Big Ten Conference expansion: College sports musical chairs game is about to begin
MONDAY, 07 JUNE 2010 11:37
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Barry Alvarez is the Chief Economic Officer of a business that brings in over $90 million annually in Madison, Wisconsin. Alvarez has admitted the business, which is part of a business that has 10 active partners in various endeavors and another "silent" partner in the Midwest, doesn't necessarily need to take in more partners but could be forced into an expansion of the business in order to maximize revenues.
Alvarez is the Athletic Director of the University of Wisconsin, a school that belongs to the Big Ten conference, and Alvarez is looking for more money to fund his athletic program. He is not alone, the other 10 active sports playing members of the Big Ten want more money and the way to get that is by increasing the cable TV network that the schools along with the University of Chicago co-own with FOX Cable TV.
If the Big Ten adds more schools, the conference probably will be able to add to the growing cable TV network and reach a goal of 60 million subscribers. If the Big Ten hits the 60 million number and gets two dollars a month from each one of those subscribers, that means that particular college sports conference will bring in $120 million a month or close to $1.5 billion a year from cable TV programming.
"You know what, there are some interesting things going on, interesting discussions, you know there is a possibility of major change," said Alvarez.
Interesting things? According to reports the Big 12 wants to know whether Missouri and Nebraska are jumping to the Big Ten by this Friday. The Pac 10, which hired the powerful Hollywood reps, Creative Artist Agency, is looking to expand beyond the Pacific states. A former NFL insider said on Friday that former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue is working extremely hard on plotting the future of the Big East, a conference which includes Rutgers.
Is Rutgers headed for the Big Ten? Is Rutgers going to stay in what remains of the Big East or will the school head to the Atlantic Coast Conference?
No one knows at this point. But changes are coming.
"I think there is a history of change," said Alvarez. "This isn't something new and you can go back and study the NC two A, study college athletics and see there has been expansion before. You have people (CAA, Tagliabue) to think outside the box and trying to make things better. Continue to tweak things. And I think this is just part of the process."
A couple of days ago, it was thought the Big Ten was the linchpin and other college conferences would react to whatever the conference was planning. But other conferences are also playing the change game and the Big Ten may not get first dibs on schools like Missouri, Nebraska, Texas, Syracuse, Pittsburgh or Rutgers.
"The Big Ten doesn't need to do it," said Alvarez of expansion. "I think our Commissioner (James Delany) is looking to continue to improve the Big Ten and make things better. He's a guy who thinks outside the box and so I think this is a natural progression.
"I feel comfortable in looking into the expansion. I think there are a lot of things that make sense and I have a lot of confidence in our commissioner and in our (the colleges and universities) presidents and they're the ones that make the ultimate decision."
The ideal fit in football and athletics for Wisconsin and the other Big Ten schools is Notre Dame. The school is a football factory and can easily be accepted into The Committee on Institutional Cooperation which is the Big Ten's academic component. The Big Ten has to not only weigh the football/basketball and other sports programs but academics as well and that might be a problem for some of the schools that might be courted by Delany.
"I am working on that scheduling right now," said Alvarez who would like to get Notre Dame to play in Madison as an independent. "I don't think there is any secret, all of us would love to have Notre Dame in our league, I think it is a natural. And so, whether it will happen or not, I don't know but I sure would like to see it. (Notre Dame) will have to sit back and take a look at what is going on nationally, if there is expansion and it affects a number of leagues and all of a sudden maybe you have four big leagues. You know four 16-team conferences, when the music stops, you better have a seat. I'm worrying about one conference. Big Ten
"I don't know how the Big East will be affected or if it will be affected. I don't know enough about the Big East."
The Big Ten Commissioner Delany will meet with the heads of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin along with the University of Chicago and lay out various proposals. The conference could add one, three or five teams or sit at 11. Each school in the Big Ten is getting $22 million a year from the Big Ten Network and that could go depending on geography. Rutgers is in a Comcast state and more than likely, the Big Ten Network would pick up New Jersey subscribers from Comcast but it is unknown whether Charles Dolan's Cablevision or Time Warner would take the Big Ten Network in the New York area. But Delany may look to expand the TV network in the south, not the New York area and that could mean that Texas is the prize.
"That's what Jim will talk to the presidents about," said Alvarez of the Big Ten meeting. "I think he will give them information, they will discuss it and decide what direction they will go."
Alvarez was a football coach who is now really playing with the big boys. A football school like Wisconsin attracts big time TV contracts, sneaker deals, major marketing partners, well heeled alum, well heeled boosters, luxury box owners, club seat patrons and a whole host of other people who are both looking to make money off of a school and also make sure the school is producing winning teams in the big revenue generating sports such as football and basketball and in Alvarez's case, hockey.
"Basically I am running a $90 million company right now," said Alvarez. "We take no (Wisconsin) state funding, we are self-supporting, the engine that drives the train is football. We have 23 sports and 800 athletes and you have to pay the bills for the sports, coaches, etc. etc. It is important to find new money streams and ways to finance your programs. Football is the engine because of the TV money, 80-thousand seat stadium in our case but football generates the majority of the money. We profit share in our league and our TV contracts are second to none."
TV contracts second to none may be the most important words Alvarez uttered. The Pac10's deal with FOX is done after 2012 and suddenly far away schools from the Pacific coast like Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado or Baylor are attractive. Pac 10 teams receive an estimated $8-10 million from the present FOX deal; Southeast Conference deals get more than $17 million while Big East teams get about $7 million.
Big time college sports is all about money, there is literally a pot of gold available from the beast, cable and broadband TV, and that beast needs to be constantly fed. Boise State could be end up in the Mountain West Conference, a group of schools that in 2006 launched a TV network in the Rocky Mountains area. That cable network is partially owned by CBS and has programming on Versus. TV drove the last college conference realignment about seven years ago and it is the guiding force behind this one.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business:" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, June 7, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The Belmont Stakes Is Now Just an Afterthought
The Belmont Stakes Is Now Just an Afterthought
By Evan Weiner
In 1950, baseball, boxing and horse racing were on top of the America's list of favorite sports. Thoroughbred racing was a huge deal back then with both jockeys and horses becoming household names. Eddie Arcaro and Johnny Longden were certified stars and so were the horses as there were six Triple Crown winners between 1935 and 1948. Arcaro was on the cover of Time magazine in May 1948.
