on the stadium, has been given the game because locals built a new stadium.
New Orleans gets the 2013 game partly because of guilt over Hurricane Katrina and because Louisiana came up with money to redo the Superdome and worked out a new lease arrangement with Saints owner Tom Benson.
The awarding of Super Bowls to communities who have done "the right thing" by NFL owners should not go unnoticed in places like San Diego, Santa Clara, California, Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minnesota. The NFL ownership is telling you, do the right thing – provide public money, and tax breaks such as payments in lieu of taxes or tax increment financing – and you will get a Super Bowl complete with the economic impact of at least $300 million although that figure is open to conjecture particularly in places like Miami, Tampa and Glendale, AZ., where "snowbirds" are displaced in favor of people coming to the Super Bowl.
Local motels and hotels raise their rates for the game but if the hotel/motel is part of a chain, the extra money goes back to the home office instead of the community. Hotel/motel workers do not get paid more money just because it is Super Bowl week. The economic impact is less than estimated in places like Miami, Tampa and Glendale and is substantially higher in Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul where there are not a lot of tourists in February. New York has a lull during February and this will bring some people to the area.
The New York/New Jersey Super Bowl's first impact might be felt in Santa Clara, California a week from Tuesday when voters will be asked to provide funding for a new San Francisco 49ers stadium. There has been one Bay Area Super Bowl at Stanford Stadium. The Super Bowl and the "economic impact" is a carrot that will be dangled before voters. No one knows exactly how much the Santa Clara stadium will cost or if it will house one team, the 49ers, or two, the 49ers and Oakland Raiders, or even if 49ers owner John York has the money to actually fund this nearly billion dollar building but proponents should be pointing to the Meadowlands Stadium as proof in the "if they build it, they will come" mantra.
South Florida may be out of the Super Bowl running because the NFL just doesn't like the present set up of the stadium and wants major improvements at the Miami Dolphins home just a few years after a major renovation. New York/New Jersey's 2014 win might be just the jolt that is needed to get someone to pony up a quarter of a billion dollars to fix up the Dolphins home. The NFL doesn't need Miami now that the door has been opened to Super Bowls in the metropolitan area and also Washington, Foxboro, MA., Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver and other cold weather cities.
San Diego and Minnesota are out of the Super Bowl rotation. The NFL wants no part of the more than four-decades old San Diego stadium and the nearly three-decades old Metrodome in Minneapolis. The Minnesota legislature tried to put together a Vikings stadium package in the recently concluded session but the clock ran out. They will try again next year with the Vikings/Metrodome lease expiring at the end of 2011. There seems to be nothing going on in Los Angeles in terms of getting a new stadium built and the NFL's hopes of holding Super Bowl L (50 for those who don't like Roman numerals) in 2016 seem to be fading. The Los Angeles Coliseum will still be there but it is not an NFL-friendly stadium.
The NFL is a business and can do what it wants with Super Bowls. The Giants' and Jets' new building lacks a corporate naming rights partner. The two teams might pick one up with the Super Bowl coming as Joe Robbie/Dolphin and a-host-of-naming-rights-partners Stadium did prior to this year's Super Bowl in Broward County in South Florida. But Jones' Cowboys Stadium is still Cowboys Stadium and the Super Bowl is just nine months away.
The Super Bowl is a big-ticket item and is not designed for the average fan. The high rollers are around for just Super Bowl weekend and just to clear up one misconception that Jacksonville learned the hard way, the high rollers just want to be seen at the game and have no intentions of relocating their business or opening up a branch for their business just because they are in town for a game. Jacksonville thought that would happen in 2005.
It didn't.
People are having trouble understanding the rationale behind the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl. Woody Johnson and John Mara are in the club, the owners club, and they were taken care of by their brethren. Just wait until the NFL decides to hold a game in London – not Ontario, but England. The Super Bowl might be a TV ratings monster in the U.S. and grab some Canadian viewership along with Mexico but globally the NFL is a dud.
The NFL would kill for the eyeballs that India/Pakistan gets for cricket or table tennis watchers in China. New York/New Jersey just might be the launching pad in a whole new chapter for the Super Bowl with just one goal in mind. Get as much money as possible from the Super Bowl franchise no matter what the weather is.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, lecturer on the Business of Sports and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2010
TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2010 21:16
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
If you understand how National Football League owners operate, then it is really no surprise that the 2014 Super Bowl will be played in the Meadowlands. The NFL has been targeting a New York/New Jersey Super Bowl for years, first as part of a Manhattan west side Olympics/football stadium and then after that project failed in 2005, East Rutherford, N.J., at the new football stadium that would eventually replace Giants Stadium.
The new place didn't have a roof, but that was no big deal, even though the NFL likes warm weather sites for the extravaganza. The NFL uses the Super Bowl for leverage in getting new facilities and rewarded Houston, Detroit and Glendale, Arizona for building new stadiums with the Super Bowl. Next February's Super Bowl is at Jerry Jones' new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. If there is a 2011 NFL season, the big game will be played in Indianapolis in 2012. Indianapolis, despite the dome on the stadium, has been given the game because locals built a new stadium.
New Orleans gets the 2013 game partly because of guilt over Hurricane Katrina and because Louisiana came up with money to redo the Superdome and worked out a new lease arrangement with Saints owner Tom Benson.
The awarding of Super Bowls to communities who have done "the right thing" by NFL owners should not go unnoticed in places like San Diego, Santa Clara, California, Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minnesota. The NFL ownership is telling you, do the right thing – provide public money, and tax breaks such as payments in lieu of taxes or tax increment financing – and you will get a Super Bowl complete with the economic impact of at least $300 million although that figure is open to conjecture particularly in places like Miami, Tampa and Glendale, AZ., where "snowbirds" are displaced in favor of people coming to the Super Bowl.
Local motels and hotels raise their rates for the game but if the hotel/motel is part of a chain, the extra money goes back to the home office instead of the community. Hotel/motel workers do not get paid more money just because it is Super Bowl week. The economic impact is less than estimated in places like Miami, Tampa and Glendale and is substantially higher in Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul where there are not a lot of tourists in February. New York has a lull during February and this will bring some people to the area.
The New York/New Jersey Super Bowl's first impact might be felt in Santa Clara, California a week from Tuesday when voters will be asked to provide funding for a new San Francisco 49ers stadium. There has been one Bay Area Super Bowl at Stanford Stadium. The Super Bowl and the "economic impact" is a carrot that will be dangled before voters. No one knows exactly how much the Santa Clara stadium will cost or if it will house one team, the 49ers, or two, the 49ers and Oakland Raiders, or even if 49ers owner John York has the money to actually fund this nearly billion dollar building but proponents should be pointing to the Meadowlands Stadium as proof in the "if they build it, they will come" mantra.
South Florida may be out of the Super Bowl running because the NFL just doesn't like the present set up of the stadium and wants major improvements at the Miami Dolphins home just a few years after a major renovation. New York/New Jersey's 2014 win might be just the jolt that is needed to get someone to pony up a quarter of a billion dollars to fix up the Dolphins home. The NFL doesn't need Miami now that the door has been opened to Super Bowls in the metropolitan area and also Washington, Foxboro, MA., Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver and other cold weather cities.
San Diego and Minnesota are out of the Super Bowl rotation. The NFL wants no part of the more than four-decades old San Diego stadium and the nearly three-decades old Metrodome in Minneapolis. The Minnesota legislature tried to put together a Vikings stadium package in the recently concluded session but the clock ran out. They will try again next year with the Vikings/Metrodome lease expiring at the end of 2011. There seems to be nothing going on in Los Angeles in terms of getting a new stadium built and the NFL's hopes of holding Super Bowl L (50 for those who don't like Roman numerals) in 2016 seem to be fading. The Los Angeles Coliseum will still be there but it is not an NFL-friendly stadium.
The NFL is a business and can do what it wants with Super Bowls. The Giants' and Jets' new building lacks a corporate naming rights partner. The two teams might pick one up with the Super Bowl coming as Joe Robbie/Dolphin and a-host-of-naming-rights-partners Stadium did prior to this year's Super Bowl in Broward County in South Florida. But Jones' Cowboys Stadium is still Cowboys Stadium and the Super Bowl is just nine months away.
