Baseball’s Bay Problems
By Evan Weiner
April 2, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m4d2-Baseballs-Bay-Problems
(New York, N. Y.) --- Major League Baseball has a Bay problem in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay in Oakland and west of Tampa Bay, specifically in St. Petersburg. Neither the ownership group of the Oakland A's nor the ownership group of the Tampa Bay Rays want to operate in their present homes, the Oakland Coliseum or whatever it is being called today and at the dome in St. Petersburg which was built after Major League Baseball said no, no, don't build it for us to various Florida political entities in the late 1980s.
The politicians ignored Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and built the dome even though there was no real commitment from any team to move to St. Petersburg although San Francisco and Seattle were rumored to be ready to relocate until MLB expanded in 1995.
The Oakland dilemma is simple. A's owner Lewis Wolff would like to move his team to San Jose which is more than 40 miles south of San Francisco down the 101 but because the San Francisco Giants control the territorial rights to the Bay Area's largest city, Wolff cannot relocate his team there. Wolff almost cut a deal to build a stadium down I-880 in Fremont which is as closed as you can get to San Jose without venturing into Giants territory but the deal fell though.
In St. Petersburg, the Rays ownership led by Stuart Sternberg has been pursuing a new stadium since 2007 when they proposed a building a stadium on the St. Petersburg waterfront. That idea was shelved in 2009 but that does not mean Sternberg has given up on getting his Rays a new ballyard.
Sternberg does have a significant obstacle to overcome in his pursuit of a new facility. The franchise is contractually obligated to play in the Suncoast Dome or whatever name is attached to the building until 2027 and St. Petersburg officials say they will make sure the team fulfills that contract.
But as the late Dr. John McMullen, who owned MLB's Houston Astros and the National Hockey League's New Jersey Devils, once said, a contract is just a piece of paper. In other words, the contract could be broken.
At this point, there are no real options for Stenberg in the Bay Area and even if someone approached the Rays owner about moving his team, St. Petersburg officials are threatening to sue anyone who interferes with the Rays lease at the stadium. But as Dr. McMullen once pointed out, a contract is just a piece of paper.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Wolff has been looking for a stadium for years. Initially he wanted to claim some land north of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and Arena and turn that into a stadium village. Oakland officials seemingly were not interested which forced Wolff to explore Fremont. That didn't work out. San Jose officials seem very interested in bringing Wolff's A's to town but there are numerous hurdles to overcome starting with the San Francisco Giants ownership getting the territorial rights to Santa Clara County in 1992. The Giants ownership still controls the territory even though voters in San Jose and Santa Clara said no to building a Giants ballpark. Then there is the matter of whether San Jose voters want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a yard for Lewis Wolff.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed a committee to study the A's stadium situation and see if a deal can be worked out with the Giants and the A's ownership that would allow Wolff to move his franchise to San Jose. The Giants ownership does draw customers from San Jose/Santa Clara but that away is an hour away by car from the Giants ballpark in China Basin. The Oakland Coliseum is significantly closer to San Francisco and Oakland is easily accessible from San Francisco by car and train with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). The television market doesn't matter, both teams saturate the entire market with games and both teams share the radio market.
Selig and Major League Baseball worked out a deal in 2004 which allowed the then 29 MLB owners of the Montreal Expos and move the franchise to Washington even though D. C. was part of Peter Angelos' Baltimore Orioles territory. MLB established a baseball-centric regional sports network, the Mid Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) with Angelos getting the lion’s share of cable TV revenues to offset his potential losses of customers from Washington and Northern Virginia. The new Washington franchise would have significantly less cable TV revenues.
The answer to the Oakland dilemma seems to be paying off the Giants ownership so that Wolff can end up in San Jose, assuming San Jose residents want a stadium.
If Selig's committee, Wolff and the Giants ownership cannot work out a deal, Wolff could move his team anyway to San Jose and then sue MLB for violating antitrust laws although MLB does have an antitrust exemption. Wolff doesn't seem to be the type to challenge MLB. It is an option however.
MLB’s bay problem will drag into the 2010 baseball season. Wolff has a few years left on his Oakland Coliseum lease and there is still a possibility that Oakland might come back with a stadium deal. In the Tampa Bay area, that battle could go on for years.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
A three-league solution for the MLB
A three-league solution for the MLB
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 03/29/10 at 1:20 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/29/a-three-league-solution-for-the-mlb/
The Major League Baseball season will be opening up shortly, and for baseball backers who follow the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Kansas City Royals, it figures to be yet another long season.
It’s been many years since Kansas City and Pittsburgh boosters have had something to cheer about in October, but at one time in the 1970s and 1980s, Kansas City had playoff teams and Pittsburgh had contenders in the early 1990s.
Pittsburgh lost Barry Bonds because the franchise simply did not have the money to keep him. Bonds ended up signing with the San Francisco Giants after the 1992 season when he received a six-year, $43.75 million offer from the Bay Area team. Kansas City’s failures stem more from not developing good players after the team’s championship run ended in 1985, although Kansas City still had some good teams into the 1990s because then-owner Ewing Kauffman opened his checkbook. After Kauffman died in 1993, the baseball team’s fortunes sunk with him.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who himself was the owner of a struggling baseball team until he heard a higher call and took over as the owners’ top man, decided to ask some of the best minds in his industry to come up with plans to level the playing field.
The problem seems to be that the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox can just sign really good players to contracts that look more like telephone numbers, or they can bid for big-time Japanese players. New York and Boston have spent a lot of money and have been great teams; Boston has two championships in the past ten years; Philadelphia, is the best team (in theory) in the National League.
But the big money signings ruining the competitive balance argument has some flaws. Fred Wilpon’s New York Mets baseball club was awful in 2009 despite having a huge payroll, and Peter Angelos’ Baltimore Orioles won nothing in the past despite Angelos writing big checks to players.
Money is not the root of all evil in baseball, even if you believe the Red Sox CEO and President Larry Lucchino that the New York Yankees franchise is the “evil empire”.
Lucchino should not have spoken so quickly about his business partner. One of the Boston Red Sox’s properties is the Fenway Sports Group, and one of FSG’s clients is Dunkin’ Donuts. Guess which ad agency arranged a deal that featured Yankees pitcher Jaba Chamberlain in a Dunkin Donuts promotion?
Major League Baseball cannot split up the Yankees-Red Sox or there might be a whole new “Curse of the Bambino” on the industry.The Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is good for New York and Boston, for FOX, Turner Sports and ESPN. It is not good for people outside the northeast I-95 corridor, and that is something Selig wants to address.
Major League Baseball has had bad teams and bad franchises in the game since the start of the professional era in 1869. For some reason, neither the National nor the American League moved franchises around from 1903 to 1953. Team owners built their own stadiums.
The paradigm changed in March 1953, when Boston Braves owner Lou Perini moved his team to Milwaukee. Perini got a sweetheart deal from Milwaukee elected officials, who in 1950 decided to build a municipally funded baseball-football field to attract a Major League Baseball team and keep a portion of the Green Bay Packers home schedule in Milwaukee. Perini paid $1,000 in rent and got to keep concessions money, which got Walter O’Malley thinking about the future of his Brooklyn Dodgers. O’Malley felt the financially strong Dodgers franchise was going to fall behind Milwaukee, of all places, if he did not get a new stadium in Brooklyn.
O’Malley tested the waters in Jersey City, and his Dodgers played a handful of games west of the Hudson River hoping to get New York’s Mayor Robert Wagner and Robert Moses to listen to his plight. O’Malley took a deal in Los Angeles in 1957.
Financially struggling franchises followed Perini’s lead. O’Malley’s New York rival, Horace Stoneham, took his Giants to San Francisco in 1957 after taking a long look at Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Following the Tax Act of 1986, Major League Baseball found Fool’s Gold. The 1986 federal tax reform had a loophole that put a ceiling on how much revenue generated inside a municipally funded stadium or arena at eight percent, which meant owners could negotiate sweetheart contracts and pay players. New stadiums quickly came online and added revenues into the pockets of the owners but there was a problem.
It was a temporary fix for small market teams. The big boys would also get shiny new stadiums to increase revenue and baseball’s revenue sharing policies were not good to struggling owners in the 1990s. Cable TV became prominent and teams like the Yankees an Red Sox ended up owning the regional network cable TV stations that gave them even more money.
The big market owners who had astute decision-makers could pay top dollar for talent became dominant. Small market teams with limited money for payroll or signing young talent could succeed on occasion, but the success would be short lived. Once a player got to his sixth year, he could leave. Many did.
Exhibit A is the Florida Marlins franchise. Champions one year, rebuilding the next because the team could not afford to pay high prices for established talent.
One of the ideas floating around has teams shifting divisions. If Cleveland builds a good enough team to win the American League Central and get to the World Series (and that happened in 1997), Cleveland could stay in that division.
But if Cleveland is rotten and ownership is looking for extra home games against the Yankees, ownership can apply to switch divisions or trade places with, say, Toronto or Baltimore or Tampa Bay. Any one of those teams could pursue a switch if ownership feels that their team might be good enough to win the Central.
Central teams can move east or west, but movements are limited to just a two hour switch in time zones, which might be a problem for Detroit if Mike Ilitch wants to move his Tigers into the American League or National League West. Detroit, despite being a Central team, is on the eastern time zone clock.
Perhaps it is time for Major League Baseball to split into three leagues, the American League, National League and the Continental League with eight teams in the American League, eight in the National League and the other 14 in the Continental League. “Turn back the clock day” has been a good Major League promotion, so this one could be a good idea. In fact, it almost came to pass in 1960.
The Continental League of Professional Baseball Clubs was a brainchild of long time Baseball executive Branch Rickey. The man who signed Jackie Robinson to a contract with Brooklyn in 1946 and developed the farm system wanted to build a third major league after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated to California after the 1957 season. The plan in 1961 was for the Continental League to open the season with eight teams, Atlanta, Buffalo, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York and Toronto. The league would eventually claim Major League status while building baseball squads. The league folded in August 1960 after baseball’s National League decided to expand into New York and Houston.
The American League would house eight financially viable markets that have major government support (publicly supported stadiums or stadiums that give owners land and substantial tax breaks and incentives) along with big cable TV dollars and large corporate support. The AL would have the Yankees and Red Sox along with the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as permanent members, sort of like the United Nations’ security council. Those four teams would stay in the AL unless they finish next to last or last.