Thoroughbred racing's popularity has been on a steep decline since the days of Arcaro and Longden and for the third time since 2000, Saturday’s Belmont Stakes lineup will not include the winners of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. The combination of an erosion of thoroughbred racing's fan base and the lack of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winners in the Belmont field will further drive home that point.
There isn’t very much interest in the Belmont or in thoroughbred racing on a day to day basis anymore and the sports field is far more crowded than it was in 1950. Belmont just had to keep with baseball and golf and tennis. This year, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association championship finals are being played, there is baseball, golf, the French Open, a world championship boxing bout at Yankee Stadium that night and a build up to Soccer’s World Cup.
Even a crown jewel event like The Belmont cannot break through the logjam of sports events.
Thoroughbred racing has a long way to go before it captures the imagination of even the casual racing fan who just watches three races a year---the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes---and racing industry people aren't even certain that the fall of thoroughbred racing has hit rock bottom.
There are all sorts of reasons for the lack of interest in the ponies. The racetrack used to be the only place outside of Nevada where people could legally bet and that all changed in the 1960s with state sponsored gambling such as lotteries and the advent of Off Track Betting. The lure of betting in a local candy store brought in people who never went to the track and those who used to venture to the track. The track was embedded into the culture in the movies and on the TV shows.
Thoroughbred racing has an aging fan base and with casinos popping up everywhere there is no need to go to the track and that has not been lost on Charles Hayward, the President and CEO of the New York Racing Association (NYRA).
Hayward came pretty close to temporarily shutting down two of his tracks, Belmont and Saratoga, this summer and is only operating because of a New York State loan for about $15 million to cover expenses after New York's OTB stiffed NYRA. New York was once a major center of activity in the thoroughbred business, today there is a struggle to keep the sport relevant in the nation's biggest market.
"We since the start of the financial collapse in 2007, the industry has been sustaining declines in total wagering activity in the neighborhood of eight or nine percent. The horse population, the number of horses that have been sold at auction has been down fairly dramatically," said Hayward in the state of the union analysis of the industry. "I think we need to see a reduction in the number of live racing days, there is going to be a consolidation in ownership and in horse ownership.
"I think that we are transitioning in the way a lot of businesses are as a result of the changes in the economic climate. But I am still reasonably optimistic about quality races going forward."
The Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes draw spectators. They are championship races but the day to day health of the industry is not good.
"Listen, the Triple Crown is a great thing," said Hayward. "The Kentucky Derby is the biggest race in the country and always will be. The Triple Crown is safe for the foreseeable future."
There have been stories in the past suggesting that the Preakness would be moved from the Pimlico track in Baltimore. For the time being, Maryland officials are certain that the race will remain in Baltimore.
Consolidation of the industry might help but horse racing has a lot of different fiefdoms and getting state regulators together with horse owners, track owners and other groups is going to be an onerous task.
"I think, unfortunately, there is no common ground," said Hayward whose own fiefdom is NYRA. "The biggest problem we have, which you alluded to, is that we are regulated on a state basis. That's everything from racing days to medications to horse ownership, credentialing horse owners. It is one of the big problems we have in the business. I think, unfortunately, there is not going to be a smooth, seamless transition. It will be one that will be done on somewhat a regional basis depending on the economics in that environment.
"It is not going to be pretty, it is going to have some dislocations, you are going to have some racetracks closing but I wish there was a common way for that to happen but unfortunately there isn't, so."
For those who want to create another Federal bureau and create a United States Sports Ministry many like similar posts in governments globally, Hayward is not an advocate of racing being included in a group that would be overseen by a cabinet level post.
"I think, the Feds have talked about that from time to time, I think on horse safety, track safety, medications, the industry really has stepped up and made some improvements," Hayward stated. "I think adding another layer of regulation would not be helpful and I think the industry has demonstrated that they can take care of some of these Federal concerns that have come forward.
"I think the big problem with our sport is unlike baseball, basketball where they have commissioners and they have leagues, we really, our content is only valuable from a wagering perspective. The media rights are not worth a whole lot. The sponsorships are not worth a whole lot. We cannot sell ARod jerseys for our jockeys. So I think we are always, unfortunately, going to be a decentralized business. And you know as nice as it would be to have a league, I just think, there have been some attempts at that, it is not going to happen."
The racing industry has been somewhat revitalized by the introduction of "Video Lottery Terminals" or VLTs. States have given casino licenses to dying racetracks which have kept racing alive. Hayward is waiting for New York to give him a licensing partner to keep his NYRA franchise alive. There are a number of states who have given the go ahead to convert tracks into casinos and it has been a boost to harness tracks in New York, West Virginia and in Delaware.
"Thoroughbred racing could last on its own if we had a proper OTB operation but we don't, we have six regional OTBs (in New York State), we have some other constraints placed on us so there is no question that in the near term for the capital expenditure monies we are going to receive and for the purse supplements, we are going to need that (the VLTs or slot machines)," said Hayward. "I don't think we are on our heels quite the way the harness industry was and there is no question that has really rejuvenated that business. But I think we are looking forward to very much that money and we are starting to make some plans on the facility improvement we would do."
Hayward also talked about an unspoken benefit for New York if the slots go into his track. He would be able to give bigger purses in races and that has an economic domino effect which has occurred in Pennsylvania and Delaware.
"One of the things, New York racing drives historically has been a really strong New York breeding program. Unfortunately in the last couple of years it has been in decline for exactly the reason that Pennsylvania has been growing. They have had the same kind of transformation of their racing business that we have seen in the harness racing business here (in New York). People who have come here and opened farms and remember this legislation (allowing VLTs in NYRA tracks) was passed and since that time there has been eight harness tracks that have opened and one thoroughbred track in Finger Lakes (in New York) and we haven't opened," said Hayward.