The Super Bowl is a big-ticket item and is not designed for the average fan. The high rollers are around for just Super Bowl weekend and just to clear up one misconception that Jacksonville learned the hard way, the high rollers just want to be seen at the game and have no intentions of relocating their business or opening up a branch for their business just because they are in town for a game. Jacksonville thought that would happen in 2005.
It didn't.
People are having trouble understanding the rationale behind the New York/New Jersey Super Bowl. Woody Johnson and John Mara are in the club, the owners club, and they were taken care of by their brethren. Just wait until the NFL decides to hold a game in London – not Ontario, but England. The Super Bowl might be a TV ratings monster in the U.S. and grab some Canadian viewership along with Mexico but globally the NFL is a dud.
The NFL would kill for the eyeballs that India/Pakistan gets for cricket or table tennis watchers in China. New York/New Jersey just might be the launching pad in a whole new chapter for the Super Bowl with just one goal in mind. Get as much money as possible from the Super Bowl franchise no matter what the weather is.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, lecturer on the Business of Sports and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( TUESDAY, 25 MAY 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Cycling’s Dirty Tricks: The Latest Chapter
Cycling’s Dirty Tricks: The Latest Chapter
By Evan Weiner
May 23, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- When it comes to dirty tricks, cyclist Floyd Landis apparently can teach the masters a few lessons if the whispers coming out of Los Angeles are true. Allegedly Landis told the Anchutz Entertainment Group (AEG) that if he was not invited to this year's Tour of California bike race, somewhere around day three or four, he would start naming names and tell the world who was doping.
AEG didn't take kindly to Landis' threat and told the cyclist hit the road.
Landis apparently kept his word after AEG did not invite him to race this year and a few days into the race he accused fellow cyclist Lance Armstrong
of not only joining Landis in using performance enhancing drugs but added that Armstrong showed other cyclists how to beat the system (drug testing) and allegedly Armstrong paid the former president of the International Cycling Union to keep a failed test quiet.
Armstrong has denied all of the accusations.
AEG knew Landis was going to go public and decided to roll the dice to see if he would actually go ahead with his threat.
He did.
In a sense Landis, because he was not invited by AEG to this year's event, has become the Jose Canseco of cycling. The former Major League Baseball player Canseco went public and named names and more often than not, Canseco was right. Landis doesn't have a book to sell at the moment but seems to be singing to anyone who is listening. Landis has not just set his sights on Armstrong. There is a list of people he is accusing of doping.
Some have already come out against Landis’ charge.
Landis has admitted that he was blood doping years before he won the 2006 Tour de France. He was stripped of his title after the results of a test showed that he had used synthetic testosterone.
Landis was banned from cycling for two years between January 30, 2007 and January 30, 2009 because he was a cheater. He has served his time and wants back in.
There is a difference between being a cheater and being user of an illegal substance. Illegal substances can put you in prison for a while. The sports industry has not as of yet acknowledged the difference. Just ask International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge about what he thinks of athletes using banned substances. Rogge tried to explain to Italian authorities before the 2006 Turin Winter Games that the IOC should police the Olympic Village not Italian authorities for illegal substances such as performance enhancing drugs because using the drugs was cheating not illegal.
An Olympian, track and field gold medal winner Marion Jones, was sentenced to six months in prison in January 2008 for lying to federal investigators about the BALCO steroid ring and for lying about a check-fraud scheme involving her ex-boyfriend, the Olympic sprinter Tim Montgomery.
Jones did not go to jail for using steroids. It seems athletes have Teflon when it comes to breaking the law using drugs.
Maybe it is because the world puts athletes on a podium and there is more shame in cheating than breaking the law.
In the BALCO case, Victor Conte, Greg Anderson (Barry Bonds trainer) and Patrick Arnold were sent to prison. The athletes who testified in the case with the exception of two athletes who went to jail Jones, Tim Montgomery and one coach Steven Riddick (all on non-drug, money laundering charges even though Jones, Montgomery and Thomas all admitted to using PEDs) were given a scarlet letter and received scorn from baseball writers and some fans but pretty much went unscathed. That list included Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire among others. A track and field coach, Trevor Graham, was barred for life from participating in training US Olympians because of the number of athletes who received PEDs from him including Marion Jones. He faced criminal charges for lying to criminal investigators and received house arrest.
It seems not too many people in the sports industry or even government agencies are too concerned about the illegality issue. Instead there is a tendency to give out 50 day suspensions in Major League and Minor League Baseball, a four week ban in the NFL, and Olympic suspensions ranging from two to four to eight years for athletes who are caught using PEDs.
Landis got a two-year suspension.
On April 5, 2008 Olympics cyclist Tammy Thomas was found guilty by a jury on three perjury counts and one count of obstruction of justice as a byproduct of the BALCO investigation. Thomas had been banned from cycling but interestingly enough none of the charges against her including using banned substances.
Landis used PEDs and was convicted of cheating. Landis and other athletes pay a price in shame and humiliation and apparently have no problems outing others out. The list includes baseball's Rafael Palmiero who blamed his Baltimore Orioles teammate Miguel Tejada for failing a drug test. Palmiero contended that Tejada gave him what he thought was a B-12 shot.
Tejada is an interesting study as well.
He was charged by Congress for lying to that august group about the usage of PEDs in Major League Baseball. But the Congressional investigators were not interested in whether Tejada used banned substances. Instead, the Washington lawmakers thought Tejada lied about talking to a teammate about steroids and human growth hormones. On February 11, 2009, Tejada pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and received one year probation. A Dominican Republic national, Tejada, was also allowed to continue his baseball career and was given a visa to work in the United States. Tejada could have been deported from the United States.
Landis may have found out something that sports insiders have known for years. Corporations are not going to stop buying tickets for sports events in the United States because of doping allegations or end their marketing partnerships, TV networks (and their Internet arms) are not going to stop showing sports events, the US government is not lifting Baseball's Antitrust exemption or revoking the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act or undoing the 1966 American Football League-National Football League merger nor undoing the major loophole in the 1986 Tax Act which spurred stadium and arena construction nationally and local governments are not stopping the funding for stadiums and arenas for teams.
Just a few people care, some sportswriters, politicians who talk a good game about drugs and the impact on kids who follow sports and glom onto athletes as heroes and some sports talk radio callers and hosts. The Tour of California is going on without Landis even with the knowledge that Landis planned to use the race as his platform to out people who he contended were doping.
Sports is a lot like the Whac-A-Mole game, hit one mole and five more come up. The next one is already on the lathe, Dr. Anthony Galea, the former team doctor of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts who had an elixir for treating injured athletes. Dr. Galea’s clients included Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Jose Reyes, the Olympic swimmer Dana Torres and others. Landis will be forgotten soon enough and replaced by Dr. Galea as the next act opens.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
May 23, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- When it comes to dirty tricks, cyclist Floyd Landis apparently can teach the masters a few lessons if the whispers coming out of Los Angeles are true. Allegedly Landis told the Anchutz Entertainment Group (AEG) that if he was not invited to this year's Tour of California bike race, somewhere around day three or four, he would start naming names and tell the world who was doping.
AEG didn't take kindly to Landis' threat and told the cyclist hit the road.
Landis apparently kept his word after AEG did not invite him to race this year and a few days into the race he accused fellow cyclist Lance Armstrong
of not only joining Landis in using performance enhancing drugs but added that Armstrong showed other cyclists how to beat the system (drug testing) and allegedly Armstrong paid the former president of the International Cycling Union to keep a failed test quiet.
Armstrong has denied all of the accusations.
AEG knew Landis was going to go public and decided to roll the dice to see if he would actually go ahead with his threat.
He did.
In a sense Landis, because he was not invited by AEG to this year's event, has become the Jose Canseco of cycling. The former Major League Baseball player Canseco went public and named names and more often than not, Canseco was right. Landis doesn't have a book to sell at the moment but seems to be singing to anyone who is listening. Landis has not just set his sights on Armstrong. There is a list of people he is accusing of doping.
Some have already come out against Landis’ charge.
Landis has admitted that he was blood doping years before he won the 2006 Tour de France. He was stripped of his title after the results of a test showed that he had used synthetic testosterone.
Landis was banned from cycling for two years between January 30, 2007 and January 30, 2009 because he was a cheater. He has served his time and wants back in.