Seattle has been profitable lately and would qualify for the league; Baltimore has a great TV deal and a sweetheart lease at Camden Yards, so it’s possible that Baltimore could be franchise number 6. Toronto with a huge market, Rogers Communications funding the enterprise and with Bay Street, the Canadian version of Wall Street, nearby should be franchise seven. Number eight is a toss-up between Detroit and Cleveland, with possibly the Texas Rangers because of the Dallas-Fort Worth or the Minnesota Twins, representing Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Six teams would be banished to the Continental League. Kansas City, Oakland, Tampa Bay are keepers. Cleveland or Detroit or Minnesota or Texas would be the fourth, fifth or sixth franchises.
Retaining a position in the American League would require that a team finishes better than sixth with the last two teams in the standings dropping to the Continental League and two former American League teams joining the league by qualifying for the CL playoffs. The 14-team CL would be split into two divisions, the American Conference and the National Conference.
The National League would also house eight financially viable markets with the same set of qualifications stemming from government backing, cable TV support and corporate financing. The NL would have the New York Mets, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and the Chicago Cubs as permanent members. St. Louis would be the fifth team; San Francisco would the sixth club. It is extremely hard to find the seventh and eighth teams to fill out the league although cases could be made for Washington and perhaps Denver.
The National Conference of the Continental League could include Arizona, Cincinnati, Colorado, Florida, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Washington. The same rules would apply; the two top finishers in the National Conference would replace the two bottom feeders in the National League.
The result would be better baseball. Even though all 30 teams would get the same amount of national and international TV monies, the Continental League teams would be competing against similar sized markets and there would be incentive to win for the owners, the chance to return to the American and National League and a chance to play in the World Series. For the eight teams in the American and National League, being banished to the Continental League would be embarrassing so there is more incentive to win to stay in the big market leagues because only American and National league teams can play in the World Series.
There would be a Continental League championship and that would give fans in cities like Kansas City and Pittsburgh some hope for their baseball teams. The Continental League idea is just an idea and perhaps as valid of teams trading divisions.
Selig wants changes but baseball history suggests there will be always bad teams with financial problems. It’s just the way it is.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, author and a lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business.”
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 03/29/10 at 1:20 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/29/a-three-league-solution-for-the-mlb/
The Major League Baseball season will be opening up shortly, and for baseball backers who follow the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Kansas City Royals, it figures to be yet another long season.
It’s been many years since Kansas City and Pittsburgh boosters have had something to cheer about in October, but at one time in the 1970s and 1980s, Kansas City had playoff teams and Pittsburgh had contenders in the early 1990s.
Pittsburgh lost Barry Bonds because the franchise simply did not have the money to keep him. Bonds ended up signing with the San Francisco Giants after the 1992 season when he received a six-year, $43.75 million offer from the Bay Area team. Kansas City’s failures stem more from not developing good players after the team’s championship run ended in 1985, although Kansas City still had some good teams into the 1990s because then-owner Ewing Kauffman opened his checkbook. After Kauffman died in 1993, the baseball team’s fortunes sunk with him.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who himself was the owner of a struggling baseball team until he heard a higher call and took over as the owners’ top man, decided to ask some of the best minds in his industry to come up with plans to level the playing field.
The problem seems to be that the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox can just sign really good players to contracts that look more like telephone numbers, or they can bid for big-time Japanese players. New York and Boston have spent a lot of money and have been great teams; Boston has two championships in the past ten years; Philadelphia, is the best team (in theory) in the National League.
But the big money signings ruining the competitive balance argument has some flaws. Fred Wilpon’s New York Mets baseball club was awful in 2009 despite having a huge payroll, and Peter Angelos’ Baltimore Orioles won nothing in the past despite Angelos writing big checks to players.
Money is not the root of all evil in baseball, even if you believe the Red Sox CEO and President Larry Lucchino that the New York Yankees franchise is the “evil empire”.
Lucchino should not have spoken so quickly about his business partner. One of the Boston Red Sox’s properties is the Fenway Sports Group, and one of FSG’s clients is Dunkin’ Donuts. Guess which ad agency arranged a deal that featured Yankees pitcher Jaba Chamberlain in a Dunkin Donuts promotion?
Major League Baseball cannot split up the Yankees-Red Sox or there might be a whole new “Curse of the Bambino” on the industry.The Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is good for New York and Boston, for FOX, Turner Sports and ESPN. It is not good for people outside the northeast I-95 corridor, and that is something Selig wants to address.
Major League Baseball has had bad teams and bad franchises in the game since the start of the professional era in 1869. For some reason, neither the National nor the American League moved franchises around from 1903 to 1953. Team owners built their own stadiums.
The paradigm changed in March 1953, when Boston Braves owner Lou Perini moved his team to Milwaukee. Perini got a sweetheart deal from Milwaukee elected officials, who in 1950 decided to build a municipally funded baseball-football field to attract a Major League Baseball team and keep a portion of the Green Bay Packers home schedule in Milwaukee. Perini paid $1,000 in rent and got to keep concessions money, which got Walter O’Malley thinking about the future of his Brooklyn Dodgers. O’Malley felt the financially strong Dodgers franchise was going to fall behind Milwaukee, of all places, if he did not get a new stadium in Brooklyn.
O’Malley tested the waters in Jersey City, and his Dodgers played a handful of games west of the Hudson River hoping to get New York’s Mayor Robert Wagner and Robert Moses to listen to his plight. O’Malley took a deal in Los Angeles in 1957.
Financially struggling franchises followed Perini’s lead. O’Malley’s New York rival, Horace Stoneham, took his Giants to San Francisco in 1957 after taking a long look at Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Following the Tax Act of 1986, Major League Baseball found Fool’s Gold. The 1986 federal tax reform had a loophole that put a ceiling on how much revenue generated inside a municipally funded stadium or arena at eight percent, which meant owners could negotiate sweetheart contracts and pay players. New stadiums quickly came online and added revenues into the pockets of the owners but there was a problem.
It was a temporary fix for small market teams. The big boys would also get shiny new stadiums to increase revenue and baseball’s revenue sharing policies were not good to struggling owners in the 1990s. Cable TV became prominent and teams like the Yankees an Red Sox ended up owning the regional network cable TV stations that gave them even more money.
The big market owners who had astute decision-makers could pay top dollar for talent became dominant. Small market teams with limited money for payroll or signing young talent could succeed on occasion, but the success would be short lived. Once a player got to his sixth year, he could leave. Many did.
Exhibit A is the Florida Marlins franchise. Champions one year, rebuilding the next because the team could not afford to pay high prices for established talent.
One of the ideas floating around has teams shifting divisions. If Cleveland builds a good enough team to win the American League Central and get to the World Series (and that happened in 1997), Cleveland could stay in that division.
But if Cleveland is rotten and ownership is looking for extra home games against the Yankees, ownership can apply to switch divisions or trade places with, say, Toronto or Baltimore or Tampa Bay. Any one of those teams could pursue a switch if ownership feels that their team might be good enough to win the Central.
Central teams can move east or west, but movements are limited to just a two hour switch in time zones, which might be a problem for Detroit if Mike Ilitch wants to move his Tigers into the American League or National League West. Detroit, despite being a Central team, is on the eastern time zone clock.
Perhaps it is time for Major League Baseball to split into three leagues, the American League, National League and the Continental League with eight teams in the American League, eight in the National League and the other 14 in the Continental League. “Turn back the clock day” has been a good Major League promotion, so this one could be a good idea. In fact, it almost came to pass in 1960.
The Continental League of Professional Baseball Clubs was a brainchild of long time Baseball executive Branch Rickey. The man who signed Jackie Robinson to a contract with Brooklyn in 1946 and developed the farm system wanted to build a third major league after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated to California after the 1957 season. The plan in 1961 was for the Continental League to open the season with eight teams, Atlanta, Buffalo, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York and Toronto. The league would eventually claim Major League status while building baseball squads. The league folded in August 1960 after baseball’s National League decided to expand into New York and Houston.
The American League would house eight financially viable markets that have major government support (publicly supported stadiums or stadiums that give owners land and substantial tax breaks and incentives) along with big cable TV dollars and large corporate support. The AL would have the Yankees and Red Sox along with the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as permanent members, sort of like the United Nations’ security council. Those four teams would stay in the AL unless they finish next to last or last.
Seattle has been profitable lately and would qualify for the league; Baltimore has a great TV deal and a sweetheart lease at Camden Yards, so it’s possible that Baltimore could be franchise number 6. Toronto with a huge market, Rogers Communications funding the enterprise and with Bay Street, the Canadian version of Wall Street, nearby should be franchise seven. Number eight is a toss-up between Detroit and Cleveland, with possibly the Texas Rangers because of the Dallas-Fort Worth or the Minnesota Twins, representing Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Six teams would be banished to the Continental League. Kansas City, Oakland, Tampa Bay are keepers. Cleveland or Detroit or Minnesota or Texas would be the fourth, fifth or sixth franchises.
Retaining a position in the American League would require that a team finishes better than sixth with the last two teams in the standings dropping to the Continental League and two former American League teams joining the league by qualifying for the CL playoffs. The 14-team CL would be split into two divisions, the American Conference and the National Conference.
The National League would also house eight financially viable markets with the same set of qualifications stemming from government backing, cable TV support and corporate financing. The NL would have the New York Mets, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and the Chicago Cubs as permanent members. St. Louis would be the fifth team; San Francisco would the sixth club. It is extremely hard to find the seventh and eighth teams to fill out the league although cases could be made for Washington and perhaps Denver.
The National Conference of the Continental League could include Arizona, Cincinnati, Colorado, Florida, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Washington. The same rules would apply; the two top finishers in the National Conference would replace the two bottom feeders in the National League.
The result would be better baseball. Even though all 30 teams would get the same amount of national and international TV monies, the Continental League teams would be competing against similar sized markets and there would be incentive to win for the owners, the chance to return to the American and National League and a chance to play in the World Series. For the eight teams in the American and National League, being banished to the Continental League would be embarrassing so there is more incentive to win to stay in the big market leagues because only American and National league teams can play in the World Series.
There would be a Continental League championship and that would give fans in cities like Kansas City and Pittsburgh some hope for their baseball teams. The Continental League idea is just an idea and perhaps as valid of teams trading divisions.
Selig wants changes but baseball history suggests there will be always bad teams with financial problems. It’s just the way it is.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, author and a lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business.”
Saturday, March 27, 2010
WADA’s Tired Demands of Major League Baseball Again
WADA’s Tired Demands of Major League Baseball Again
By Evan Weiner
March 27, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- From the this is boring file, John Fahey, the President of the World Anti-Doping Agency, is demanding that Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association knuckle under to him and his merry band of urine collectors and apparently now blood test takers and get serious about cleansing the sport of "cheaters." Fahey wants Major League Baseball to start taking blood samples in addition to urine samples of individual players to see if they are using human growth hormone.