"A lot of people have invested in farms upstate that have really closed down and have moved in some cases back to Kentucky and in some cases to Pennsylvania. As of a couple years ago, we had 400 farms in the breeding business here which was about 17,000 jobs and $1.2 billion of economic activity and those numbers have been diminished by about 30 percent. So we are hoping, part of the reason is about 30 percent of our races are state bred races, it is a program that allows Kentucky stallions and other state stallions to breed to New York mares, have them come back here so the quality of the state breds is really terrific. They run for about 30 percent of our races and $25 million in purses. It is a big economic driver for the state particularly in the upstate area where most of the farms are.
There is far more to the fan enjoyment or betting on The Belmont Stakes or any horse race for that matter. The thoroughbred industry is receding rapidly and other than putting slot machines in race tracks there seems to be no other way to save the sport from oblivion. In the end other forms of gambling will either kill horse racing entirely or prop it up where it will be little more than a few times a year curiosity. The days of the superstar horse and superstar jockeys are over and horse industry people know it.
The Triple Crown seems to be a lost slice of Americana and belongs to another age.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of the Business of Sports" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
In 1950, baseball, boxing and horse racing were on top of the America's list of favorite sports. Thoroughbred racing was a huge deal back then with both jockeys and horses becoming household names. Eddie Arcaro and Johnny Longden were certified stars and so were the horses as there were six Triple Crown winners between 1935 and 1948. Arcaro was on the cover of Time magazine in May 1948.
Thoroughbred racing's popularity has been on a steep decline since the days of Arcaro and Longden and for the third time since 2000, Saturday’s Belmont Stakes lineup will not include the winners of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. The combination of an erosion of thoroughbred racing's fan base and the lack of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winners in the Belmont field will further drive home that point.
There isn’t very much interest in the Belmont or in thoroughbred racing on a day to day basis anymore and the sports field is far more crowded than it was in 1950. Belmont just had to keep with baseball and golf and tennis. This year, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association championship finals are being played, there is baseball, golf, the French Open, a world championship boxing bout at Yankee Stadium that night and a build up to Soccer’s World Cup.
Even a crown jewel event like The Belmont cannot break through the logjam of sports events.
Thoroughbred racing has a long way to go before it captures the imagination of even the casual racing fan who just watches three races a year---the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes---and racing industry people aren't even certain that the fall of thoroughbred racing has hit rock bottom.
There are all sorts of reasons for the lack of interest in the ponies. The racetrack used to be the only place outside of Nevada where people could legally bet and that all changed in the 1960s with state sponsored gambling such as lotteries and the advent of Off Track Betting. The lure of betting in a local candy store brought in people who never went to the track and those who used to venture to the track. The track was embedded into the culture in the movies and on the TV shows.
Thoroughbred racing has an aging fan base and with casinos popping up everywhere there is no need to go to the track and that has not been lost on Charles Hayward, the President and CEO of the New York Racing Association (NYRA).
Hayward came pretty close to temporarily shutting down two of his tracks, Belmont and Saratoga, this summer and is only operating because of a New York State loan for about $15 million to cover expenses after New York's OTB stiffed NYRA. New York was once a major center of activity in the thoroughbred business, today there is a struggle to keep the sport relevant in the nation's biggest market.
"We since the start of the financial collapse in 2007, the industry has been sustaining declines in total wagering activity in the neighborhood of eight or nine percent. The horse population, the number of horses that have been sold at auction has been down fairly dramatically," said Hayward in the state of the union analysis of the industry. "I think we need to see a reduction in the number of live racing days, there is going to be a consolidation in ownership and in horse ownership.
"I think that we are transitioning in the way a lot of businesses are as a result of the changes in the economic climate. But I am still reasonably optimistic about quality races going forward."
The Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes draw spectators. They are championship races but the day to day health of the industry is not good.
"Listen, the Triple Crown is a great thing," said Hayward. "The Kentucky Derby is the biggest race in the country and always will be. The Triple Crown is safe for the foreseeable future."
There have been stories in the past suggesting that the Preakness would be moved from the Pimlico track in Baltimore. For the time being, Maryland officials are certain that the race will remain in Baltimore.
Consolidation of the industry might help but horse racing has a lot of different fiefdoms and getting state regulators together with horse owners, track owners and other groups is going to be an onerous task.
"I think, unfortunately, there is no common ground," said Hayward whose own fiefdom is NYRA. "The biggest problem we have, which you alluded to, is that we are regulated on a state basis. That's everything from racing days to medications to horse ownership, credentialing horse owners. It is one of the big problems we have in the business. I think, unfortunately, there is not going to be a smooth, seamless transition. It will be one that will be done on somewhat a regional basis depending on the economics in that environment.
"It is not going to be pretty, it is going to have some dislocations, you are going to have some racetracks closing but I wish there was a common way for that to happen but unfortunately there isn't, so."
For those who want to create another Federal bureau and create a United States Sports Ministry many like similar posts in governments globally, Hayward is not an advocate of racing being included in a group that would be overseen by a cabinet level post.
"I think, the Feds have talked about that from time to time, I think on horse safety, track safety, medications, the industry really has stepped up and made some improvements," Hayward stated. "I think adding another layer of regulation would not be helpful and I think the industry has demonstrated that they can take care of some of these Federal concerns that have come forward.
"I think the big problem with our sport is unlike baseball, basketball where they have commissioners and they have leagues, we really, our content is only valuable from a wagering perspective. The media rights are not worth a whole lot. The sponsorships are not worth a whole lot. We cannot sell ARod jerseys for our jockeys. So I think we are always, unfortunately, going to be a decentralized business. And you know as nice as it would be to have a league, I just think, there have been some attempts at that, it is not going to happen."
The racing industry has been somewhat revitalized by the introduction of "Video Lottery Terminals" or VLTs. States have given casino licenses to dying racetracks which have kept racing alive. Hayward is waiting for New York to give him a licensing partner to keep his NYRA franchise alive. There are a number of states who have given the go ahead to convert tracks into casinos and it has been a boost to harness tracks in New York, West Virginia and in Delaware.