There is a difference between being a cheater and being user of an illegal substance. Illegal substances can put you in prison for a while. The sports industry has not as of yet acknowledged the difference. Just ask International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge about what he thinks of athletes using banned substances. Rogge tried to explain to Italian authorities before the 2006 Turin Winter Games that the IOC should police the Olympic Village not Italian authorities for illegal substances such as performance enhancing drugs because using the drugs was cheating not illegal.
An Olympian, track and field gold medal winner Marion Jones, was sentenced to six months in prison in January 2008 for lying to federal investigators about the BALCO steroid ring and for lying about a check-fraud scheme involving her ex-boyfriend, the Olympic sprinter Tim Montgomery.
Jones did not go to jail for using steroids. It seems athletes have Teflon when it comes to breaking the law using drugs.
Maybe it is because the world puts athletes on a podium and there is more shame in cheating than breaking the law.
In the BALCO case, Victor Conte, Greg Anderson (Barry Bonds trainer) and Patrick Arnold were sent to prison. The athletes who testified in the case with the exception of two athletes who went to jail Jones, Tim Montgomery and one coach Steven Riddick (all on non-drug, money laundering charges even though Jones, Montgomery and Thomas all admitted to using PEDs) were given a scarlet letter and received scorn from baseball writers and some fans but pretty much went unscathed. That list included Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire among others. A track and field coach, Trevor Graham, was barred for life from participating in training US Olympians because of the number of athletes who received PEDs from him including Marion Jones. He faced criminal charges for lying to criminal investigators and received house arrest.
It seems not too many people in the sports industry or even government agencies are too concerned about the illegality issue. Instead there is a tendency to give out 50 day suspensions in Major League and Minor League Baseball, a four week ban in the NFL, and Olympic suspensions ranging from two to four to eight years for athletes who are caught using PEDs.
Landis got a two-year suspension.
On April 5, 2008 Olympics cyclist Tammy Thomas was found guilty by a jury on three perjury counts and one count of obstruction of justice as a byproduct of the BALCO investigation. Thomas had been banned from cycling but interestingly enough none of the charges against her including using banned substances.
Landis used PEDs and was convicted of cheating. Landis and other athletes pay a price in shame and humiliation and apparently have no problems outing others out. The list includes baseball's Rafael Palmiero who blamed his Baltimore Orioles teammate Miguel Tejada for failing a drug test. Palmiero contended that Tejada gave him what he thought was a B-12 shot.
Tejada is an interesting study as well.
He was charged by Congress for lying to that august group about the usage of PEDs in Major League Baseball. But the Congressional investigators were not interested in whether Tejada used banned substances. Instead, the Washington lawmakers thought Tejada lied about talking to a teammate about steroids and human growth hormones. On February 11, 2009, Tejada pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and received one year probation. A Dominican Republic national, Tejada, was also allowed to continue his baseball career and was given a visa to work in the United States. Tejada could have been deported from the United States.
Landis may have found out something that sports insiders have known for years. Corporations are not going to stop buying tickets for sports events in the United States because of doping allegations or end their marketing partnerships, TV networks (and their Internet arms) are not going to stop showing sports events, the US government is not lifting Baseball's Antitrust exemption or revoking the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act or undoing the 1966 American Football League-National Football League merger nor undoing the major loophole in the 1986 Tax Act which spurred stadium and arena construction nationally and local governments are not stopping the funding for stadiums and arenas for teams.
Just a few people care, some sportswriters, politicians who talk a good game about drugs and the impact on kids who follow sports and glom onto athletes as heroes and some sports talk radio callers and hosts. The Tour of California is going on without Landis even with the knowledge that Landis planned to use the race as his platform to out people who he contended were doping.
Sports is a lot like the Whac-A-Mole game, hit one mole and five more come up. The next one is already on the lathe, Dr. Anthony Galea, the former team doctor of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts who had an elixir for treating injured athletes. Dr. Galea’s clients included Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, Jose Reyes, the Olympic swimmer Dana Torres and others. Landis will be forgotten soon enough and replaced by Dr. Galea as the next act opens.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Opinion: Arizona sucks
Opinion: Arizona sucks
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 05/19/10 at 3:46 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/19/opinion-arizona-sucks/2/
In America, there’s supposed to be a stark separation between sports and real life. Sporting events are designed to be forms of escapist entertainment, much-needed opportunities for Americans to forget about things like budget deficits and political candidates and focus instead on their hometown team.
On Facebook, you can find a popular group entitled “Keep Your Politics Out Of My Arizona Sports” that tries to preserve this escapist element of sports. The stated reason for the group’s existence is simple: It’s for “Democrats and Republicans alike who don’t want to see their hometown teams get caught up in political issues.”
Though Los Angeles Lakers Coach Phil Jackson once entertained the idea of serving as former teammate Bill Bradley’s campaign manager for his ill-fated 2000 presidential run, he could easily be a member of the group, as well.
“I have respect for those who oppose the new Arizona immigration law, but I am wary of putting entire sports organizations in the middle of political controversies,” said Jackson.
Jackson and the Facebook group were referring to the recently passed Arizona law that aims to crack down on what some see as the growing threat posed to the state by illegal immigration. The ownership of the Phoenix Suns, they argue, made an unwise statement by permitting the team to wear ‘Los Suns’ jerseys to protest the Arizona law.
Still, there are calls by everyone from Chicago White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen — whose team trains in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale — to San Diego’s Adrian Gonzalez urging Major League Baseball to move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix. One soccer match on July 7 featuring two teams from Mexico at a Glendale, Arizona stadium was canceled. And the World Boxing Council will not schedule Mexican fighters in boxing matches in Arizona.
For the 125 members of the Keep Your Politics Out Of My Arizona Sports group – and for Jackson – here’s a sobering reality check: Politics and government in the United States and around the world drive sports, and they always will.
Take a look at Afghanistan: It was the Soviet invasion of the country that was the basis of President Jimmy Carter’s decision to stop Americans from competing in the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. The Soviets returned the favor in 1984, when Eastern European countries under Soviet influence and the USSR boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Games in 1984.
Before that, twenty-five African countries used the Olympics as a forum for protest by boycotting the 1976 Montreal Summer Games because New Zealand’s rugby team had played a match in the apartheid state of South Africa. Arizona lost one Super Bowl — the January 31, 1993 contest — because NFL owners, with a heavy push from the NFL Players Association, did not like the fact that the state chose not to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.
If Major League Baseball did move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix, it would not be precedent-setting, though it would be somewhat startling in that many athletes today are instructed to ignore the political climate. It’s not generally considered good for business for teams to discuss the issues of the day.
**
In January of 1965, a group of American Football League players took a political stand that has mostly been forgotten. Following the 1964 American Football League season, the league scheduled the fourth-annual AFL All-Star Game in New Orleans. The January 16, 1965 contest would have been the prelude to the city getting an American Football League team.
New Orleans was a football hotbed, and both the American Football League and National Football League were taking a close look at the city as a potential expansion site. The AFL apparently won the race to New Orleans, and a game was scheduled at Tulane Stadium. Dave Dixon headed the promotion and persuaded American Football League owners and players that it would be a good city for the match.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was now the law of the land, and New Orleans was going to welcome the AFL All-Stars — which included twenty-two African-American players — with open arms. Segregation and Jim Crow were part of the history books, and the city desperately wanted a professional team. After all, Syracuse had just played in the Sugar Bowl against LSU and had eight African-American players on the team without incident. New Orleans seemed the perfect spot to host both the All-Star Game and a professional football team.
It didn’t turn out that way, according to Abner Haynes, a former Kansas City Chiefs running back. Haynes had been a civil rights pioneer as one of the first two African-Americans to play college football in Texas.
“Clem and I decided to fly out to the game,” Haynes said. “I didn’t know what to expect; Mr. [Lamar] Hunt [the Kansas City Chiefs owner and American Football League founder] said there would be no problems.”
The American Football League was really an experiment in the sports world. It was the only league at the time to truly embrace the African-American athlete as an equal on the field with white players. Major League Baseball struggled with integration, even through the 1950s. And the NFL’s Washington Redskins did not employ a black player until 1962.
“One of the things we [the AFL] needed was the unity of the white and black players for our new league,” said Haynes. “When the white players, Jack Kemp, Jerry Mays who was our [Kansas City] defensive leader and four or five other guys heard about what was happening, their character showed and my teammates were looking after me.”