Apparently Fahey thinks that players should just give blood and is presuming that all the players are using HGH until proven otherwise. There is a presumption of guilt by the WADA guys and they are absolutely correct in their approach.
Just ask them.
Fahey and his group, who trample over individual rights in their quest to clean sports, say there is a valid blood test for HGH because a British rugby player tested, Terry Newton, positive after giving blood. The odd thing about Fahey blasting Major League Baseball is that International Olympic Committee delegates have exiled the sport to Elba; well maybe not Elba as Major League Baseball has moved on and started a global competition, the World Baseball Classic.
The Newton case was the first time a player in any athletic endeavor tested positive for HGH but a major question remains. Is the test reliable? At this point, WADA officials say yes but WADA is an arm of the International Olympic Committee, an organization that has been assailed by the former Majority Leader of the United States Senate George Mitchell for being corrupt. The same George Mitchell who issued the drug report on Major League Baseball.
Fahey is following in the footsteps of his predecessor Dick Pound, the Montreal lawyer, who was also on a cheater crusade. Apparently the Pounds and Faheys of the world and you can throw in the President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, want to rid the sports world of cheaters even though those cheaters are using illegal substances that could end up in arrests and maybe a conviction here or there.
Rogge tried to make that case to Italian authorities prior to the 2006 Turin Olympics.
WADA acts as if it is a sovereign state and one of the WADA rules is that all athletes be ready for a drug test when WADA wants to administer a drug test at any time or any place. A human rights violation is not troubling to the Pounds and Faheys of the world. Or Rogge either as he apparently looked the other way in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics about China’s human rights record.
Some athletic organizations have fought back against the 24/7 rule and the tactics seems more in line with the Geneva Convention treaties that govern the treatment of war prisoners than sports. The Belgium sports union, Sporta, challenged WADA's edict under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights that allows for privacy and the right to be free from unlawful searches. The International Federation of Professional Footballers is not very happy with WADA either.
The country of France doesn't seem too impressed with WADA either. A plan to increase taxes on television sports fees that would go to help fund WADA according to the magazine Cycleworld has been scrapped. French football team owners didn't think that they should be taxed to support anti-doping efforts.
WADA is not a state nor is the International Olympic Committee although the IOC for some inexplicable reason has the same United Nations observer rights as the Vatican, which is a sovereign state. WADA works with the cover of governments globally.
That is the most troubling part of the Rogge-Pound and now Fahey squawking. Governments have given these people legitimacy. The World Anti-Doping Agency gets funding from governments globally. WADA just cares about sports. It would be refreshing to see a Fahey, a former Australian Finance Minister, Rogge or Pound speak out on the drug problems on the US-Mexican border or the other drug problems in the world including poppy production in Afghanistan but they don’t utter a word. They just go after athletes. Of course Rogge and his IOC delegation (Pound was an IOC delegate) and Fahey make their livelihoods through international sports events with funding from American TV networks and American corporations paying a great deal of the freight.
Major League Baseball has been in the IOC/WADA cross hairs for a long time. The international sports organization was stung by Major League Baseball's refusal to interrupt the regular season and send MLB's best players to a meaningless two-week baseball tournament. The IOC will never officially admit a vendetta against Major League Baseball, that is too petty even for the IOC, but IOC delegates think they have gotten even with Baseball Commissioner Bid Selig and the former Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association Donald Fehr by throwing the game out of the Olympics starting with the London Games in 2012 and continuing with the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics. In an unrelated matter, the IOC delegates also dismissed softball from the Olympic sports roster beginning in 2012 but the thought is that the IOC by dropping women’s softball is somehow hurting Major League Baseball.
The unofficial thinking is that the IOC was punishing baseball for not toeing the line for not sending players to their Olympics and also not adopting the WADA rules by more than 130 governments and numerous sports organizations globally.
Fahey and his ilk cannot be too happy that the United States and Canadian law enforcement officials are investigating Dr. Anthony Galea who is at the center of a drug smuggling case involving human growth hormones. Dr. Galea has some big named clients including Golf's Tiger Woods and New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. The Fahey/Rogge view of HGH is slightly different than that of real governments. It is illegal to possess the stuff unless administered by a physician. The Fahey/Rogge doctrine is more in the lines of the use of HGH is cheating and that a simple suspension of a couple of years is better than jail time.
Since steroids and HGH possession is illegal in the United States without a doctor's consent, law enforcement officials, whether it is the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Drug Enforcement Administration, should be the lead investigators not some bunch of people like Fahey, Rogge and Pound who think they have some quasi-governmental authority.
At the end of the day, if the big money behind sports wanted to clean up the industry and that is a big if, there are very simple steps that can be taken. Turn off the money faucet that keeps big time sports going in the United States. Family values corporations like Disney (ESPN) or another guy who peddles high morals, Rupert Murdoch (FOX), could just stop buying television rights to Major League Baseball and other sports, corporations could say no to buying big ticket items like club seats and luxury boxes, municipalities would make teams pay property taxes and cut far better leases with teams. But that doesn't happen.
Which begs the question. Is Fahey truly interested in assuring the integrity of a sports event or is he, Rogge and all the other sports moralists that are pushing evasive drug testing by taking blood and trampling on athletes' rights just to appease some fans who scream on talk radio, although most don't care about athletes using performance enhancing drugs, and protect their high paying jobs and global status by jumping up and down and yelling about the need for Major League Baseball players giving blood because it is some sort of privilege to be an athlete?
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
March 27, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- From the this is boring file, John Fahey, the President of the World Anti-Doping Agency, is demanding that Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association knuckle under to him and his merry band of urine collectors and apparently now blood test takers and get serious about cleansing the sport of "cheaters." Fahey wants Major League Baseball to start taking blood samples in addition to urine samples of individual players to see if they are using human growth hormone.
Apparently Fahey thinks that players should just give blood and is presuming that all the players are using HGH until proven otherwise. There is a presumption of guilt by the WADA guys and they are absolutely correct in their approach.
Just ask them.
Fahey and his group, who trample over individual rights in their quest to clean sports, say there is a valid blood test for HGH because a British rugby player tested, Terry Newton, positive after giving blood. The odd thing about Fahey blasting Major League Baseball is that International Olympic Committee delegates have exiled the sport to Elba; well maybe not Elba as Major League Baseball has moved on and started a global competition, the World Baseball Classic.
The Newton case was the first time a player in any athletic endeavor tested positive for HGH but a major question remains. Is the test reliable? At this point, WADA officials say yes but WADA is an arm of the International Olympic Committee, an organization that has been assailed by the former Majority Leader of the United States Senate George Mitchell for being corrupt. The same George Mitchell who issued the drug report on Major League Baseball.
Fahey is following in the footsteps of his predecessor Dick Pound, the Montreal lawyer, who was also on a cheater crusade. Apparently the Pounds and Faheys of the world and you can throw in the President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, want to rid the sports world of cheaters even though those cheaters are using illegal substances that could end up in arrests and maybe a conviction here or there.
Rogge tried to make that case to Italian authorities prior to the 2006 Turin Olympics.
WADA acts as if it is a sovereign state and one of the WADA rules is that all athletes be ready for a drug test when WADA wants to administer a drug test at any time or any place. A human rights violation is not troubling to the Pounds and Faheys of the world. Or Rogge either as he apparently looked the other way in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics about China’s human rights record.
Some athletic organizations have fought back against the 24/7 rule and the tactics seems more in line with the Geneva Convention treaties that govern the treatment of war prisoners than sports. The Belgium sports union, Sporta, challenged WADA's edict under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights that allows for privacy and the right to be free from unlawful searches. The International Federation of Professional Footballers is not very happy with WADA either.
The country of France doesn't seem too impressed with WADA either. A plan to increase taxes on television sports fees that would go to help fund WADA according to the magazine Cycleworld has been scrapped. French football team owners didn't think that they should be taxed to support anti-doping efforts.
WADA is not a state nor is the International Olympic Committee although the IOC for some inexplicable reason has the same United Nations observer rights as the Vatican, which is a sovereign state. WADA works with the cover of governments globally.
That is the most troubling part of the Rogge-Pound and now Fahey squawking. Governments have given these people legitimacy. The World Anti-Doping Agency gets funding from governments globally. WADA just cares about sports. It would be refreshing to see a Fahey, a former Australian Finance Minister, Rogge or Pound speak out on the drug problems on the US-Mexican border or the other drug problems in the world including poppy production in Afghanistan but they don’t utter a word. They just go after athletes. Of course Rogge and his IOC delegation (Pound was an IOC delegate) and Fahey make their livelihoods through international sports events with funding from American TV networks and American corporations paying a great deal of the freight.
Major League Baseball has been in the IOC/WADA cross hairs for a long time. The international sports organization was stung by Major League Baseball's refusal to interrupt the regular season and send MLB's best players to a meaningless two-week baseball tournament. The IOC will never officially admit a vendetta against Major League Baseball, that is too petty even for the IOC, but IOC delegates think they have gotten even with Baseball Commissioner Bid Selig and the former Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association Donald Fehr by throwing the game out of the Olympics starting with the London Games in 2012 and continuing with the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics. In an unrelated matter, the IOC delegates also dismissed softball from the Olympic sports roster beginning in 2012 but the thought is that the IOC by dropping women’s softball is somehow hurting Major League Baseball.
The unofficial thinking is that the IOC was punishing baseball for not toeing the line for not sending players to their Olympics and also not adopting the WADA rules by more than 130 governments and numerous sports organizations globally.
Fahey and his ilk cannot be too happy that the United States and Canadian law enforcement officials are investigating Dr. Anthony Galea who is at the center of a drug smuggling case involving human growth hormones. Dr. Galea has some big named clients including Golf's Tiger Woods and New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. The Fahey/Rogge view of HGH is slightly different than that of real governments. It is illegal to possess the stuff unless administered by a physician. The Fahey/Rogge doctrine is more in the lines of the use of HGH is cheating and that a simple suspension of a couple of years is better than jail time.
Since steroids and HGH possession is illegal in the United States without a doctor's consent, law enforcement officials, whether it is the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Drug Enforcement Administration, should be the lead investigators not some bunch of people like Fahey, Rogge and Pound who think they have some quasi-governmental authority.