"Thoroughbred racing could last on its own if we had a proper OTB operation but we don't, we have six regional OTBs (in New York State), we have some other constraints placed on us so there is no question that in the near term for the capital expenditure monies we are going to receive and for the purse supplements, we are going to need that (the VLTs or slot machines)," said Hayward. "I don't think we are on our heels quite the way the harness industry was and there is no question that has really rejuvenated that business. But I think we are looking forward to very much that money and we are starting to make some plans on the facility improvement we would do."
Hayward also talked about an unspoken benefit for New York if the slots go into his track. He would be able to give bigger purses in races and that has an economic domino effect which has occurred in Pennsylvania and Delaware.
"One of the things, New York racing drives historically has been a really strong New York breeding program. Unfortunately in the last couple of years it has been in decline for exactly the reason that Pennsylvania has been growing. They have had the same kind of transformation of their racing business that we have seen in the harness racing business here (in New York). People who have come here and opened farms and remember this legislation (allowing VLTs in NYRA tracks) was passed and since that time there has been eight harness tracks that have opened and one thoroughbred track in Finger Lakes (in New York) and we haven't opened," said Hayward.
"A lot of people have invested in farms upstate that have really closed down and have moved in some cases back to Kentucky and in some cases to Pennsylvania. As of a couple years ago, we had 400 farms in the breeding business here which was about 17,000 jobs and $1.2 billion of economic activity and those numbers have been diminished by about 30 percent. So we are hoping, part of the reason is about 30 percent of our races are state bred races, it is a program that allows Kentucky stallions and other state stallions to breed to New York mares, have them come back here so the quality of the state breds is really terrific. They run for about 30 percent of our races and $25 million in purses. It is a big economic driver for the state particularly in the upstate area where most of the farms are.
There is far more to the fan enjoyment or betting on The Belmont Stakes or any horse race for that matter. The thoroughbred industry is receding rapidly and other than putting slot machines in race tracks there seems to be no other way to save the sport from oblivion. In the end other forms of gambling will either kill horse racing entirely or prop it up where it will be little more than a few times a year curiosity. The days of the superstar horse and superstar jockeys are over and horse industry people know it.
The Triple Crown seems to be a lost slice of Americana and belongs to another age.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of the Business of Sports" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
How do you fix horse racing in New Jersey?
How do you fix horse racing industry in New Jersey?
Wednesday, 02 June 2010 15:35
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/how-do-you-fix-horse-racing-industry-in-new-jersey#
Other states have turned to more gambling options at racetracks to bolster ailing sport
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
The 142nd running of the Belmont Stakes takes place on Saturday and for most people who have a casual interest in thoroughbred racing, that marks the end of the Triple Crown and racing season. There is no superstar horse to follow and the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winners are sitting this race out. The hardcore racing fan and bettor will follow the horses the rest of the year but that group is thinning out year after year and that is a major problem for a once popular industry. So how do you go about and fix what used to be one of the three most followed sports in the United States?
There seems to be just one answer.
Continue building casinos and putting slots or video lottery terminals (VLT) in racetracks. Pennsylvania has done just that, New York has put VLTs in all of the state's harness tracks and one thoroughbred track, Finger Lakes. Delaware has done the same thing. West Virginia is a racing hotbed, thanks to one-armed bandits. New York by August 15 will decide on which company should put a casino at the Big A, Aqueduct, in Queens.
That seems to put New Jersey in a box. New Jersey has slots and tables in Atlantic City but there are no VLTs, which has become the salvation of racetracks in West Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, at racetracks throughout the state. New Jersey politicians may be joining the VLT fray. State backed gambling is not going away and in fact, the state-sanction gaming industry is growing rapidly. The racetrack casinos are popular with people who live within a 20-25 mile radius of the track and a lot of people are making money off of local bettors who all of a sudden have VLTs in their backyard.
Horse racing needs casino revenues to exist but in many areas there would be no casinos without the horses.
Gambling has become a major component in municipal budgeting. Ironically it was the government rush to embrace Off Track Betting (and revenues) that helped to create an atmosphere in New York that has nearly killed the horse racing business.
"The racing business, you go back to the early 1970s, tracks were jammed with people because there was no other kinds of gambling and you couldn't go to an OTB. Once the OTB started in 1971, they built a hundred OTBs in a matter of three or four years and the attendance at the track plummeted," said Charles Hayward, the President and the Chief Operating Officer of the New York Racing Association (NYRA). "You are just never going to get that kind of dynamic back, unfortunately, and the attention and the knowledge and the fan base just eroded."
The erosion has deeply cut into the industry. Hayward's group just got a $15 million pledge from New York State so it could keep operating although they were entitled to $15 million. OTB, another government agency in financial distress in New York, simply has not delivered that cash to NYRA.
Hayward and NYRA may be able to open a slot area at the Big A within 12 months. The timetable seems to be August 1 for a group to get a casino license and by November 1, a contract will be signed and construction of a casino at the Queens racetrack will commence shortly thereafter. But had all the stars been in alignment in the past few years, Hayward would have opened his casino by now.
New York has not been able to grant a casino license for NYRA's tracks, the Big A, Belmont and Saratoga. Last March, the State Lottery Division would not grant a license to Governor David Patterson's preferred choice, the Aqueduct Entertainment Group. In October 2008, Delaware North was selected to be the casino licensee but the group was gone five months later because financial issues could not be resolved.
"I started here in November of 2004 and I have been asked that question and answered that question probably 40 times and all 40 times I have been wrong," said Hayward about having slots at one of his tracks. "So I have put a stop to speculating but I think there is a real significant development that appears to have changed everything.
"We selected MGM, that didn't work out (former New York Governor George) Pataki didn't support that, then the executives did two of their own processes, those didn't work out as we know. So what they (the state of New York) are doing now is what probably should have been done in the first instances. They have told the (New York) lottery to do a state RFP (request for proposal) bid process which has rules. They have started that process; they have solicited questions from all the bidders. We have been involved in helping answering that. All of the bids will be able to be judged one against the other which has not been the case in the past and I think the deadline they have set to name the bidder is early August, I think that is a little ambitious. They good news is that they are going to make a recommendation that will then be acted upon by the three political leaders (Patterson, the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate).