The idea of a boycott of New Orleans didn’t take shape until the players met at the Roosevelt Hotel and started sharing stories. It’s worth noting that neither Haynes nor Daniels was able to hail a cab at the airport to take them down to the city. They waited for about two hours before someone finally picked them up and took them to the hotel. Once they got there, things didn’t get much better.
“They had a woman operating the elevator and she said, ‘you monkeys come on in and get to the back.’ […] Finally we had about 10 or 12 guys in my room, we were talking sensibly. We were going to stay together. This was just another test,” he said.
The thought of a boycott of the game came up, and the discussion quickly grew serious, with Buffalo’s Cookie Gilchrest being one of the most vocal leaders.
“We were disrespected as men,” Haynes remembered. “We were not here because of color; we were here because of talent. Why should we go out there and put our lives on the line for people who don’t appreciate us? We were not appreciated here. Everyone agreed, you should not put your life on the line in that type of situation.”
Pro football in 1965 does not in any way resemble pro football in 2010. The players acted alone and took a stand. There were no agents warning the players of possible and probable repercussions if there was a boycott of the game. There were not any worries about losing endorsements because the players had no endorsements at the time. They players took the action because they felt it was a correct and principled fight. They got support from their white teammates, including Jack Kemp, the Buffalo quarterback who headed the American Football league Players Association. Kemp, Ron Mix, Jim Tyrer, Freddie Arbanas and the other white players put their careers on the line, as did the African-American players. There was no safety net for any of them, and they could have all been fired for their actions.
“They were first good men,” said Haynes of everyone involved with the boycott. “They gave a damn, they stood up, people I am extremely proud of.”
The boycott was not about sports. It was about society and conditions in New Orleans for nearly two-dozen African-American players. The New Orleans boycott came after Civil Rights actions throughout the South and after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights legislation. But, oddly enough, civil rights leaders never contacted Haynes or his teammates, as far as he could tell.
“We had no leverage,” Haynes said. “We weren’t playing for money, but we were playing for progress. Football players took the lead. Places like Atlanta, New Orleans, [and] Miami were death holes. Grayson couldn’t get a drink at the bar. Our white teammates [in New Orleans] were there for us.”
Haynes did not know at the time that Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams was in contact with some of the players and offered an alternative site for the game: Houston.
On January 11, 1965, the league moved the game.
The AFL players stood up and staged the first sports boycott of a city, New Orleans. The players received tacit support from Hunt, Adams and the rest of the American Football League owners. There seemed to be no retribution for ruining the New Orleans game and the possible expansion fee revenues that would have been split up by the eight owners, which might have come out to somewhere between $500,000 and a million dollars for each owner. That was big money in 1965.
“That was the toughest thing that happened to me,” said Haynes. “We stood up; we shocked the nation. Our white teammates stood up. It was amazing the league moved the game. Stuff like that didn’t happen. Hunt took us to dinner, Stram, the Chiefs All-Stars, but never addressed the issue.”
Haynes did say he thought all the players were “kind of marked,” but none of the players was blackballed.
New Orleans eventually did get a football team in 1966, though only after some political intervention. The two leagues, the AFL and NFL, decided that they could no longer financially compete for players and worked out a merger. The marriage needed congressional blessing, and there were two prominent members of Congress — Louisiana Senator Russell Long and Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs — who didn’t think the merger served the best interests of Louisiana because New Orleans had no team. Both Long and Boggs eventually voted ‘yes’ after NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle promised them New Orleans would eventually get a team.
To those on Facebook and to Phil Jackson, there is a lesson to be learned here: You cannot keep politics out of sports.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and a lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/19/opinion-arizona-sucks/print/#ixzz0oQyvc4Ug
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 05/19/10 at 3:46 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/19/opinion-arizona-sucks/2/
In America, there’s supposed to be a stark separation between sports and real life. Sporting events are designed to be forms of escapist entertainment, much-needed opportunities for Americans to forget about things like budget deficits and political candidates and focus instead on their hometown team.
On Facebook, you can find a popular group entitled “Keep Your Politics Out Of My Arizona Sports” that tries to preserve this escapist element of sports. The stated reason for the group’s existence is simple: It’s for “Democrats and Republicans alike who don’t want to see their hometown teams get caught up in political issues.”
Though Los Angeles Lakers Coach Phil Jackson once entertained the idea of serving as former teammate Bill Bradley’s campaign manager for his ill-fated 2000 presidential run, he could easily be a member of the group, as well.
“I have respect for those who oppose the new Arizona immigration law, but I am wary of putting entire sports organizations in the middle of political controversies,” said Jackson.
Jackson and the Facebook group were referring to the recently passed Arizona law that aims to crack down on what some see as the growing threat posed to the state by illegal immigration. The ownership of the Phoenix Suns, they argue, made an unwise statement by permitting the team to wear ‘Los Suns’ jerseys to protest the Arizona law.
Still, there are calls by everyone from Chicago White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen — whose team trains in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale — to San Diego’s Adrian Gonzalez urging Major League Baseball to move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix. One soccer match on July 7 featuring two teams from Mexico at a Glendale, Arizona stadium was canceled. And the World Boxing Council will not schedule Mexican fighters in boxing matches in Arizona.
For the 125 members of the Keep Your Politics Out Of My Arizona Sports group – and for Jackson – here’s a sobering reality check: Politics and government in the United States and around the world drive sports, and they always will.
Take a look at Afghanistan: It was the Soviet invasion of the country that was the basis of President Jimmy Carter’s decision to stop Americans from competing in the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. The Soviets returned the favor in 1984, when Eastern European countries under Soviet influence and the USSR boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Games in 1984.
Before that, twenty-five African countries used the Olympics as a forum for protest by boycotting the 1976 Montreal Summer Games because New Zealand’s rugby team had played a match in the apartheid state of South Africa. Arizona lost one Super Bowl — the January 31, 1993 contest — because NFL owners, with a heavy push from the NFL Players Association, did not like the fact that the state chose not to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.
If Major League Baseball did move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix, it would not be precedent-setting, though it would be somewhat startling in that many athletes today are instructed to ignore the political climate. It’s not generally considered good for business for teams to discuss the issues of the day.
**
In January of 1965, a group of American Football League players took a political stand that has mostly been forgotten. Following the 1964 American Football League season, the league scheduled the fourth-annual AFL All-Star Game in New Orleans. The January 16, 1965 contest would have been the prelude to the city getting an American Football League team.
New Orleans was a football hotbed, and both the American Football League and National Football League were taking a close look at the city as a potential expansion site. The AFL apparently won the race to New Orleans, and a game was scheduled at Tulane Stadium. Dave Dixon headed the promotion and persuaded American Football League owners and players that it would be a good city for the match.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was now the law of the land, and New Orleans was going to welcome the AFL All-Stars — which included twenty-two African-American players — with open arms. Segregation and Jim Crow were part of the history books, and the city desperately wanted a professional team. After all, Syracuse had just played in the Sugar Bowl against LSU and had eight African-American players on the team without incident. New Orleans seemed the perfect spot to host both the All-Star Game and a professional football team.
It didn’t turn out that way, according to Abner Haynes, a former Kansas City Chiefs running back. Haynes had been a civil rights pioneer as one of the first two African-Americans to play college football in Texas.
“Clem and I decided to fly out to the game,” Haynes said. “I didn’t know what to expect; Mr. [Lamar] Hunt [the Kansas City Chiefs owner and American Football League founder] said there would be no problems.”
The American Football League was really an experiment in the sports world. It was the only league at the time to truly embrace the African-American athlete as an equal on the field with white players. Major League Baseball struggled with integration, even through the 1950s. And the NFL’s Washington Redskins did not employ a black player until 1962.
“One of the things we [the AFL] needed was the unity of the white and black players for our new league,” said Haynes. “When the white players, Jack Kemp, Jerry Mays who was our [Kansas City] defensive leader and four or five other guys heard about what was happening, their character showed and my teammates were looking after me.”
The idea of a boycott of New Orleans didn’t take shape until the players met at the Roosevelt Hotel and started sharing stories. It’s worth noting that neither Haynes nor Daniels was able to hail a cab at the airport to take them down to the city. They waited for about two hours before someone finally picked them up and took them to the hotel. Once they got there, things didn’t get much better.
“They had a woman operating the elevator and she said, ‘you monkeys come on in and get to the back.’ […] Finally we had about 10 or 12 guys in my room, we were talking sensibly. We were going to stay together. This was just another test,” he said.