At the end of the day, if the big money behind sports wanted to clean up the industry and that is a big if, there are very simple steps that can be taken. Turn off the money faucet that keeps big time sports going in the United States. Family values corporations like Disney (ESPN) or another guy who peddles high morals, Rupert Murdoch (FOX), could just stop buying television rights to Major League Baseball and other sports, corporations could say no to buying big ticket items like club seats and luxury boxes, municipalities would make teams pay property taxes and cut far better leases with teams. But that doesn't happen.
Which begs the question. Is Fahey truly interested in assuring the integrity of a sports event or is he, Rogge and all the other sports moralists that are pushing evasive drug testing by taking blood and trampling on athletes' rights just to appease some fans who scream on talk radio, although most don't care about athletes using performance enhancing drugs, and protect their high paying jobs and global status by jumping up and down and yelling about the need for Major League Baseball players giving blood because it is some sort of privilege to be an athlete?
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
How Racinos Have Saved the Standardbred Horse Racing Business
How Racinos Have Saved the Standardbred Horse Racing Business
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m3d24-How-racinos-have-saved-thestandard-horse-racing-business
By Evan Weiner
March 24, 2010
(Dover, DE) -- The Minnesota State Legislature has apparently not shut the door to the idea of having “racinos” throughout the state after lawmakers left the idea for dead nearly two weeks ago. The Minnesota House of Agriculture, Rural Economics and Veterans Affairs Finance Committee has given approval to keep the discussion going about putting slots into two of the state’s racetracks.
The revenues that could be raised at the tracks could go to various projects including the funding of a new football stadium for the Minnesota Vikings.
Whether the panel’s recommendation has any legs is debatable at this point. But Minnesota is looking at the “racino” plan again, which is a bit more than New York State is doing at the moment.
Last Sunday, people connected to the thoroughbred racing industry in New York demonstrated in support of putting a “racino” at Aqueduct and Belmont with the thought that by putting video lottery terminals or slot machines in those two tracks along with one in Saratoga would save not only the meets at those three tracks but it would also save all of the ancillary businesses that go with racing including horse farms, breeding, training, and taking care of horses.
Thoroughbred racing in New York State is dying.
The only reason that standardbred racing survives in New York at Yonkers Raceway, Monticello, Batavia Downs, Buffalo Raceway, Finger Lakes Racetrack, Saratoga Gaming and Raceway, Tioga Downs, Vernon Downs is because of the video lottery terminals (VLT) or slot machines.
In 2007, Tim Rooney, who owns Yonkers Raceway, said without the “machines” as he called the VLT or slots, Yonkers Raceway would be a shopping mall.
The Vice President of Horse Racing, Charles Lockhart, at Dover Downs in Dover, DE. said that his Delaware racetrack, which features 133 days of standardbred racing between mid-October and mid-April probably, would be a shopping center too without the slots.
Dover Downs will become a full betting center sometime in the late spring when table games are added to the slots and football betting. The Dover Downs’ ownership group is hoping to increase sports gambling at the facility’s sports bar with additional professional sports betting and is waiting for a court date to explain why there should be more than just parlay betting on NFL games at the facility.
Dover Downs, like just about every other track in the United States was in a steep decline by the 1970s. At one time as late as 1950, horse racing was mentioned in the same breath as boxing and baseball in popularity in the United States. But a number of factors pushed both standardbred and thoroughbred racing into the abyss including the emergence of state sponsored lotteries, Off Track Betting (OTB), and American Indian casinos. The ease with which one could now place a bet had a significant impact on horse racing.
"The first thing was OTB came in," Rooney said in 2007. "And OTB took 30-some percent of the business from us and they were giving them the product in the neighborhoods. There was always a certain element of people who didn't care about the sport — they cared about the gambling aspect of it…then we started televising our racing into the parlors, so it made it easier for them to stay in the city than [come] out here [to Yonkers], so our attendance went down even further. Then you add the other types of gambling: Atlantic City came in, the lottery came in.
"People want to win that $200 million prize. I think the Indian casinos up in Connecticut and having Atlantic City open, it took a lot of business off of the racing industry," Rooney added. "It's a faster game and you don't have to get that racing form, and handicap what the speed rating was, if it was a muddy track, and what jockey or driver switches there are. It's a little more complicated than getting on one of these machines, putting $50 in it, and just pressing buttons."
Lockhart's racetrack is inside the Dover Downs Speedway, which is behind the Dover Downs resort. The track has no horses based at the facility but the horses that do compete stay at nearby farms and are brought to the track on race day. It is rather unlikely there would have been racing or even standard bred horse farms in Delaware without the gaming.
The slots revenues have kept horsemen in Delaware as some of the proceeds from the slots go to the daily purses. Delaware's purses have picked up which means a better caliber horse races in the state and more incentive for horsemen from states other then Delaware to set up shop.
New York has the Belmont Stakes, which may be the only racing day that gets people out to the Elmont, New York facility. The state, because of the slots and soon video table games, still has a standardbred horse racing industry but the entire thoroughbred industry is in deep trouble. Dover Downs is adding tables in June. The standardbred racetracks in New York cannot add tables unless two different state legislatures in consecutive years give the go ahead for tables and the New York governor signs it into law.
Given just how dysfunctional the governor's office and the legislature have become in Albany, it may take years before that type of legislation is even considered by lawmakers. But the video tables are coming to the racinos.
It is a long and arduous process from a proposal to have slots in a racetrack until a state legislature passes a bill that gets a governor's signature or voters say yes in a referendum. In Delaware, Lockhart said the first effort to put slots in the state's three racetracks began in 1988 and the legislation authorizing slots at the tracks did not come to pass until 1994. Dover Downs’ casino opened on December 29, 1995.
The horse racing community is multifaceted according to Lockhart and to those in the New York thoroughbred industry who protested that New York Governor David Patterson and the state legislature still does not have a partner for a potential casino at Aqueduct.
"In Aqueduct," said Lockhart, "there are the horses and the blacksmiths, vets, and a lot goes into a race, a meet, not just the jockey. We don't have a barn area (at Dover Downs) but most of the people (who race) are from the area. It is a big agriculture business. (Dover Downs) employs 1,000 people and is the largest taxpayer in the city. Any place the slots go, it stimulates the agribusiness of horse racing.
"There is no question Dover Downs would have been out of business in 1995 (without the slots). Harrington Park canceled its meet in 1994 and was saved."
NASCAR first held an event in Dover in 1969.
The NASCAR events would still be in business with or without the horse racing/slots business. The Dover Downs story is not very much different than standardbred tracks in New York and in West Virginia and other states. Betting in Delaware is restricted to the three tracks, Delaware Park, Dover Downs and Harrington.
There is some irony here for horsemen and the others connected to the racing business. State sponsored gambling, which includes lottery games, helped destroy the thoroughbred and standardbred business yet the racing industry is getting helped out by state sponsored "racinos" but as Rooney pointed out in 2007, "from a horseman's standpoint, it doesn't make any difference what the source of income is. If the source of income is going up in leaps and bounds, and the breeding programs are going up in leaps and bounds, it's revitalizing the breeding industry, the people in the farms, the people buying horses and racing horses."
That is the message New York's thoroughbred community is sending out.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m3d24-How-racinos-have-saved-thestandard-horse-racing-business
By Evan Weiner
March 24, 2010
(Dover, DE) -- The Minnesota State Legislature has apparently not shut the door to the idea of having “racinos” throughout the state after lawmakers left the idea for dead nearly two weeks ago. The Minnesota House of Agriculture, Rural Economics and Veterans Affairs Finance Committee has given approval to keep the discussion going about putting slots into two of the state’s racetracks.
The revenues that could be raised at the tracks could go to various projects including the funding of a new football stadium for the Minnesota Vikings.
Whether the panel’s recommendation has any legs is debatable at this point. But Minnesota is looking at the “racino” plan again, which is a bit more than New York State is doing at the moment.
Last Sunday, people connected to the thoroughbred racing industry in New York demonstrated in support of putting a “racino” at Aqueduct and Belmont with the thought that by putting video lottery terminals or slot machines in those two tracks along with one in Saratoga would save not only the meets at those three tracks but it would also save all of the ancillary businesses that go with racing including horse farms, breeding, training, and taking care of horses.
Thoroughbred racing in New York State is dying.
The only reason that standardbred racing survives in New York at Yonkers Raceway, Monticello, Batavia Downs, Buffalo Raceway, Finger Lakes Racetrack, Saratoga Gaming and Raceway, Tioga Downs, Vernon Downs is because of the video lottery terminals (VLT) or slot machines.
In 2007, Tim Rooney, who owns Yonkers Raceway, said without the “machines” as he called the VLT or slots, Yonkers Raceway would be a shopping mall.
The Vice President of Horse Racing, Charles Lockhart, at Dover Downs in Dover, DE. said that his Delaware racetrack, which features 133 days of standardbred racing between mid-October and mid-April probably, would be a shopping center too without the slots.
Dover Downs will become a full betting center sometime in the late spring when table games are added to the slots and football betting. The Dover Downs’ ownership group is hoping to increase sports gambling at the facility’s sports bar with additional professional sports betting and is waiting for a court date to explain why there should be more than just parlay betting on NFL games at the facility.
Dover Downs, like just about every other track in the United States was in a steep decline by the 1970s. At one time as late as 1950, horse racing was mentioned in the same breath as boxing and baseball in popularity in the United States. But a number of factors pushed both standardbred and thoroughbred racing into the abyss including the emergence of state sponsored lotteries, Off Track Betting (OTB), and American Indian casinos. The ease with which one could now place a bet had a significant impact on horse racing.
"The first thing was OTB came in," Rooney said in 2007. "And OTB took 30-some percent of the business from us and they were giving them the product in the neighborhoods. There was always a certain element of people who didn't care about the sport — they cared about the gambling aspect of it…then we started televising our racing into the parlors, so it made it easier for them to stay in the city than [come] out here [to Yonkers], so our attendance went down even further. Then you add the other types of gambling: Atlantic City came in, the lottery came in.
"People want to win that $200 million prize. I think the Indian casinos up in Connecticut and having Atlantic City open, it took a lot of business off of the racing industry," Rooney added. "It's a faster game and you don't have to get that racing form, and handicap what the speed rating was, if it was a muddy track, and what jockey or driver switches there are. It's a little more complicated than getting on one of these machines, putting $50 in it, and just pressing buttons."
Lockhart's racetrack is inside the Dover Downs Speedway, which is behind the Dover Downs resort. The track has no horses based at the facility but the horses that do compete stay at nearby farms and are brought to the track on race day. It is rather unlikely there would have been racing or even standard bred horse farms in Delaware without the gaming.