"Given that there will be rankings, it will be very clearly documented, you just have a much higher sense of the level of professionalism and I think the recommendation is going to be hard for anybody to not agree with because it is going to be very transparent and very clear as to how they reach that agreement."
Of course this is New York State with a lame duck governor and a dysfunctional legislature.
"I am cautiously optimistic," said Hayward. "Although our past performances wouldn't maybe warrant that optimism."
NYRA lost money in 2009.
Delaware and Pennsylvania have a vibrant racing industry now, but it is being driven by casino dollars not the horses.
"There is no question that their (Philadelphia Park) purses have increased but they have done some things," said Hayward. "They have a hard cap percentage wise on their stakes races so that most of the money goes into their overnight racing program that takes care of the day in and day out owners and trainers. They don't have the kind of appetite to compete at the kind of stakes you will see, not only the Belmont Stakes which of course is a classic but we got five undercard races with either a grade one or grade two stakes. Day in, day out purses, the allowance, the overnight stakes, the purse levels have grown substantially they are still substantially less than Belmont and Saratoga but there is no question the racing situation has improved a lot in Pennsylvania."
With Pennsylvania and Delaware having slots and table games such as roulette and blackjack and New York already having gambling at harness tracks and apparently honing in on opening up a casino in Queens, New Jersey may be forced into some sort of retaliatory move.
The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which runs the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park racetracks, wants slot machines because the agency needs additional revenue. Monmouth Park has a shorter meet this year and is paying bigger purses but that is not going to make racing profitable in New Jersey. Atlantic City casinos subsidize the tracks to the tune of $30 million annually. The casino owners are rethinking that commitment.
"The New Jersey landscape is so hard to read," said Hayward. "Clearly, Atlantic City has a lot of stick. Monmouth is doing this program with enhanced purses, $20 of the $50 million they are giving out is coming from a casino subsidy. I think that is in return for not pursuing any gaming. They have gone from 140 dates to 50 dates this summer. The purses have gone up dramatically. They are not running any more thoroughbreds at the Meadowlands which they did before, they are going to run a weekend meet through the fall at Monmouth, which they tried in the past. So far, it looks like they have had some good success in terms of their handle and so forth. Whether they can sustain the purse level, that is a whole other question."
The Belmont is still a brand name but the thoroughbred horse racing industry is reeling. There is less interest in the ponies. It is not just in New York, it is not just in New Jersey. There is too much betting around whether it is playing a state lottery in a 7-11 or in New York, playing keno while waiting for a slice of pizza. NYRA and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority are gambling that a one-armed bandit will save their industry.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, 02 June 2010 15:35
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/how-do-you-fix-horse-racing-industry-in-new-jersey#
Other states have turned to more gambling options at racetracks to bolster ailing sport
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
The 142nd running of the Belmont Stakes takes place on Saturday and for most people who have a casual interest in thoroughbred racing, that marks the end of the Triple Crown and racing season. There is no superstar horse to follow and the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winners are sitting this race out. The hardcore racing fan and bettor will follow the horses the rest of the year but that group is thinning out year after year and that is a major problem for a once popular industry. So how do you go about and fix what used to be one of the three most followed sports in the United States?
There seems to be just one answer.
Continue building casinos and putting slots or video lottery terminals (VLT) in racetracks. Pennsylvania has done just that, New York has put VLTs in all of the state's harness tracks and one thoroughbred track, Finger Lakes. Delaware has done the same thing. West Virginia is a racing hotbed, thanks to one-armed bandits. New York by August 15 will decide on which company should put a casino at the Big A, Aqueduct, in Queens.
That seems to put New Jersey in a box. New Jersey has slots and tables in Atlantic City but there are no VLTs, which has become the salvation of racetracks in West Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, at racetracks throughout the state. New Jersey politicians may be joining the VLT fray. State backed gambling is not going away and in fact, the state-sanction gaming industry is growing rapidly. The racetrack casinos are popular with people who live within a 20-25 mile radius of the track and a lot of people are making money off of local bettors who all of a sudden have VLTs in their backyard.
Horse racing needs casino revenues to exist but in many areas there would be no casinos without the horses.
Gambling has become a major component in municipal budgeting. Ironically it was the government rush to embrace Off Track Betting (and revenues) that helped to create an atmosphere in New York that has nearly killed the horse racing business.
"The racing business, you go back to the early 1970s, tracks were jammed with people because there was no other kinds of gambling and you couldn't go to an OTB. Once the OTB started in 1971, they built a hundred OTBs in a matter of three or four years and the attendance at the track plummeted," said Charles Hayward, the President and the Chief Operating Officer of the New York Racing Association (NYRA). "You are just never going to get that kind of dynamic back, unfortunately, and the attention and the knowledge and the fan base just eroded."
The erosion has deeply cut into the industry. Hayward's group just got a $15 million pledge from New York State so it could keep operating although they were entitled to $15 million. OTB, another government agency in financial distress in New York, simply has not delivered that cash to NYRA.
Hayward and NYRA may be able to open a slot area at the Big A within 12 months. The timetable seems to be August 1 for a group to get a casino license and by November 1, a contract will be signed and construction of a casino at the Queens racetrack will commence shortly thereafter. But had all the stars been in alignment in the past few years, Hayward would have opened his casino by now.
New York has not been able to grant a casino license for NYRA's tracks, the Big A, Belmont and Saratoga. Last March, the State Lottery Division would not grant a license to Governor David Patterson's preferred choice, the Aqueduct Entertainment Group. In October 2008, Delaware North was selected to be the casino licensee but the group was gone five months later because financial issues could not be resolved.
"I started here in November of 2004 and I have been asked that question and answered that question probably 40 times and all 40 times I have been wrong," said Hayward about having slots at one of his tracks. "So I have put a stop to speculating but I think there is a real significant development that appears to have changed everything.
"We selected MGM, that didn't work out (former New York Governor George) Pataki didn't support that, then the executives did two of their own processes, those didn't work out as we know. So what they (the state of New York) are doing now is what probably should have been done in the first instances. They have told the (New York) lottery to do a state RFP (request for proposal) bid process which has rules. They have started that process; they have solicited questions from all the bidders. We have been involved in helping answering that. All of the bids will be able to be judged one against the other which has not been the case in the past and I think the deadline they have set to name the bidder is early August, I think that is a little ambitious. They good news is that they are going to make a recommendation that will then be acted upon by the three political leaders (Patterson, the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate).