The thought of a boycott of the game came up, and the discussion quickly grew serious, with Buffalo’s Cookie Gilchrest being one of the most vocal leaders.
“We were disrespected as men,” Haynes remembered. “We were not here because of color; we were here because of talent. Why should we go out there and put our lives on the line for people who don’t appreciate us? We were not appreciated here. Everyone agreed, you should not put your life on the line in that type of situation.”
Pro football in 1965 does not in any way resemble pro football in 2010. The players acted alone and took a stand. There were no agents warning the players of possible and probable repercussions if there was a boycott of the game. There were not any worries about losing endorsements because the players had no endorsements at the time. They players took the action because they felt it was a correct and principled fight. They got support from their white teammates, including Jack Kemp, the Buffalo quarterback who headed the American Football league Players Association. Kemp, Ron Mix, Jim Tyrer, Freddie Arbanas and the other white players put their careers on the line, as did the African-American players. There was no safety net for any of them, and they could have all been fired for their actions.
“They were first good men,” said Haynes of everyone involved with the boycott. “They gave a damn, they stood up, people I am extremely proud of.”
The boycott was not about sports. It was about society and conditions in New Orleans for nearly two-dozen African-American players. The New Orleans boycott came after Civil Rights actions throughout the South and after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights legislation. But, oddly enough, civil rights leaders never contacted Haynes or his teammates, as far as he could tell.
“We had no leverage,” Haynes said. “We weren’t playing for money, but we were playing for progress. Football players took the lead. Places like Atlanta, New Orleans, [and] Miami were death holes. Grayson couldn’t get a drink at the bar. Our white teammates [in New Orleans] were there for us.”
Haynes did not know at the time that Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams was in contact with some of the players and offered an alternative site for the game: Houston.
On January 11, 1965, the league moved the game.
The AFL players stood up and staged the first sports boycott of a city, New Orleans. The players received tacit support from Hunt, Adams and the rest of the American Football League owners. There seemed to be no retribution for ruining the New Orleans game and the possible expansion fee revenues that would have been split up by the eight owners, which might have come out to somewhere between $500,000 and a million dollars for each owner. That was big money in 1965.
“That was the toughest thing that happened to me,” said Haynes. “We stood up; we shocked the nation. Our white teammates stood up. It was amazing the league moved the game. Stuff like that didn’t happen. Hunt took us to dinner, Stram, the Chiefs All-Stars, but never addressed the issue.”
Haynes did say he thought all the players were “kind of marked,” but none of the players was blackballed.
New Orleans eventually did get a football team in 1966, though only after some political intervention. The two leagues, the AFL and NFL, decided that they could no longer financially compete for players and worked out a merger. The marriage needed congressional blessing, and there were two prominent members of Congress — Louisiana Senator Russell Long and Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs — who didn’t think the merger served the best interests of Louisiana because New Orleans had no team. Both Long and Boggs eventually voted ‘yes’ after NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle promised them New Orleans would eventually get a team.
To those on Facebook and to Phil Jackson, there is a lesson to be learned here: You cannot keep politics out of sports.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and a lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/19/opinion-arizona-sucks/print/#ixzz0oQyvc4Ug
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski challenges NCAA to do something for 'student-athletes'
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski challenges NCAA to do something for 'student-athletes'
Monday, 17 May 2010 21:52
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
After a Philadelphia policeman tasered a teenager running around the outfield during a Phillies home game on May 2, there was a suggestion that perhaps the Phillies and the other 29 Major League Baseball franchises should just go out and hire college football players and have them near the field in the event someone decides to trespass during a baseball game and that a beefy college football player would know what to do with an interloper and would deliver the same sort of punishment to the person as a running back looking to pick up a few yards.
It was a better alternative than tasering a teenager looking for a moment of fame.
But there is a major problem with the hiring any athlete from a big NCAA sports playing school for an 81 game baseball season even at minimum wage. You can only pay that athlete up to $2,000 a year, anything more and that athlete risks losing his or her scholarship. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, an organization that runs commercials talking about how much they care about "student-athletes" and education, is so concerned about the welfare of athletes that they impose a limit on an athlete's wages during the calendar, not the school year from any line of employment.
The term "student-athlete" was invented by the NCAA after the University of Denver lost a workman's compensation case in 1953 in the University of Colorado v. Nemeth. A Colorado Supreme Court determined that a full-time enrolled student and football player was an employee injured in the course of his employment and was therefore entitled to workers' compensation benefits. The NCAA thought a subtle change in nomenclature to "student-athlete" would shield schools from claims by injured students who were hurt while playing sports.
There are major differences between athletes on scholarships playing sports at big time schools and the rest of the student body, even those on other types of scholarships.
If someone in the school band, who is attending a college on a band scholarship, wanted to work during the school year and was able to pick up paying gigs or got a job giving music lessons there would be no cap on earned income.
The stars of the sports shows, the athletes — who play the games and get a scholarship which pays for school, room and board and incidentals like books — cannot even get a part time job that pays more than an average of $40 a week during their years of sports eligibility. On the other hand, big time college sports programs have invested huge sums of money for tutors and academic advisors to keep the students eligible with a minimum of a 2.0 GPA.
Those are the rules and Duke University's Men's Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski cannot even let his players coach and speak at his basketball camp unless they make under $2,000 in salary for the year.
Everyone gets a shot at big money at big time college sports schools except the athletes.
Sumner Redstone's CBS television network, the Disney Company (the ones that make family friendly programming for TV and the movies) and the Disney operated ESPN and ABC television networks, General Electric's NBC TV, Rupert Murdoch's FOX over-the-air and regional cable TV networks and Time Warner's Turner Sports are forking over billions of dollars for rights fees, marketing partners are handing colleges who engage in big time sports hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorships, sneaker companies are buying off schools with multimillion dollar contracts which outfit the coaches and the school teams in that label's products and boosters are flooding the market with dollars. The players are glorified in video games, although not named, with their images complete with their number of their nuances. The players get no compensation in return (there are two lawsuits dealing with college players, their images and who controls a players likeness before the courts now).
The NCAA allows the schools to literally sell the shirts off the backs of the superstars in football and basketball and the superstar does not see one cent of the revenue derived off of his talent.
The real stars of the show — the athletes — play under a salary cap in their off time.
"There are still are (restrictions)," said Krzyzewski picking up on a conversation that started about a decade ago when he complained that he could no longer hire Duke Blue Devils basketball players at his camp. "I don't think the NCAA has kept up to date with what we do for the student athletes. I think we should do more for the student athlete, especially the student-athlete in revenue sports.
"They have more asked of them. They have more commitments made for them. But that could be done in certain allowances without actually paying a student athlete like just giving them money. There is a thing called the scholarship-umbrella where you have benefits whether it be books, board, tuition or whatever.
"We have to look at that and see how we are able to help them and to unveil some summer opportunities. For the last 15 years or more, our kids can't go and speak in camps. I think it is a bad thing."
The NCAA is raking in billions to run programs and there is no thought of paying "student-athletes" for their time for practice, sports classroom study and games not to mention the "involuntary" voluntary practices in the off-season. But the NCAA doesn't even want "student-athletes" to get a job and earn money because the august body that supervises the college sports industry is afraid that some appreciative booster will take care of a player with a cushiony no-show job with a satchel filled with cash that no one knows about except the booster and player.
Krzyzewski is of the opinion that paying players at his (and others) camps would accomplish two things.
"That is a way they can be missionaries and ambassadors for our sport while actually earning money and being able to speak publicly. But because there was one abuse or two abuses then all of a sudden, it was just taken away," the coach explained. "To keep looking for ways to help the student-athletes, I am in favor of it.
"A kid cannot actually work during the school year. We should not have it where kids try to make money during the school year because going to school and doing your sport is work enough. But during the summer months and sometimes you have as many as four months, you can make some money and get good experiences."
Krzyzewski can get his players at his camp but he isn't paying them enough money so they can do things paying for a date. Krzyzewski is not the only big-name coach who has even voiced an opinion that the NCAA has to back off the salary cap. Penn State football coach Joe Paterno and long time college basketball coach Rick Majerus have been openly vocal about the NCAA's draconian rule.
"We can hire our players to work our camp if they are paid at the same amount as another high school coach but you don't make much money doing that and it is tough to do that while they are in summer school but speaking at camps would be a better way of doing it."