The slots revenues have kept horsemen in Delaware as some of the proceeds from the slots go to the daily purses. Delaware's purses have picked up which means a better caliber horse races in the state and more incentive for horsemen from states other then Delaware to set up shop.
New York has the Belmont Stakes, which may be the only racing day that gets people out to the Elmont, New York facility. The state, because of the slots and soon video table games, still has a standardbred horse racing industry but the entire thoroughbred industry is in deep trouble. Dover Downs is adding tables in June. The standardbred racetracks in New York cannot add tables unless two different state legislatures in consecutive years give the go ahead for tables and the New York governor signs it into law.
Given just how dysfunctional the governor's office and the legislature have become in Albany, it may take years before that type of legislation is even considered by lawmakers. But the video tables are coming to the racinos.
It is a long and arduous process from a proposal to have slots in a racetrack until a state legislature passes a bill that gets a governor's signature or voters say yes in a referendum. In Delaware, Lockhart said the first effort to put slots in the state's three racetracks began in 1988 and the legislation authorizing slots at the tracks did not come to pass until 1994. Dover Downs’ casino opened on December 29, 1995.
The horse racing community is multifaceted according to Lockhart and to those in the New York thoroughbred industry who protested that New York Governor David Patterson and the state legislature still does not have a partner for a potential casino at Aqueduct.
"In Aqueduct," said Lockhart, "there are the horses and the blacksmiths, vets, and a lot goes into a race, a meet, not just the jockey. We don't have a barn area (at Dover Downs) but most of the people (who race) are from the area. It is a big agriculture business. (Dover Downs) employs 1,000 people and is the largest taxpayer in the city. Any place the slots go, it stimulates the agribusiness of horse racing.
"There is no question Dover Downs would have been out of business in 1995 (without the slots). Harrington Park canceled its meet in 1994 and was saved."
NASCAR first held an event in Dover in 1969.
The NASCAR events would still be in business with or without the horse racing/slots business. The Dover Downs story is not very much different than standardbred tracks in New York and in West Virginia and other states. Betting in Delaware is restricted to the three tracks, Delaware Park, Dover Downs and Harrington.
There is some irony here for horsemen and the others connected to the racing business. State sponsored gambling, which includes lottery games, helped destroy the thoroughbred and standardbred business yet the racing industry is getting helped out by state sponsored "racinos" but as Rooney pointed out in 2007, "from a horseman's standpoint, it doesn't make any difference what the source of income is. If the source of income is going up in leaps and bounds, and the breeding programs are going up in leaps and bounds, it's revitalizing the breeding industry, the people in the farms, the people buying horses and racing horses."
That is the message New York's thoroughbred community is sending out.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
New York Giants get first home Meadowlands game, so what?
New York Giants Get First Home Meadowlands game, So What?
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m3d16-New-York-Giants-get-first-home-Meadowlands-game-so-what
By Evan Weiner
March 16, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- The owner of the East Rutherford, New Jersey-based New York Jets is unhappy that his team will not host the first “regular” season National Football League game at the new Meadowlands Stadium. Robert Wood Johnson IV, better known as Woody, unloaded on the way the National Football League handled the coin toss which decided the team that would get the first game honor without any representatives from Johnson’s Jets or the stadium’s other tenant and half owner, the Mara-Tisch families’ owned New York Giants. The Mara-Tisch Giants “won” the toss and got the first regular season game on Sunday, September 12th while Johnson’s Jets get the first Monday night game at the place on the following day.
Both teams are scheduled to play pre-season games in the new building including one against each other. The Mara-Tisch Giants practice outside the facility. The stadium opens April 10th with a college lacrosse tournament, there is a three day music festival at the end of April, the first “football” game will be a match between Mexico and Ecuador on May 7, Bon Jovi is performing for three nights there in May followed by the Eagles, not the ones from Philadelphia, in June and U2 is in for a July concert. NFL pre-season games come four months into the stadium’s existence.
The stadium, built for football, is featuring other events which should help pay some of the bills at the place. The stadium is also available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Johnson put up half the cash for the new place and the surrounding real estate which will be turned into a New York-area football hall of fame and other businesses, the Mara-Tisch families put up the other 50 percent with the state of New Jersey kicking in hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure and East Rutherford gets only a slice of what should be a multimillion check for property taxes through a mechanism called “Payments in Lieu of Taxes” or PILOT.
Johnson released a statement which condemned the league and probably the one-time Jets employee, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
“An NFL coin toss has a few fundamental elements that are missing here, most notably the presence of the teams involved,” said Johnson. “That's how it's always done in the League, whether it’s determining the order of the draft or deciding who’s going to kick off the game. When the issue of which team would be hosting the first regular season game could not be resolved on the merits, I suggested a coin toss as the fairest way to resolve this issue. The League rejected that idea. Then, I was told on Friday that a coin toss had taken place at the League office and that the Jets had lost. We rejected a process in which neither team was present. The League departed from our time-honored tradition and declined the opportunity to set the matter straight with a transparent process. “
And with that Mara-Tisch get to “open” the stadium and Johnson gets what New York Rangers forward Sean Avery might call “sloppy seconds”
Perhaps the National Football League was the wrong party to hold the coin flip. The truth of the matter is that the coin flip should have been held in the Trenton office of the Governor of the State of New Jersey, and Governor Chris Christie should have conducted the flip. Governor Christie was not in office in 2005 when the Mara/Tisch-Johnson stadium/real estate deal was signed and when New Jersey committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the project and signed off on giving East Rutherford a slice of the property tax assessment on the land. New Jersey is a partner in the stadium venture and should have been included in the process.
There will be all sorts of conspiracy theories about even whether there was a coin flip but the Maras have seemingly gotten their way virtually every time in the New York area since the one time bookie and bootlegger Tim Mara invested $500 to get an NFL franchise in 1925 for Manhattan. Mara’s Giants franchise was a financial disaster throughout the 1925 season and the team was saved from financial ruin by George Halas quite by accident. The Chicago Bears owner Halas signed Red Grange right after Grange’s college football season with Illinois was done and immediately went on tour with the “Galloping Ghost.”
One of the stops was the Polo Grounds in Manhattan with the Giants hosting the Bears and New Yorkers came to see not the Giants, but the legendary Grange. That game paid the bills and established Mara’s team, at least for the 1926 season. But the Grange game also caused Mara some problems.
Grange and his agent C. C. (Cash and Carry) Pyle applied to get an NFL franchise for Yankee Stadium for the 1926 season based on the Polo Grounds game. The NFL, protecting Mara’s franchise, said no. Grange and Pyle started the first American Football League in 1926. The league folded after just one season but the NFL took Grange and the Yankees franchise in 1927 to replace the Brooklyn Lions. Grange was injured in 1927 and his team folded after the 1928 season.
The New York territory has been in the Mara family since 1925 and as Bill Parcells said in 1991 when he quit as Giants coach, “it is the flagship franchise of the league.” Parcells spoke an awful lot of truth with that statement although there is little evidence that the Mara family was all that influential in the league and that whatever influence the Mara family may have had stemmed from being in the biggest city in America and their ability to withstand challenges from other owners trying to make it in New York in football.
The Mara family outlasted the Staten Island Stapletons (1929-32), the Newark Tornadoes (1930), the Brooklyn Dodgers (1930-43), and the Brooklyn Tigers (1944). In 1945, Dan Topping’s Dodgers merged forces with the Boston Yanks. Topping owned Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees owner was part owner of the Yanks-Dodgers combination. Topping decided to move his portion of the Tigers from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field to Yankee Stadium, but Tim Mara refused to allow Topping to invade his territory as the Polo Grounds as across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium. Topping took holdings out of the NFL and joined the rival All American Football Conference in 1946 playing as the Brooklyn Dodgers and eventually as the second New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium. That team folded when the National Football League absorbed three AAFC teams, Baltimore, Cleveland and San Francisco in 1950.
That was not the last time Mara had to face competition from another Yankee Stadium-based team. The Boston Yanks moved to New York and the Polo Grounds in 1949 and the owners, the singer Kate Smith and her agent Ted Collins renamed the team the New York Bulldogs. In 1950, Collins and Smith moved across the river to Yankee Stadium and called the team the New York Yankees. That NFL franchise folded after 1951 and ended up in Dallas.
The Mara family would not have any New York City rivals between 1952 and 1959. In 1960, the fourth American Football League put a team in the Polo Grounds, Mara moved to Topping’s Yankee Stadium in 1956 from the Polo Grounds. Harry Wismer’s New York Titans franchise was a financial shipwreck but the AFL was able to get new owners for the team in 1963 with a group led by David (Sonny) Werblin.
Sonny Werblin gave the Mara family a lot of trouble. Werblin was well connected in show business and worked for a company that provided programming for David Sarnoff’s National Broadcasting Company. Sarnoff’s NBC lost the bid to gain control over NFL television rights in 1964 to William Paley’s Columbia Broadcasting System. Sarnoff decided to get even through Werblin and discussed how NBC would fund the AFL giving the league a multimillion dollar, multiyear TV deal.
NBC landed the AFL beginning with the 1965 season which gave AFL owners more money to compete for players after their college careers were done. That raised salaries and old line NFL owners and AFL owners needed to solve their money problem. Ironically it was Mara’s Giants that poured fuel on the AFL-NFL rivalry by signing Buffalo kicker Pete Gogolak. It was the first time the NFL went after an AFL star and the AFL’s new commissioner, Al Davis, took notice and as a league, the AFL went after the NFL’s two of the top quarterbacks, Roman Gabriel and John Brodie.
Werblin understood football was entertainment, something old line NFL owners like Mara’s son Jack and Wellington did not. Werblin used some of NBC’s money and a new home field, Shea Stadium, to land players like Joe Namath. Werblin, who believed in the star system, had his star, Namath and his new home field, Shea Stadium and his Jets became a credible rival to the Mara family’s Giants.
The two leagues, the NFL and AFL, merged on June 8, 1966. Apparently neither the NFL nor the Maras wanted a second New York team and one of the merger plans on the table was to move Werblin’s Jets out of New York so that the Maras would continue to have an NFL monopoly in New York. The league also wanted to maintain the San Francisco 49ers one team market in the Bay Area. Werblin’s Jets would have been relocated to Los Angeles, LA Rams owner Daniel Reeves would have taken his team south to San Diego, Barron Hilton would have moved his Chargers from San Diego to fill a hole in New Orleans, the two leagues needed support from Louisiana Senator Russell Long and House member Hale Boggs to pass the merger through Congress, and the Oakland Raiders would exit the Bay Area and end up in the Pacific Northwest in either Seattle or Portland.