"Given that there will be rankings, it will be very clearly documented, you just have a much higher sense of the level of professionalism and I think the recommendation is going to be hard for anybody to not agree with because it is going to be very transparent and very clear as to how they reach that agreement."
Of course this is New York State with a lame duck governor and a dysfunctional legislature.
"I am cautiously optimistic," said Hayward. "Although our past performances wouldn't maybe warrant that optimism."
NYRA lost money in 2009.
Delaware and Pennsylvania have a vibrant racing industry now, but it is being driven by casino dollars not the horses.
"There is no question that their (Philadelphia Park) purses have increased but they have done some things," said Hayward. "They have a hard cap percentage wise on their stakes races so that most of the money goes into their overnight racing program that takes care of the day in and day out owners and trainers. They don't have the kind of appetite to compete at the kind of stakes you will see, not only the Belmont Stakes which of course is a classic but we got five undercard races with either a grade one or grade two stakes. Day in, day out purses, the allowance, the overnight stakes, the purse levels have grown substantially they are still substantially less than Belmont and Saratoga but there is no question the racing situation has improved a lot in Pennsylvania."
With Pennsylvania and Delaware having slots and table games such as roulette and blackjack and New York already having gambling at harness tracks and apparently honing in on opening up a casino in Queens, New Jersey may be forced into some sort of retaliatory move.
The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which runs the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park racetracks, wants slot machines because the agency needs additional revenue. Monmouth Park has a shorter meet this year and is paying bigger purses but that is not going to make racing profitable in New Jersey. Atlantic City casinos subsidize the tracks to the tune of $30 million annually. The casino owners are rethinking that commitment.
"The New Jersey landscape is so hard to read," said Hayward. "Clearly, Atlantic City has a lot of stick. Monmouth is doing this program with enhanced purses, $20 of the $50 million they are giving out is coming from a casino subsidy. I think that is in return for not pursuing any gaming. They have gone from 140 dates to 50 dates this summer. The purses have gone up dramatically. They are not running any more thoroughbreds at the Meadowlands which they did before, they are going to run a weekend meet through the fall at Monmouth, which they tried in the past. So far, it looks like they have had some good success in terms of their handle and so forth. Whether they can sustain the purse level, that is a whole other question."
The Belmont is still a brand name but the thoroughbred horse racing industry is reeling. There is less interest in the ponies. It is not just in New York, it is not just in New Jersey. There is too much betting around whether it is playing a state lottery in a 7-11 or in New York, playing keno while waiting for a slice of pizza. NYRA and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority are gambling that a one-armed bandit will save their industry.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, May 31, 2010
LeBron James, Dwayne Wade colluding to be N.Y. Knicks? Times have certainly changed in the NBA
LeBron James, Dwayne Wade colluding to be N.Y. Knicks? Times have certainly changed in the NBA
MONDAY, 31 MAY 2010 12:54
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/lebron-james-dwayne-wade-colluding-to-be-ny-knicks-times-have-certainly-changed-in-the-nba#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
Let's get this straight. People are "concerned" that National Basketball Association free agents to be Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh may meet to discuss whatever free agents-to-be need to discuss, such as playing together. Wade's agent now says there will not be a "summit" with the NBA's top available free agent talent but there probably will be some talks here and there. The New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers can offer two "max" contracts and there is talk the Dolan-family owned Knicks (who probably don't pay a "max" salary of about $14 million a year in New York City property taxes on Madison Square Garden real estate) might go after Lebron and Wade. There is "concern" that players can collude but owners cannot and that the players will orchestrate where they will play which means the free agents could make or break franchises.
Nowhere in this "concern" is it mentioned that the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players is up after the 2010-11 season and that the NBA wants huge financial rollbacks from the players which could scuttle the plans of any owner including Dolan or the Nets new moneyman Mikhail Prokhorov or even the Clippers Donald Sterling from going after two max players.
The NBA is still an owners toy because of a salary cap. Two great players might be on the same team, but good complimentary players may be passed over because of salary cap restrictions and that is a complication in building a team.
At one time, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh-like players would not have even been considered for employment in the NBA.
Prior to 1950, they all would have ended up with the Harlem Globetrotters. The NBA closed the doors to Negro players back then just like it closes the doors today to 18-year-olds of all stripes out of high school.
The NBA remains an exclusive and exclusionary club to certain people.
The Harlem Globetrotters were important to the NBA. The team and brand were bigger than the National Basketball League, the Basketball Association of America or the new National Basketball Association that was established in August 1949. In what turned out to be the dying days of the NBL, the match up of the Globetrotters and the Mikan led Minneapolis Lakers brought attention to the struggling Midwest-based league in 1948.
The Globetrotters were basketball troubadours who literally played anywhere as long as someone set up a basketball court and was willing to give Abe Saperstein some cash. The Globetrotters also provided the first half of a night's worth of entertainment at NBA games as a featured attraction in a double header.
"The Globetrotters would play the preliminary and the NBA would play the main attraction," said Marquis Haynes. "But it got to the point we people after our game, the Harlem Globetrotters game would start leaving before the halftime of the NBA game and they switched it around for them, the NBA teams to play the first game and the Harlem Globetrotters the second which made a lot of sense."
The Globetrotters popularity might have had something to do with blacks being accepted into pro basketball with no fanfare. In 1942/43, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers of the National Basketball League had black players in their lineups. Both teams folded, but the NBL was integrated four and a half years before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier.
Mikan and the Lakers would face the Globbies before a sellout crowd at Chicago Stadium on February 20, 1948 in a game that was conceived by a Chicago sports editor, Arch Ward. (Ward came up with the idea for the American and National League All-Star Game in baseball and pushed for the formation of a new football league, the All America Football Conference in 1946 and the College All Star Game against the NFL in Chicago).