The NCAA is the overseeing body on all that encompasses college sports. But there are so many fiefdoms within the college sports structure that the NCAA President does not have the final say in what is a de facto salary cap. Do coaches lobby the NCAA President or do they lobby college presidents and chancellors or do they go to the conferences. When it comes to making TV deals, there is the NCAA and then the conferences. There are a lot of turfs that are being defended within college sports.
"Who do you go to?" said Krzyzewski. "There is a maze of how to get things changed in the NCAA and a coach does not have a vote and most of the time doesn't have any voice. So somebody has to take that who is at an administrative level, whether it be a conference, a conference commissioner and stuff like that to be an advocate. For coaches to change things, it would be impossible."
College sports is constantly under the scrutiny of either the House of Representatives or the Senate. Most of the recent Congressional hearings dealing with sports have centered around how the Bowl Championship Series is executed and how BCS teams get big dollars for being within that exclusive group and that the rest of the college football playing schools are on the outside looking in when it comes to generating the same revenues as BCS schools and playing for a national championship.
Congress will probably also bring up the topic of why there is not a college football championship again while deftly forgetting a number of topics that relate to the "student-athlete" including the salary cap for outside work.
Congress has held periodic college sports hearings even though the United States is fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the unemployment rate is high, the economy nearly melted down in September 2008 and immigration was left on the table during the Bush Presidency.
"I wish, Congress should be running our country and we should do a better job of running college basketball. I think if there was a single entity in charge of college basketball---there is none. Like who is in charge of college basketball? It is a committee, we need somebody who is following it on a day-to-day basis where you have pinpoint responsibility, this is happening in this sport what about it Mr. So and so or Mrs. So and so and we don't have that and as a result, it gets diluted and you go through a maze.
"It is a maze.
"Our sport is a billion dollar sports which funds over 90 percent of the activities of the NCAA and it should be run by a group under the NCAA umbrella and have a person who is totally in charge. Football has a different, their rules are governed by the NCAA but the money is all with the BCS. So they have a greater chance at changing rules because you can pinpoint who is in charge of the BCS right now and they are kind of running college football, you cannot do that with men's college basketball.
The money train is picking up steam as conferences make plans to grow in size and hand out big fees to people like Paul Tagliabue and entertainment companies like Creative Artist Agency to come up with strategy so that they can generate even more TV, broadband, marketing and sponsorship dollars. Everyone gets a shot at money except the entertainers — the "student-athletes" — the real stars of the show.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Last Updated ( Monday, 17 May 2010 23:23 )
Monday, 17 May 2010 21:52
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
After a Philadelphia policeman tasered a teenager running around the outfield during a Phillies home game on May 2, there was a suggestion that perhaps the Phillies and the other 29 Major League Baseball franchises should just go out and hire college football players and have them near the field in the event someone decides to trespass during a baseball game and that a beefy college football player would know what to do with an interloper and would deliver the same sort of punishment to the person as a running back looking to pick up a few yards.
It was a better alternative than tasering a teenager looking for a moment of fame.
But there is a major problem with the hiring any athlete from a big NCAA sports playing school for an 81 game baseball season even at minimum wage. You can only pay that athlete up to $2,000 a year, anything more and that athlete risks losing his or her scholarship. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, an organization that runs commercials talking about how much they care about "student-athletes" and education, is so concerned about the welfare of athletes that they impose a limit on an athlete's wages during the calendar, not the school year from any line of employment.
The term "student-athlete" was invented by the NCAA after the University of Denver lost a workman's compensation case in 1953 in the University of Colorado v. Nemeth. A Colorado Supreme Court determined that a full-time enrolled student and football player was an employee injured in the course of his employment and was therefore entitled to workers' compensation benefits. The NCAA thought a subtle change in nomenclature to "student-athlete" would shield schools from claims by injured students who were hurt while playing sports.
There are major differences between athletes on scholarships playing sports at big time schools and the rest of the student body, even those on other types of scholarships.
If someone in the school band, who is attending a college on a band scholarship, wanted to work during the school year and was able to pick up paying gigs or got a job giving music lessons there would be no cap on earned income.
The stars of the sports shows, the athletes — who play the games and get a scholarship which pays for school, room and board and incidentals like books — cannot even get a part time job that pays more than an average of $40 a week during their years of sports eligibility. On the other hand, big time college sports programs have invested huge sums of money for tutors and academic advisors to keep the students eligible with a minimum of a 2.0 GPA.
Those are the rules and Duke University's Men's Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski cannot even let his players coach and speak at his basketball camp unless they make under $2,000 in salary for the year.
Everyone gets a shot at big money at big time college sports schools except the athletes.
Sumner Redstone's CBS television network, the Disney Company (the ones that make family friendly programming for TV and the movies) and the Disney operated ESPN and ABC television networks, General Electric's NBC TV, Rupert Murdoch's FOX over-the-air and regional cable TV networks and Time Warner's Turner Sports are forking over billions of dollars for rights fees, marketing partners are handing colleges who engage in big time sports hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorships, sneaker companies are buying off schools with multimillion dollar contracts which outfit the coaches and the school teams in that label's products and boosters are flooding the market with dollars. The players are glorified in video games, although not named, with their images complete with their number of their nuances. The players get no compensation in return (there are two lawsuits dealing with college players, their images and who controls a players likeness before the courts now).
The NCAA allows the schools to literally sell the shirts off the backs of the superstars in football and basketball and the superstar does not see one cent of the revenue derived off of his talent.
The real stars of the show — the athletes — play under a salary cap in their off time.
"There are still are (restrictions)," said Krzyzewski picking up on a conversation that started about a decade ago when he complained that he could no longer hire Duke Blue Devils basketball players at his camp. "I don't think the NCAA has kept up to date with what we do for the student athletes. I think we should do more for the student athlete, especially the student-athlete in revenue sports.
"They have more asked of them. They have more commitments made for them. But that could be done in certain allowances without actually paying a student athlete like just giving them money. There is a thing called the scholarship-umbrella where you have benefits whether it be books, board, tuition or whatever.
"We have to look at that and see how we are able to help them and to unveil some summer opportunities. For the last 15 years or more, our kids can't go and speak in camps. I think it is a bad thing."
The NCAA is raking in billions to run programs and there is no thought of paying "student-athletes" for their time for practice, sports classroom study and games not to mention the "involuntary" voluntary practices in the off-season. But the NCAA doesn't even want "student-athletes" to get a job and earn money because the august body that supervises the college sports industry is afraid that some appreciative booster will take care of a player with a cushiony no-show job with a satchel filled with cash that no one knows about except the booster and player.
Krzyzewski is of the opinion that paying players at his (and others) camps would accomplish two things.
"That is a way they can be missionaries and ambassadors for our sport while actually earning money and being able to speak publicly. But because there was one abuse or two abuses then all of a sudden, it was just taken away," the coach explained. "To keep looking for ways to help the student-athletes, I am in favor of it.
"A kid cannot actually work during the school year. We should not have it where kids try to make money during the school year because going to school and doing your sport is work enough. But during the summer months and sometimes you have as many as four months, you can make some money and get good experiences."
Krzyzewski can get his players at his camp but he isn't paying them enough money so they can do things paying for a date. Krzyzewski is not the only big-name coach who has even voiced an opinion that the NCAA has to back off the salary cap. Penn State football coach Joe Paterno and long time college basketball coach Rick Majerus have been openly vocal about the NCAA's draconian rule.
"We can hire our players to work our camp if they are paid at the same amount as another high school coach but you don't make much money doing that and it is tough to do that while they are in summer school but speaking at camps would be a better way of doing it."
The NCAA is the overseeing body on all that encompasses college sports. But there are so many fiefdoms within the college sports structure that the NCAA President does not have the final say in what is a de facto salary cap. Do coaches lobby the NCAA President or do they lobby college presidents and chancellors or do they go to the conferences. When it comes to making TV deals, there is the NCAA and then the conferences. There are a lot of turfs that are being defended within college sports.
"Who do you go to?" said Krzyzewski. "There is a maze of how to get things changed in the NCAA and a coach does not have a vote and most of the time doesn't have any voice. So somebody has to take that who is at an administrative level, whether it be a conference, a conference commissioner and stuff like that to be an advocate. For coaches to change things, it would be impossible."