That plan died in a House of Representatives merger hearings when NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle assured Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Cellar, who has a very large place in NFL history despite never having played, coached or being an owner in the NFL, that all 24 teams, 15 NFL teams and nine AFL teams would not be relocated. Werblin and his partners, including Leon Hess, would pay Wellington and Jack Mara $10 million for invading the Giants New York territory and the Raiders ownership provide eight million dollars to the 49ers ownership to share the Bay Area marketplace.
Neither Werblin nor the Raiders ownership wanted a merger.
Wellington Mara became enough of an NFL visionary by 1971 that he accepted New Jersey’s new stadium offer which was presented to him by, of all people, Werblin who left the Jets partnership in 1968. Werblin headed up the New Jersey Sports Authority. Mara’s Giants moved into Giants Stadium in 1976 and played the venue’s first NFL regular season game on October 10th of that year losing to Dallas. Werblin’s former team, the Jets, moved into the Meadowlands in 1984. In 2005, Wellington Mara and Woody Johnson agreed to fund a new Meadowlands Stadium.
The Mara-Tisch guys beat Johnson this time around but the Giants and Jets franchises have been linked for decades and at the end of the day, Woody will get over not hosting the first NFL game in the new place, there is too much money at stake for him to continue having a fit and besides, the Mara-Tisch-Johnson troika will be bidding for a huge prize, the 2014 Super Bowl and NFL policy lately has been to reward owners who get municipal funding or build their own stadiums with a Super Bowl.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m3d16-New-York-Giants-get-first-home-Meadowlands-game-so-what
By Evan Weiner
March 16, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- The owner of the East Rutherford, New Jersey-based New York Jets is unhappy that his team will not host the first “regular” season National Football League game at the new Meadowlands Stadium. Robert Wood Johnson IV, better known as Woody, unloaded on the way the National Football League handled the coin toss which decided the team that would get the first game honor without any representatives from Johnson’s Jets or the stadium’s other tenant and half owner, the Mara-Tisch families’ owned New York Giants. The Mara-Tisch Giants “won” the toss and got the first regular season game on Sunday, September 12th while Johnson’s Jets get the first Monday night game at the place on the following day.
Both teams are scheduled to play pre-season games in the new building including one against each other. The Mara-Tisch Giants practice outside the facility. The stadium opens April 10th with a college lacrosse tournament, there is a three day music festival at the end of April, the first “football” game will be a match between Mexico and Ecuador on May 7, Bon Jovi is performing for three nights there in May followed by the Eagles, not the ones from Philadelphia, in June and U2 is in for a July concert. NFL pre-season games come four months into the stadium’s existence.
The stadium, built for football, is featuring other events which should help pay some of the bills at the place. The stadium is also available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Johnson put up half the cash for the new place and the surrounding real estate which will be turned into a New York-area football hall of fame and other businesses, the Mara-Tisch families put up the other 50 percent with the state of New Jersey kicking in hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure and East Rutherford gets only a slice of what should be a multimillion check for property taxes through a mechanism called “Payments in Lieu of Taxes” or PILOT.
Johnson released a statement which condemned the league and probably the one-time Jets employee, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
“An NFL coin toss has a few fundamental elements that are missing here, most notably the presence of the teams involved,” said Johnson. “That's how it's always done in the League, whether it’s determining the order of the draft or deciding who’s going to kick off the game. When the issue of which team would be hosting the first regular season game could not be resolved on the merits, I suggested a coin toss as the fairest way to resolve this issue. The League rejected that idea. Then, I was told on Friday that a coin toss had taken place at the League office and that the Jets had lost. We rejected a process in which neither team was present. The League departed from our time-honored tradition and declined the opportunity to set the matter straight with a transparent process. “
And with that Mara-Tisch get to “open” the stadium and Johnson gets what New York Rangers forward Sean Avery might call “sloppy seconds”
Perhaps the National Football League was the wrong party to hold the coin flip. The truth of the matter is that the coin flip should have been held in the Trenton office of the Governor of the State of New Jersey, and Governor Chris Christie should have conducted the flip. Governor Christie was not in office in 2005 when the Mara/Tisch-Johnson stadium/real estate deal was signed and when New Jersey committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the project and signed off on giving East Rutherford a slice of the property tax assessment on the land. New Jersey is a partner in the stadium venture and should have been included in the process.
There will be all sorts of conspiracy theories about even whether there was a coin flip but the Maras have seemingly gotten their way virtually every time in the New York area since the one time bookie and bootlegger Tim Mara invested $500 to get an NFL franchise in 1925 for Manhattan. Mara’s Giants franchise was a financial disaster throughout the 1925 season and the team was saved from financial ruin by George Halas quite by accident. The Chicago Bears owner Halas signed Red Grange right after Grange’s college football season with Illinois was done and immediately went on tour with the “Galloping Ghost.”
One of the stops was the Polo Grounds in Manhattan with the Giants hosting the Bears and New Yorkers came to see not the Giants, but the legendary Grange. That game paid the bills and established Mara’s team, at least for the 1926 season. But the Grange game also caused Mara some problems.
Grange and his agent C. C. (Cash and Carry) Pyle applied to get an NFL franchise for Yankee Stadium for the 1926 season based on the Polo Grounds game. The NFL, protecting Mara’s franchise, said no. Grange and Pyle started the first American Football League in 1926. The league folded after just one season but the NFL took Grange and the Yankees franchise in 1927 to replace the Brooklyn Lions. Grange was injured in 1927 and his team folded after the 1928 season.
The New York territory has been in the Mara family since 1925 and as Bill Parcells said in 1991 when he quit as Giants coach, “it is the flagship franchise of the league.” Parcells spoke an awful lot of truth with that statement although there is little evidence that the Mara family was all that influential in the league and that whatever influence the Mara family may have had stemmed from being in the biggest city in America and their ability to withstand challenges from other owners trying to make it in New York in football.
The Mara family outlasted the Staten Island Stapletons (1929-32), the Newark Tornadoes (1930), the Brooklyn Dodgers (1930-43), and the Brooklyn Tigers (1944). In 1945, Dan Topping’s Dodgers merged forces with the Boston Yanks. Topping owned Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees owner was part owner of the Yanks-Dodgers combination. Topping decided to move his portion of the Tigers from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field to Yankee Stadium, but Tim Mara refused to allow Topping to invade his territory as the Polo Grounds as across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium. Topping took holdings out of the NFL and joined the rival All American Football Conference in 1946 playing as the Brooklyn Dodgers and eventually as the second New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium. That team folded when the National Football League absorbed three AAFC teams, Baltimore, Cleveland and San Francisco in 1950.
That was not the last time Mara had to face competition from another Yankee Stadium-based team. The Boston Yanks moved to New York and the Polo Grounds in 1949 and the owners, the singer Kate Smith and her agent Ted Collins renamed the team the New York Bulldogs. In 1950, Collins and Smith moved across the river to Yankee Stadium and called the team the New York Yankees. That NFL franchise folded after 1951 and ended up in Dallas.
The Mara family would not have any New York City rivals between 1952 and 1959. In 1960, the fourth American Football League put a team in the Polo Grounds, Mara moved to Topping’s Yankee Stadium in 1956 from the Polo Grounds. Harry Wismer’s New York Titans franchise was a financial shipwreck but the AFL was able to get new owners for the team in 1963 with a group led by David (Sonny) Werblin.
Sonny Werblin gave the Mara family a lot of trouble. Werblin was well connected in show business and worked for a company that provided programming for David Sarnoff’s National Broadcasting Company. Sarnoff’s NBC lost the bid to gain control over NFL television rights in 1964 to William Paley’s Columbia Broadcasting System. Sarnoff decided to get even through Werblin and discussed how NBC would fund the AFL giving the league a multimillion dollar, multiyear TV deal.
NBC landed the AFL beginning with the 1965 season which gave AFL owners more money to compete for players after their college careers were done. That raised salaries and old line NFL owners and AFL owners needed to solve their money problem. Ironically it was Mara’s Giants that poured fuel on the AFL-NFL rivalry by signing Buffalo kicker Pete Gogolak. It was the first time the NFL went after an AFL star and the AFL’s new commissioner, Al Davis, took notice and as a league, the AFL went after the NFL’s two of the top quarterbacks, Roman Gabriel and John Brodie.
Werblin understood football was entertainment, something old line NFL owners like Mara’s son Jack and Wellington did not. Werblin used some of NBC’s money and a new home field, Shea Stadium, to land players like Joe Namath. Werblin, who believed in the star system, had his star, Namath and his new home field, Shea Stadium and his Jets became a credible rival to the Mara family’s Giants.
The two leagues, the NFL and AFL, merged on June 8, 1966. Apparently neither the NFL nor the Maras wanted a second New York team and one of the merger plans on the table was to move Werblin’s Jets out of New York so that the Maras would continue to have an NFL monopoly in New York. The league also wanted to maintain the San Francisco 49ers one team market in the Bay Area. Werblin’s Jets would have been relocated to Los Angeles, LA Rams owner Daniel Reeves would have taken his team south to San Diego, Barron Hilton would have moved his Chargers from San Diego to fill a hole in New Orleans, the two leagues needed support from Louisiana Senator Russell Long and House member Hale Boggs to pass the merger through Congress, and the Oakland Raiders would exit the Bay Area and end up in the Pacific Northwest in either Seattle or Portland.
That plan died in a House of Representatives merger hearings when NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle assured Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Cellar, who has a very large place in NFL history despite never having played, coached or being an owner in the NFL, that all 24 teams, 15 NFL teams and nine AFL teams would not be relocated. Werblin and his partners, including Leon Hess, would pay Wellington and Jack Mara $10 million for invading the Giants New York territory and the Raiders ownership provide eight million dollars to the 49ers ownership to share the Bay Area marketplace.
Neither Werblin nor the Raiders ownership wanted a merger.
Wellington Mara became enough of an NFL visionary by 1971 that he accepted New Jersey’s new stadium offer which was presented to him by, of all people, Werblin who left the Jets partnership in 1968. Werblin headed up the New Jersey Sports Authority. Mara’s Giants moved into Giants Stadium in 1976 and played the venue’s first NFL regular season game on October 10th of that year losing to Dallas. Werblin’s former team, the Jets, moved into the Meadowlands in 1984. In 2005, Wellington Mara and Woody Johnson agreed to fund a new Meadowlands Stadium.