Mikan's Lakers seemed to be really good and the Globetrotters team was thought to be the best in the world. Ermer Robinson, Ducky Moore, Sam Wheeler, Goose Tatum, Haynes, Babe Pressley, Ted Strong, Vertes Ziegler, and Wilbert King defeated Mikan, Jim Pollard and the Lakers, 61-59, before a crowd of 17,823 at Chicago Stadium. Robinson won the game on a last second, two-handed 20-foot set shot.
"I was told by several NBA owners at the time that that was the beginning of them deciding to draft or recruit players from the Harlem Globetrotters and the black colleges," said Haynes in an interview in the mid-1990s.
Minneapolis, along with three other teams, joined the BAA in the 1948 off season. Wade, LeBron, Johnson and Bosh would not have been able to follow the Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Pistons or Indianapolis into the newer league. Despite enormous talent, Negroes were "unofficially" barred from the BAA. There seems however to be an exception in the case of the New York Knicks player, the Japanese-American Wataru Misaka, who played with New York in 1947-48 and is now considered the first non-white in the BAA.
Haynes never played in the NBA but he and his Globetrotter teammates helped open the door. It took a while for the NBA to consider top notch players. It was not until 1950 that the league would give a Negro player a try out.
NBA integration would not happen until October 31, 1950 when the Washington Capitols' roster included Earl Lloyd. Years later Lloyd would downplay the significance of his breaking of the color barrier.
Lloyd had a head start on the Knicks Sweetwater Clifton, whose contract was purchased from Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters, and the Boston Celtics Chuck Cooper, who was taken out of college.
Black college coach John McLendon, who was at North Carolina College, was instrumental in getting Lloyd signed.
"The Washington Capitols were the first team to have historically black schools products on the team. They preceded Boston by one week." said John Mc Lendon (who was the first African-American coach of a pro team as he was hired by the American Basketball League's George Steinbrenner-owned Cleveland Pipers in 1961 and fired by Steinbrenner even though Cleveland won the Eastern Division because McLendon refused to tell a player Steinbrenner had traded him to that evening's opponent — McLendon then got as far away from Steinbrenner as possible and went to Malaysia as a basketball instructor). "There were two guys ahead of Cooper, Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
"I took them to a tryout in Washington, D.C. They had 20 something guys in there and they put them in threes and no combination could be the three guys. The owner, (Mike) Uline, and the general manager called me upstairs, and said, ‘hey coach get those guys dressed and bring them up here.' I have a copy of the contract they signed."
Lloyd made the Capitols, Hunter didn't. McLendon said the first two black athletes who actually signed NBA contracts were Hunter (who played for McLendon at North Carolina College) and Lloyd with Washington and the Celtics signed Cooper after drafting him in the second round of the 1950 Draft a week later.
"I took them, I was there," said McLendon. "I asked the Basketball Hall of Fame just to note five pioneers in the game. They had it up for six months and then took it down because it caused too much controversy, people were arguing about who is the first one, who was the first under contract, the first one on the floor, the first one drafted. The first two in the NBA under a tryout were Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
Lloyd and the rest of the players in the NBA were not playing for the money.
"We wasn't making more money with the Globetrotters." said Haynes. "In fact in those years, league teams weren't making much money either. They (NBA players of the 1940s and 1950s) were like we were, we had to keep in touch with different businesses in our hometown or in the area of our hometowns while the season was still going on. Hopefully, in keeping in touch with them, we were able to gain employment during the summer to be able to afford ourselves until the next season started. So the NBA players were in the same position as we were in keeping up to the money part."
The Globetrotters would eventually lose games to the Lakers but still got their share of talented players after their monopoly on black players was broken by the Lloyd signing. The Globbies did get quite a few players including Wilt Chamberlain who left Kansas to play with Saperstein's team in 1958-59 for a $50,000 salary, which was out of the NBA's range. Chamberlain was ineligible to play in 1958-59 in the NBA because he had not put in four years at college. Had Chamberlain been 18 years old in 2010, he would be ineligible for the NBA because he was not one year out of high school.
If there should be any player collusion, talented high school graduates should be filing lawsuits against the NBA for discrimination for not allowing them to apply for a job because of age. An 18-year-old can fight a war yet not play on an NBA team because Commissioner David Stern and his owners have decided that either colleges or overseas leagues should develop a player who can command millions sitting on the bench with an entry level contract. The National Basketball Players Association and NBA owners have agreed to banning 18-year-olds in the NBA and the harmed players can do nothing about it under US labor laws.
Wade and LeBron will get max contracts and the other guys, Bosh and Johnson won't be checking in with people in their hometowns for summer employment like Haynes and other NBA players once did.
Even if they collude.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and is available for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
MONDAY, 31 MAY 2010 12:54
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/lebron-james-dwayne-wade-colluding-to-be-ny-knicks-times-have-certainly-changed-in-the-nba#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
Let's get this straight. People are "concerned" that National Basketball Association free agents to be Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh may meet to discuss whatever free agents-to-be need to discuss, such as playing together. Wade's agent now says there will not be a "summit" with the NBA's top available free agent talent but there probably will be some talks here and there. The New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers can offer two "max" contracts and there is talk the Dolan-family owned Knicks (who probably don't pay a "max" salary of about $14 million a year in New York City property taxes on Madison Square Garden real estate) might go after Lebron and Wade. There is "concern" that players can collude but owners cannot and that the players will orchestrate where they will play which means the free agents could make or break franchises.
Nowhere in this "concern" is it mentioned that the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players is up after the 2010-11 season and that the NBA wants huge financial rollbacks from the players which could scuttle the plans of any owner including Dolan or the Nets new moneyman Mikhail Prokhorov or even the Clippers Donald Sterling from going after two max players.
The NBA is still an owners toy because of a salary cap. Two great players might be on the same team, but good complimentary players may be passed over because of salary cap restrictions and that is a complication in building a team.
At one time, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh-like players would not have even been considered for employment in the NBA.
Prior to 1950, they all would have ended up with the Harlem Globetrotters. The NBA closed the doors to Negro players back then just like it closes the doors today to 18-year-olds of all stripes out of high school.
The NBA remains an exclusive and exclusionary club to certain people.