College sports is constantly under the scrutiny of either the House of Representatives or the Senate. Most of the recent Congressional hearings dealing with sports have centered around how the Bowl Championship Series is executed and how BCS teams get big dollars for being within that exclusive group and that the rest of the college football playing schools are on the outside looking in when it comes to generating the same revenues as BCS schools and playing for a national championship.
Congress will probably also bring up the topic of why there is not a college football championship again while deftly forgetting a number of topics that relate to the "student-athlete" including the salary cap for outside work.
Congress has held periodic college sports hearings even though the United States is fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the unemployment rate is high, the economy nearly melted down in September 2008 and immigration was left on the table during the Bush Presidency.
"I wish, Congress should be running our country and we should do a better job of running college basketball. I think if there was a single entity in charge of college basketball---there is none. Like who is in charge of college basketball? It is a committee, we need somebody who is following it on a day-to-day basis where you have pinpoint responsibility, this is happening in this sport what about it Mr. So and so or Mrs. So and so and we don't have that and as a result, it gets diluted and you go through a maze.
"It is a maze.
"Our sport is a billion dollar sports which funds over 90 percent of the activities of the NCAA and it should be run by a group under the NCAA umbrella and have a person who is totally in charge. Football has a different, their rules are governed by the NCAA but the money is all with the BCS. So they have a greater chance at changing rules because you can pinpoint who is in charge of the BCS right now and they are kind of running college football, you cannot do that with men's college basketball.
The money train is picking up steam as conferences make plans to grow in size and hand out big fees to people like Paul Tagliabue and entertainment companies like Creative Artist Agency to come up with strategy so that they can generate even more TV, broadband, marketing and sponsorship dollars. Everyone gets a shot at money except the entertainers — the "student-athletes" — the real stars of the show.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator, and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Last Updated ( Monday, 17 May 2010 23:23 )
Saturday, May 15, 2010
When Mexico Was a Threat to Major League Baseball
When Mexico Was a Threat to Major League Baseball
By Evan Weiner
May 15, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m5d15-When-Mexico-was-a-threat-to-Major-League-Baseball#
(New York, N. Y.)Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig doesn't plan to ask his owners to move the 2011 All-Star Game from Phoenix to another venue in some other city in response to Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer signing of (Arizona) Senate Bill 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act on April 23. The law will take effect later this summer and has set off a torrent of opposition and the backlash has included a call for a boycott of the state to hurt Arizona in the pocketbook.
Selig defended Major League Baseball's record when it comes to minority hirings under his tenure earlier this week but is resisting a call for moving the game from Phoenix from various groups that claim the Brewer's signature on SB 1070 gives police the green light to go after anyone who is suspected of being in Arizona illegally in asking them for official papers and that the most likely target of the crackdown are people who appear to be Mexican.
Baseball hires many non-Americans who come to the country who need to have seasonal visas to work in the United States and Selig needs to be sensitive to the Latin American employees who work legally for Major League Baseball and for Major League Baseball subsidiaries including the minor league teams of the 30 Major League Baseball franchises.
Oddly enough, it was Mexico that almost brought the American and National League owners to their collective knees in the years after World War II. Jorge Pasquel ended up with Club Azules de Vera Cruz. Pasquel signed Satchel Paige in 1938. Pasquel also added three players who would eventually be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Josh Gibson, Ray Dandridge and Monte Irvin.
Pasquel took many of the Negro Leagues best players and by 1946; he was raiding Major League Baseball. The Mexican Baseball League eventually would force the American and National League owners to integrate although a good many teams including the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox were very slow in adding African-American players. Pasquel also changed some of the working conditions for the players employed by the 16 teams in the American and National Leagues.
Boston was the last team to add an African-American player to the roster. Tom Yawkey's franchise finally used Pumpsie Green in 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier.
When Bob Feller came to the major leagues in 1936 as an 18 year old pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, players had no freedom. Maybe a Babe Ruth could command a huge salary, but the Babe was bigger than the game. Feller had a choice of 16 teams when he signed, but once the signature went on the contract, he was an Indians employee for life or until a General Manager decided he could not use his services anymore.
"Before the war, the Reserve Clause kept the players on the same ball club. Unless you had clout maybe like Hank Greenberg, Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig and many other players of consequences on teams. They had some leverage in their salaries and it made a big difference at that time," said Feller. "After the war we started the pension plan."
The Mexican signings of major league players included Junior Stephens, Sal Maglie, Hal Lanier, Mickey Owen and others. Pasquel brothers made a run at Phil Rizzuto, Ted Williams, Feller and Stan Musial but their plan ultimately collapsed.
"They wanted to get the players who jumped to Mexico back here," Feller said. "Pasquel down there. He was a dictator. He and his four brothers ran the country. George Pasquel, I knew him quite well. I played ball for him in 1947 in October against teams in Mexico. So Happy Chandler and Larry Mc Phail figured out they had to give the players a pension plan and get the players back. They gave them (the players who jumped to Mexico) amnesty.
"At that time, Johnny Murphy of the American League, a relief pitcher with the Yankees and a very good one and Dixie Walker of the Dodgers was the National League representative. It was the first time the players were allowed to have their own representatives. They had to be active players and one a roster. That started the pension plan and they had $800,000 on the pension plan. Television made the baseball players pension plan."
World War II was a turning point for the American and National Leagues. Returning players put their life on the line in Europe and in the Pacific and they were no longer afraid of owners who controlled every aspect of their professional athletic life.
The Pittsburgh Pirates nearly became the first team in the 20th Century to strike over working conditions. In 1946, a Boston attorney named Robert Murphy tried to organize Major League Baseball Players.
"It all started in 1946 after World War II," said Ralph Kiner who was a young player with the Pirates at the time. "There was a guy named Bob Murphy who organized a players union and he picked the Pittsburgh Pirates as a place to start because Pittsburgh was a highly unionized city at that time. I was involved as a player then and I later on became the National League representative.
"It was a matter of fact that the players got no money. It was in the aftermath of World War II, where black players were coming into the game and the minimum salary was nothing. Like two or three thousand dollars a year. They wanted to get more money and in 1947, the minimum went to $5,000 a year and the players wanted to have other benefits like better playing conditions, and better dugouts."
But Major League owners really did not react to Murphy's threats. The biggest problem was coming from Mexico where the Mexican League was flexing its muscle.
"One thing that started the whole beginning of the pension plan was the Pasquel Brothers in Mexico who offered large amounts of money to some of the players to jump from the ranks of professional baseball in the states to Mexico. That didn't work, but it started the beginning of unionized baseball."
While Mexico was becoming a problem, it was just a matter of time before Major League Baseball was going to be desegregated. The Brooklyn Dodgers did sign Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier, but there was more to the story than just signing Robinson to right a social wrong. It came down to plain old dollars and cents.
It was economics that also crashed the color barrier.
"I don't think Branch Rickey should get the credit," said Kiner. "There was a movement at the time that they were going to bring black players into the game. He jumped the gun and got Jackie Robinson.
"But the reason for Branch Rickey obtaining and bringing black players in was economical. He didn't have to pay the black players any money to sign them and they were bought from the Negro Leagues at that time and Robinson was the choice. Rickey was the man who picked Robinson and that was a brilliant choice."
Teams could get black players on the cheap because black players were just grateful to get the chance.
"It was just another part of the changeover of baseball. It had to happen sooner or later. It was really an aftermath of World War II where the black players, or as they were called in those days, the Negroes, fought for our side. They had to be recognized," said Kiner.
Baseball was fighting on two front in 1946. There was the threat of Pasquel signing big names and the players were no longer just happy to put on a big league baseball uniform. They wanted to share in the revenues.
Pittsburgh was the top target because it was a huge union city loaded with steelworkers. The very same steelworkers that Marvin Miller would join in 1950 as an associate director of research and in 1960 would become the Assistant to the President of the United Steelworkers of America.
"We had a vote, we were going to strike on the field and not play against the New York Giants. We had a vote whether or not we were going to unionize and the vote failed. We ended up playing that game. It took a long time to unionize.
In 1953, the pension plan became a hot topic again. Kiner and Allie Reynolds hired New York attorney J. Norman Lewis to represent the player's interests and Lewis went to work on gaining increases in player's pensions.
The players proposed increases from $50 to $80 a month for five year players and from $100 to $150 a month for 10 year players and that pension payments begin at 45 instead of the age of 50. The players also wanted to make sure that the pension plan was funded by the Baseball's Central Fund and that monies from radio, TV, gate receipts from the All-Star Game and World Series TV and Radio rights fees were funneled into the Central Fund.