The Mara-Tisch guys beat Johnson this time around but the Giants and Jets franchises have been linked for decades and at the end of the day, Woody will get over not hosting the first NFL game in the new place, there is too much money at stake for him to continue having a fit and besides, the Mara-Tisch-Johnson troika will be bidding for a huge prize, the 2014 Super Bowl and NFL policy lately has been to reward owners who get municipal funding or build their own stadiums with a Super Bowl.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, March 15, 2010
It was 39 Years Ago This Month When Ali and Frazier First Met
It was 39 Years Ago This Month When Ali and Frazier First Met
By Evan Weiner
March 9, 2010
http://www.doverdowns.com/mylinkfiles/Entertainment/It%20was%2039%20Years%20Ago%20This%20Month%20When%20Ali%20and%20Frazier%20First%20Met.pdf
The late Don Dunphy was the voice of boxing for more than 40 years doing all sorts of fights on radio and TV. He was the blow-by-blow announcer for what may have been boxing’s biggest night ever, March 8, 1971 when Muhammad Ali took on Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden in New York in “The Fight of the Century.”
Dunphy, years later, did not think the Ali-Frazier fight was “The Fight of the Century” and in fact it probably was not even in the top 5 fights he ever called on radio and TV. But the long time boxing announcer felt that it probably was the most spectacular boxing event ever held.
The Ali-Frazier contest had one of the most massive publicity campaigns ever surrounding a fight. Ali was the villain to some while Frazier was a hero and it all had to do with the Vietnam War. Ali refused to be inducted into the military in 1967 because he objected to the war while Frazier might have served if asked. Ali lost his boxing license and the ability to fight because of his legal problems in refusing to serve and while he was away from the ring Frazier was dismantling his opponents.
Ali had won all of his 31 fights prior to the Frazier bout. Smokin’ Joe Frazier was victorious in all 26 of his fights. Both fighters were guaranteed a big payday as each man was given $2.5 million, a record purse, for just showing up.
Ali and Frazier were not the only two in attendance that night. It was more than a fight; it was a gala for celebrities as the biggest names in show biz flocked to the Garden. Burt Lancaster was the analyst with Dunphy on the closed circuit presentation of the fight which was shown in movie theaters across the United States even though the actor had never done any sports or boxing commentary in his life.
Woody Allen, who was getting his acting and movie career into the fast lane, was there. Diana Ross, without the Supremes as she had just separated from the group. and Dustin Hoffman were watching. The world was watching as well.
“I did an awful lot of fights, some were more important than others and some were better fights than others. But if you make me pick one, I have to pick the first Ali-Frazier fight in 1971 at the Garden,” said Dunphy. “Not the greatest fight of all time. A good fight but not great. But it was the most memorable evening that I ever remember.
“I think it was the greatest sports event of all time up to that time anyway. Bigger than the World Series, bigger than the Super Bowl or what. I just think that night….we had two undefeated champions, both of them great fighters Ali and Frazier and that to me stands out.”
Dunphy had a seat to history and probably had the biggest audience listening to him in his career but in many ways, the Ali-Frazier fight to him was just another bout.
“I always said to myself, I am not going to see any punches that I haven’t seen before and that was my attitude from the beginning,” said the long time boxing announcer. “The first big fight I ever did was Joe Louis and Billy Conn in 1941, 30 years earlier but I said to myself, keep calm you are not going to see anything you never saw before and that has always been my attitude. It doesn’t matter, if you are broadcasting to one or nobody or several million, it is the same show.
“I always recall up in the ring after the Ali-Frazier fight, I went up to get an interview with Joe Frazier, who had won the fight, and I went to one of the commissioners who had been in the ring and I said what do you think? He said, off-the-record. I said, off-the-record, there are 250 million people watching, you can’t be off the record.
“That was about the audience for that fight.”
Dunphy quickly came up with better fights than Ali-Frazier on March 8, 1971.
“It was a real good fight, no I had seen better,” he said. “(Tony) Zale-(Rocky) Graziano was better, the third Ali-Frazier fight was better than that one, the Thrilla in Manila, the (Carmen) Basillio-(Sugar Ray) Robinson, Robinson-(Jake) LaMotta; they were all from the fight standpoint but to me that was no evening that could touch that one for glamour.
“Everybody was at the Garden. Frank Sinatra got in because he was taking pictures for Life magazine. Oh it was a wonderful night.”
The fight itself took a lot out of both Ali and Frazier. Ali won the early rounds and began to fade in the middle. Frazier knocked down Ali in both the 11th and 15th rounds and won a unanimous decision. Ali went to the hospital after the bout to get x-rays on his jaw and Frazier spent some time in the hospital a month after the bout. But Frazier was the undisputed World Heavyweight Champion.
Ali-Frazier would meet again in 1974 and in 1975. The public clamor in 1974 was not as rabid as in 1971 but the fights were highly anticipated. Things had changed though for both men. Frazier was no longer the champions having lost to George Foreman in 1973 and for this fight, the build up started in an ABC-TV studio when the two reviewed the 1971 bout and Ali started talking and Frazier took exception and the two men came to blow, not unlike professional wrestling scripted tactics. After all, Ali watched Gorgeous George and Freddie Blassie as a kid and liked their bad guy wrestling persona. Ali won the rematch at the Garden in 12 rounds.
The Thrilla in Manila was another brutal fight; Ali was the champion having disposed of Foreman in Zaire in 1974 and won a 14 round fight after Frazier’s trainer Eddie Futch threw in the towel. It was the final fight between Ali and Frazier and ended Frazier’s relationship with Futch. Frazier fought Foreman again in 1976 and lost. It was the end of the road for Frazier. Ali won a few more bouts and lost to Leon Spinks in February 1978. He regained a title, the WBA version, by beating Spinks in October of that year. He retired in June 1979 but attempted an ill-fated comeback against former sparring partner and now champions Larry Holmes in October 1980 and lost. Ali’s final fight was in 1981 against Trevor Berbick and ended in a loss.
Frazier attempted a brief comeback in 1981, fighting to a draw with Jumbo Cummings. The era was over; both Ali and Frazier were shadows of their former selves. Neither would fight again.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, columnist, and lecturer on “The Business and Politics of Sports.” He can be reach at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
March 9, 2010
http://www.doverdowns.com/mylinkfiles/Entertainment/It%20was%2039%20Years%20Ago%20This%20Month%20When%20Ali%20and%20Frazier%20First%20Met.pdf
The late Don Dunphy was the voice of boxing for more than 40 years doing all sorts of fights on radio and TV. He was the blow-by-blow announcer for what may have been boxing’s biggest night ever, March 8, 1971 when Muhammad Ali took on Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden in New York in “The Fight of the Century.”
Dunphy, years later, did not think the Ali-Frazier fight was “The Fight of the Century” and in fact it probably was not even in the top 5 fights he ever called on radio and TV. But the long time boxing announcer felt that it probably was the most spectacular boxing event ever held.
The Ali-Frazier contest had one of the most massive publicity campaigns ever surrounding a fight. Ali was the villain to some while Frazier was a hero and it all had to do with the Vietnam War. Ali refused to be inducted into the military in 1967 because he objected to the war while Frazier might have served if asked. Ali lost his boxing license and the ability to fight because of his legal problems in refusing to serve and while he was away from the ring Frazier was dismantling his opponents.
Ali had won all of his 31 fights prior to the Frazier bout. Smokin’ Joe Frazier was victorious in all 26 of his fights. Both fighters were guaranteed a big payday as each man was given $2.5 million, a record purse, for just showing up.
Ali and Frazier were not the only two in attendance that night. It was more than a fight; it was a gala for celebrities as the biggest names in show biz flocked to the Garden. Burt Lancaster was the analyst with Dunphy on the closed circuit presentation of the fight which was shown in movie theaters across the United States even though the actor had never done any sports or boxing commentary in his life.
Woody Allen, who was getting his acting and movie career into the fast lane, was there. Diana Ross, without the Supremes as she had just separated from the group. and Dustin Hoffman were watching. The world was watching as well.
“I did an awful lot of fights, some were more important than others and some were better fights than others. But if you make me pick one, I have to pick the first Ali-Frazier fight in 1971 at the Garden,” said Dunphy. “Not the greatest fight of all time. A good fight but not great. But it was the most memorable evening that I ever remember.
“I think it was the greatest sports event of all time up to that time anyway. Bigger than the World Series, bigger than the Super Bowl or what. I just think that night….we had two undefeated champions, both of them great fighters Ali and Frazier and that to me stands out.”
Dunphy had a seat to history and probably had the biggest audience listening to him in his career but in many ways, the Ali-Frazier fight to him was just another bout.
“I always said to myself, I am not going to see any punches that I haven’t seen before and that was my attitude from the beginning,” said the long time boxing announcer. “The first big fight I ever did was Joe Louis and Billy Conn in 1941, 30 years earlier but I said to myself, keep calm you are not going to see anything you never saw before and that has always been my attitude. It doesn’t matter, if you are broadcasting to one or nobody or several million, it is the same show.
“I always recall up in the ring after the Ali-Frazier fight, I went up to get an interview with Joe Frazier, who had won the fight, and I went to one of the commissioners who had been in the ring and I said what do you think? He said, off-the-record. I said, off-the-record, there are 250 million people watching, you can’t be off the record.
“That was about the audience for that fight.”
Dunphy quickly came up with better fights than Ali-Frazier on March 8, 1971.
“It was a real good fight, no I had seen better,” he said. “(Tony) Zale-(Rocky) Graziano was better, the third Ali-Frazier fight was better than that one, the Thrilla in Manila, the (Carmen) Basillio-(Sugar Ray) Robinson, Robinson-(Jake) LaMotta; they were all from the fight standpoint but to me that was no evening that could touch that one for glamour.
“Everybody was at the Garden. Frank Sinatra got in because he was taking pictures for Life magazine. Oh it was a wonderful night.”
The fight itself took a lot out of both Ali and Frazier. Ali won the early rounds and began to fade in the middle. Frazier knocked down Ali in both the 11th and 15th rounds and won a unanimous decision. Ali went to the hospital after the bout to get x-rays on his jaw and Frazier spent some time in the hospital a month after the bout. But Frazier was the undisputed World Heavyweight Champion.
Ali-Frazier would meet again in 1974 and in 1975. The public clamor in 1974 was not as rabid as in 1971 but the fights were highly anticipated. Things had changed though for both men. Frazier was no longer the champions having lost to George Foreman in 1973 and for this fight, the build up started in an ABC-TV studio when the two reviewed the 1971 bout and Ali started talking and Frazier took exception and the two men came to blow, not unlike professional wrestling scripted tactics. After all, Ali watched Gorgeous George and Freddie Blassie as a kid and liked their bad guy wrestling persona. Ali won the rematch at the Garden in 12 rounds.