The Harlem Globetrotters were important to the NBA. The team and brand were bigger than the National Basketball League, the Basketball Association of America or the new National Basketball Association that was established in August 1949. In what turned out to be the dying days of the NBL, the match up of the Globetrotters and the Mikan led Minneapolis Lakers brought attention to the struggling Midwest-based league in 1948.
The Globetrotters were basketball troubadours who literally played anywhere as long as someone set up a basketball court and was willing to give Abe Saperstein some cash. The Globetrotters also provided the first half of a night's worth of entertainment at NBA games as a featured attraction in a double header.
"The Globetrotters would play the preliminary and the NBA would play the main attraction," said Marquis Haynes. "But it got to the point we people after our game, the Harlem Globetrotters game would start leaving before the halftime of the NBA game and they switched it around for them, the NBA teams to play the first game and the Harlem Globetrotters the second which made a lot of sense."
The Globetrotters popularity might have had something to do with blacks being accepted into pro basketball with no fanfare. In 1942/43, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers of the National Basketball League had black players in their lineups. Both teams folded, but the NBL was integrated four and a half years before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier.
Mikan and the Lakers would face the Globbies before a sellout crowd at Chicago Stadium on February 20, 1948 in a game that was conceived by a Chicago sports editor, Arch Ward. (Ward came up with the idea for the American and National League All-Star Game in baseball and pushed for the formation of a new football league, the All America Football Conference in 1946 and the College All Star Game against the NFL in Chicago).
Mikan's Lakers seemed to be really good and the Globetrotters team was thought to be the best in the world. Ermer Robinson, Ducky Moore, Sam Wheeler, Goose Tatum, Haynes, Babe Pressley, Ted Strong, Vertes Ziegler, and Wilbert King defeated Mikan, Jim Pollard and the Lakers, 61-59, before a crowd of 17,823 at Chicago Stadium. Robinson won the game on a last second, two-handed 20-foot set shot.
"I was told by several NBA owners at the time that that was the beginning of them deciding to draft or recruit players from the Harlem Globetrotters and the black colleges," said Haynes in an interview in the mid-1990s.
Minneapolis, along with three other teams, joined the BAA in the 1948 off season. Wade, LeBron, Johnson and Bosh would not have been able to follow the Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Pistons or Indianapolis into the newer league. Despite enormous talent, Negroes were "unofficially" barred from the BAA. There seems however to be an exception in the case of the New York Knicks player, the Japanese-American Wataru Misaka, who played with New York in 1947-48 and is now considered the first non-white in the BAA.
Haynes never played in the NBA but he and his Globetrotter teammates helped open the door. It took a while for the NBA to consider top notch players. It was not until 1950 that the league would give a Negro player a try out.
NBA integration would not happen until October 31, 1950 when the Washington Capitols' roster included Earl Lloyd. Years later Lloyd would downplay the significance of his breaking of the color barrier.
Lloyd had a head start on the Knicks Sweetwater Clifton, whose contract was purchased from Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters, and the Boston Celtics Chuck Cooper, who was taken out of college.
Black college coach John McLendon, who was at North Carolina College, was instrumental in getting Lloyd signed.
"The Washington Capitols were the first team to have historically black schools products on the team. They preceded Boston by one week." said John Mc Lendon (who was the first African-American coach of a pro team as he was hired by the American Basketball League's George Steinbrenner-owned Cleveland Pipers in 1961 and fired by Steinbrenner even though Cleveland won the Eastern Division because McLendon refused to tell a player Steinbrenner had traded him to that evening's opponent — McLendon then got as far away from Steinbrenner as possible and went to Malaysia as a basketball instructor). "There were two guys ahead of Cooper, Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
"I took them to a tryout in Washington, D.C. They had 20 something guys in there and they put them in threes and no combination could be the three guys. The owner, (Mike) Uline, and the general manager called me upstairs, and said, ‘hey coach get those guys dressed and bring them up here.' I have a copy of the contract they signed."
Lloyd made the Capitols, Hunter didn't. McLendon said the first two black athletes who actually signed NBA contracts were Hunter (who played for McLendon at North Carolina College) and Lloyd with Washington and the Celtics signed Cooper after drafting him in the second round of the 1950 Draft a week later.
"I took them, I was there," said McLendon. "I asked the Basketball Hall of Fame just to note five pioneers in the game. They had it up for six months and then took it down because it caused too much controversy, people were arguing about who is the first one, who was the first under contract, the first one on the floor, the first one drafted. The first two in the NBA under a tryout were Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
Lloyd and the rest of the players in the NBA were not playing for the money.
"We wasn't making more money with the Globetrotters." said Haynes. "In fact in those years, league teams weren't making much money either. They (NBA players of the 1940s and 1950s) were like we were, we had to keep in touch with different businesses in our hometown or in the area of our hometowns while the season was still going on. Hopefully, in keeping in touch with them, we were able to gain employment during the summer to be able to afford ourselves until the next season started. So the NBA players were in the same position as we were in keeping up to the money part."
The Globetrotters would eventually lose games to the Lakers but still got their share of talented players after their monopoly on black players was broken by the Lloyd signing. The Globbies did get quite a few players including Wilt Chamberlain who left Kansas to play with Saperstein's team in 1958-59 for a $50,000 salary, which was out of the NBA's range. Chamberlain was ineligible to play in 1958-59 in the NBA because he had not put in four years at college. Had Chamberlain been 18 years old in 2010, he would be ineligible for the NBA because he was not one year out of high school.
If there should be any player collusion, talented high school graduates should be filing lawsuits against the NBA for discrimination for not allowing them to apply for a job because of age. An 18-year-old can fight a war yet not play on an NBA team because Commissioner David Stern and his owners have decided that either colleges or overseas leagues should develop a player who can command millions sitting on the bench with an entry level contract. The National Basketball Players Association and NBA owners have agreed to banning 18-year-olds in the NBA and the harmed players can do nothing about it under US labor laws.
Wade and LeBron will get max contracts and the other guys, Bosh and Johnson won't be checking in with people in their hometowns for summer employment like Haynes and other NBA players once did.
Even if they collude.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and is available for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Indy 500 Isn’t The Indy 500 Anymore
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
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
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
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