An agreement between the players and owners was struck on February 16, 1954 with the players getting 60 percent of the monies generated from radio, TV, gate receipts from the All-Star Game and World Series TV and Radio rights fees were funneled into the Central Fund.
The players also asked for changes in winter ball regulations, the elimination of twi-night double headers, a hike in the minimum salary from $5,000 to $8,000 and that eight year players get the same benefits as 10 year veterans.
The owners upped the minimum salary to $6,000, gave the players $8 a day in meal money and provided moving expenses for traded players at other meetings.
Mexicans had a profound effect on Major League Baseball. If Selig and the 30 Major League Baseball owners do keep the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix, they should start an educational program about the history of Mexico and the United States baseball and civil rights relations and how the events in the late 1930s and the 1940s changed the game forever.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business." He is available for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
May 15, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m5d15-When-Mexico-was-a-threat-to-Major-League-Baseball#
(New York, N. Y.)Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig doesn't plan to ask his owners to move the 2011 All-Star Game from Phoenix to another venue in some other city in response to Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer signing of (Arizona) Senate Bill 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act on April 23. The law will take effect later this summer and has set off a torrent of opposition and the backlash has included a call for a boycott of the state to hurt Arizona in the pocketbook.
Selig defended Major League Baseball's record when it comes to minority hirings under his tenure earlier this week but is resisting a call for moving the game from Phoenix from various groups that claim the Brewer's signature on SB 1070 gives police the green light to go after anyone who is suspected of being in Arizona illegally in asking them for official papers and that the most likely target of the crackdown are people who appear to be Mexican.
Baseball hires many non-Americans who come to the country who need to have seasonal visas to work in the United States and Selig needs to be sensitive to the Latin American employees who work legally for Major League Baseball and for Major League Baseball subsidiaries including the minor league teams of the 30 Major League Baseball franchises.
Oddly enough, it was Mexico that almost brought the American and National League owners to their collective knees in the years after World War II. Jorge Pasquel ended up with Club Azules de Vera Cruz. Pasquel signed Satchel Paige in 1938. Pasquel also added three players who would eventually be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Josh Gibson, Ray Dandridge and Monte Irvin.
Pasquel took many of the Negro Leagues best players and by 1946; he was raiding Major League Baseball. The Mexican Baseball League eventually would force the American and National League owners to integrate although a good many teams including the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox were very slow in adding African-American players. Pasquel also changed some of the working conditions for the players employed by the 16 teams in the American and National Leagues.
Boston was the last team to add an African-American player to the roster. Tom Yawkey's franchise finally used Pumpsie Green in 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier.
When Bob Feller came to the major leagues in 1936 as an 18 year old pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, players had no freedom. Maybe a Babe Ruth could command a huge salary, but the Babe was bigger than the game. Feller had a choice of 16 teams when he signed, but once the signature went on the contract, he was an Indians employee for life or until a General Manager decided he could not use his services anymore.
"Before the war, the Reserve Clause kept the players on the same ball club. Unless you had clout maybe like Hank Greenberg, Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig and many other players of consequences on teams. They had some leverage in their salaries and it made a big difference at that time," said Feller. "After the war we started the pension plan."
The Mexican signings of major league players included Junior Stephens, Sal Maglie, Hal Lanier, Mickey Owen and others. Pasquel brothers made a run at Phil Rizzuto, Ted Williams, Feller and Stan Musial but their plan ultimately collapsed.
"They wanted to get the players who jumped to Mexico back here," Feller said. "Pasquel down there. He was a dictator. He and his four brothers ran the country. George Pasquel, I knew him quite well. I played ball for him in 1947 in October against teams in Mexico. So Happy Chandler and Larry Mc Phail figured out they had to give the players a pension plan and get the players back. They gave them (the players who jumped to Mexico) amnesty.
"At that time, Johnny Murphy of the American League, a relief pitcher with the Yankees and a very good one and Dixie Walker of the Dodgers was the National League representative. It was the first time the players were allowed to have their own representatives. They had to be active players and one a roster. That started the pension plan and they had $800,000 on the pension plan. Television made the baseball players pension plan."
World War II was a turning point for the American and National Leagues. Returning players put their life on the line in Europe and in the Pacific and they were no longer afraid of owners who controlled every aspect of their professional athletic life.
The Pittsburgh Pirates nearly became the first team in the 20th Century to strike over working conditions. In 1946, a Boston attorney named Robert Murphy tried to organize Major League Baseball Players.
"It all started in 1946 after World War II," said Ralph Kiner who was a young player with the Pirates at the time. "There was a guy named Bob Murphy who organized a players union and he picked the Pittsburgh Pirates as a place to start because Pittsburgh was a highly unionized city at that time. I was involved as a player then and I later on became the National League representative.
"It was a matter of fact that the players got no money. It was in the aftermath of World War II, where black players were coming into the game and the minimum salary was nothing. Like two or three thousand dollars a year. They wanted to get more money and in 1947, the minimum went to $5,000 a year and the players wanted to have other benefits like better playing conditions, and better dugouts."
But Major League owners really did not react to Murphy's threats. The biggest problem was coming from Mexico where the Mexican League was flexing its muscle.
"One thing that started the whole beginning of the pension plan was the Pasquel Brothers in Mexico who offered large amounts of money to some of the players to jump from the ranks of professional baseball in the states to Mexico. That didn't work, but it started the beginning of unionized baseball."
While Mexico was becoming a problem, it was just a matter of time before Major League Baseball was going to be desegregated. The Brooklyn Dodgers did sign Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier, but there was more to the story than just signing Robinson to right a social wrong. It came down to plain old dollars and cents.
It was economics that also crashed the color barrier.
"I don't think Branch Rickey should get the credit," said Kiner. "There was a movement at the time that they were going to bring black players into the game. He jumped the gun and got Jackie Robinson.
"But the reason for Branch Rickey obtaining and bringing black players in was economical. He didn't have to pay the black players any money to sign them and they were bought from the Negro Leagues at that time and Robinson was the choice. Rickey was the man who picked Robinson and that was a brilliant choice."
Teams could get black players on the cheap because black players were just grateful to get the chance.
"It was just another part of the changeover of baseball. It had to happen sooner or later. It was really an aftermath of World War II where the black players, or as they were called in those days, the Negroes, fought for our side. They had to be recognized," said Kiner.
Baseball was fighting on two front in 1946. There was the threat of Pasquel signing big names and the players were no longer just happy to put on a big league baseball uniform. They wanted to share in the revenues.
Pittsburgh was the top target because it was a huge union city loaded with steelworkers. The very same steelworkers that Marvin Miller would join in 1950 as an associate director of research and in 1960 would become the Assistant to the President of the United Steelworkers of America.
"We had a vote, we were going to strike on the field and not play against the New York Giants. We had a vote whether or not we were going to unionize and the vote failed. We ended up playing that game. It took a long time to unionize.
In 1953, the pension plan became a hot topic again. Kiner and Allie Reynolds hired New York attorney J. Norman Lewis to represent the player's interests and Lewis went to work on gaining increases in player's pensions.
The players proposed increases from $50 to $80 a month for five year players and from $100 to $150 a month for 10 year players and that pension payments begin at 45 instead of the age of 50. The players also wanted to make sure that the pension plan was funded by the Baseball's Central Fund and that monies from radio, TV, gate receipts from the All-Star Game and World Series TV and Radio rights fees were funneled into the Central Fund.
An agreement between the players and owners was struck on February 16, 1954 with the players getting 60 percent of the monies generated from radio, TV, gate receipts from the All-Star Game and World Series TV and Radio rights fees were funneled into the Central Fund.
The players also asked for changes in winter ball regulations, the elimination of twi-night double headers, a hike in the minimum salary from $5,000 to $8,000 and that eight year players get the same benefits as 10 year veterans.
The owners upped the minimum salary to $6,000, gave the players $8 a day in meal money and provided moving expenses for traded players at other meetings.
Mexicans had a profound effect on Major League Baseball. If Selig and the 30 Major League Baseball owners do keep the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix, they should start an educational program about the history of Mexico and the United States baseball and civil rights relations and how the events in the late 1930s and the 1940s changed the game forever.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on the "Politics of Sports Business." He is available for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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