The Thrilla in Manila was another brutal fight; Ali was the champion having disposed of Foreman in Zaire in 1974 and won a 14 round fight after Frazier’s trainer Eddie Futch threw in the towel. It was the final fight between Ali and Frazier and ended Frazier’s relationship with Futch. Frazier fought Foreman again in 1976 and lost. It was the end of the road for Frazier. Ali won a few more bouts and lost to Leon Spinks in February 1978. He regained a title, the WBA version, by beating Spinks in October of that year. He retired in June 1979 but attempted an ill-fated comeback against former sparring partner and now champions Larry Holmes in October 1980 and lost. Ali’s final fight was in 1981 against Trevor Berbick and ended in a loss.
Frazier attempted a brief comeback in 1981, fighting to a draw with Jumbo Cummings. The era was over; both Ali and Frazier were shadows of their former selves. Neither would fight again.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, columnist, and lecturer on “The Business and Politics of Sports.” He can be reach at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Note to world leaders: The IOC isn’t a sovereign state
Note to world leaders: The IOC isn’t a sovereign state
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 03/13/10 at 5:18 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/13/international-olympic-committee-isnt-a-sovereign-state/
If the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is seriously thinking about running for the post of UN Secretary General, he probably can count on the support of the International Olympic Committee.
After all, Lula, like a lot of other world leaders — including United States President Barack Obama — traveled to Denmark last October to plead before the IOC delegates that Rio was the best place on earth to host the Olympic Games.
The International Olympic Committee liked Lula’s pitch and gave Rio de Janiero the 2016 event. Lula can count on the IOC’s backing should he go in that direction; after all, the IOC is part of the United Nations and has a seat at the table. Obama went home and faced a barrage of criticism because he could not convince IOC delegates that Chicago was the best place to hold the athletic summit.
Most of the people who criticized Obama have no clue how the International Olympic Committee operates. Brazil was going to get the 2016 Games. Chicago was never a contender.
The International Olympic Committee is a global entity like no other that operates like a sovereign state and demands world leaders to treat the sporting group as a superpower with a political mandate. World leaders acquiesce to the group, falling all over themselves in an effort to please them. That is why Obama was in Copenhagen last October 2 pushing Chicago for the Games, and that is why Lula was there as well as political heavyweights from Japan (Toyko) and Spain (Madrid).
On March 15, the application bids files for the 2018 Winter Games are due, and three cities will battle it out. Annecy, France, Munich, Germany and PyeongChang, South Korea are in the hunt. In June, the IOC will have a short list of contenders and will announce the winner on July 6, 2011 for those Games. Perhaps an American TV contract will be in place by then. For all of the pomp and circumstances of the IOC, the group is nothing without American TV dollars, which is why there is no American TV deal in place yet for the 2014 Sochi, Russia and the 2016 Rio Games. The American TV networks will not commit billions yet with a soft advertising market.
But the IOC is so arrogant that the Canadian delegate Richard Pound virtually demanded Obama show up before IOC delegates in Denmark to genuflect before the group.
Local politicians have created slush funds or have raised taxes to pay down the debt incurred by building huge sports complexes for a two week sporting orgy that has left financial messes behind. American television network executives have filled IOC coffers with billions of dollars, and American corporations have thrown billions to put their logo next to the Olympic rings. Canada changed laws protecting Olympic sponsorship during the lead up to the 2010 Vancouver Games.
The Olympic aura is just too strong for political and business leaders who are attracted to the five interlocking rings like a magnet.
The International Olympic Committee spited women softball players globally by dropping the sport because the Americans women were too good and the IOC could not get Major League Baseball to shut down the season, like the National Hockey League does, and send baseball’s very best players to the Olympics.
The IOC leaned on the United States Congress to make Major League Baseball change drug policies that were collectively bargained to suit Olympics needs. The IOC didn’t care if baseball players were taking banned substances and some of those banned substances were legal in a number of players home countries like the Dominican Republic and Mexico; the IOC was bigger than Major League Baseball and flexed the group’s collective muscle.
There seems to be just one organization that intimidates the IOC: FIFA, the governing body of football (soccer). Football’s World Cup is a much bigger event than any Olympics, and the IOC knows that. FIFA calls the shots in football, not the IOC.
The International Olympic Committee now holds the same United Nations status as the Holy See or the Vatican. The United Nations is supposed have have sovereign states, and while Vatican City is a sovereign state that has diplomatic relations with other countries, the Vatican is a non-member permanent observer state, a status it gained on April 6, 1964.
The Holy See can attend United General Assembly sessions as well as the United Nations Security Council meetings and the United Nations economic and Social Council. The Holy See is allowed to speak before the General Assembly but cannot co-sponsor UN drafts or resolutions. The Vatican can also vote on international treaties. Popes have been invited to speak before the General Assembly, so it would not be a shock to see Rogge address the UN in a formal setting when the group opens the 2010 session next fall.
Since October 19, 2009, the International Olympic Committee has had virtually the same rights as the Holy See at the United Nations, as incredible as that might seem. Apparently the IOC is not allowed to vote on treaties, but as far as the United Nations is concerned, the IOC is a sovereign state. No wonder the IOC can demand that Lula, Obama and world leaders like then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin come before them and make them beg to host an Olympics as Blair did in 2005 and Putin in 2007. The IOC thinks it is more powerful than world leaders, and world leaders allow it.
The IOC is some sort of artificial royalty that now has United Nations status, just like the Holy See except the Holy See has an embassy in New York and the IOC has yet to open one up.
The International Olympic Committee is supposed to run the Summer and Winter Olympics along with the Paralympic Games. It is a sports body, that is all it is yet diplomats have give IOC President Jacques Rogge and his cohorts a seat at the table.
The IOC, which has never been shy in demanding host countries build Olympic cities for its Games, almost immediately swung into action before the General Assembly as it got Canada to introduce the “Olympic Truce Resolution” asking UN members to promote peace during the 2010 Vancouver Games and the 2010 Vancouver Paralympics along with the Youth Olympic Games, which will be held in Singapore in August.
When John Lennon sung Give Peace a Chance in 1969, it was thought he lost his mind. Yet when the IOC presented the proposal before the General Assembly, it was adopted because the IOC presented it.
There is a partnership now between a private sports organization which acts like a government. Rogge in 2006 suggested to Italian authorities to let the IOC handle illegal drug possession in the Olympic Village in Turin because the possession of illegal, performance enhancing drugs (some of which are legal in parts of the world) should be an IOC matter and the IOC, not the Italian drug enforcement officials, should hand out punishments.
Perhaps the United Nations ought to convene the General Assembly and grill Rogge about the real value of the Olympics and how Australia, Greece, apparently Canada and in the future, England and Russia were fleeced by the group to the tune of billions of dollars. But that is not going to happen, the IOC is not going to have to answer any of those questions from their new diplomatic friends and there will never be any sanctions against the IOC because the IOC is not a sovereign state.
Yet somehow, the IOC has a seat in the world body in Manhattan.
Apparently the IOC and IOC delegates have been reformed and the days of corruption and bribery have been forgotten along with the IOC turning a blind eye to human rights violations in China in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The private organization, which has the same status as Vatican City, has been praised by diplomats because of the IOC’s contributions to the UN Millennium Development Goals in peace-building, education, gender equity, environment and the fight against HIV/AIDS. But the IOC did not come down on Canada for failing to include legally blind cross-country skier Brian McKeever on the country’s cross country skiing team. McKeever was passed over despite qualifying for the team and was on the alternate list. After all, Canada wanted medal winners on the podium and got some, including the Gold Medal in men’s ice hockey but leaving McKeever off the team despite qualifying by winning a 50-kilometer race is inexcusable for an organization who has UN “Special Observer” status in part for allegedly living up to the UN Millennium Goals.
So much for the IOC equity policies.
The Paralympics event is underway in Vancouver with far less flash than the recently concluded Winter Olympics.
The IOC runs roughshod over governments with the promise of the Olympics and world leaders respond by giving the sports governing body unprecedented respect, so much so that the IOC is part of the United Nations as a permanent observer.
The IOC is a private sports organization; it is not a sovereign state like Vatican City. Yet diplomats treat Rogge, his associates and the group like royalty.
Evan Weiner is a radio/TV commentator, author and lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business.”
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 03/13/10 at 5:18 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/13/international-olympic-committee-isnt-a-sovereign-state/
If the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is seriously thinking about running for the post of UN Secretary General, he probably can count on the support of the International Olympic Committee.
After all, Lula, like a lot of other world leaders — including United States President Barack Obama — traveled to Denmark last October to plead before the IOC delegates that Rio was the best place on earth to host the Olympic Games.
The International Olympic Committee liked Lula’s pitch and gave Rio de Janiero the 2016 event. Lula can count on the IOC’s backing should he go in that direction; after all, the IOC is part of the United Nations and has a seat at the table. Obama went home and faced a barrage of criticism because he could not convince IOC delegates that Chicago was the best place to hold the athletic summit.
Most of the people who criticized Obama have no clue how the International Olympic Committee operates. Brazil was going to get the 2016 Games. Chicago was never a contender.
The International Olympic Committee is a global entity like no other that operates like a sovereign state and demands world leaders to treat the sporting group as a superpower with a political mandate. World leaders acquiesce to the group, falling all over themselves in an effort to please them. That is why Obama was in Copenhagen last October 2 pushing Chicago for the Games, and that is why Lula was there as well as political heavyweights from Japan (Toyko) and Spain (Madrid).
On March 15, the application bids files for the 2018 Winter Games are due, and three cities will battle it out. Annecy, France, Munich, Germany and PyeongChang, South Korea are in the hunt. In June, the IOC will have a short list of contenders and will announce the winner on July 6, 2011 for those Games. Perhaps an American TV contract will be in place by then. For all of the pomp and circumstances of the IOC, the group is nothing without American TV dollars, which is why there is no American TV deal in place yet for the 2014 Sochi, Russia and the 2016 Rio Games. The American TV networks will not commit billions yet with a soft advertising market.
But the IOC is so arrogant that the Canadian delegate Richard Pound virtually demanded Obama show up before IOC delegates in Denmark to genuflect before the group.
Local politicians have created slush funds or have raised taxes to pay down the debt incurred by building huge sports complexes for a two week sporting orgy that has left financial messes behind. American television network executives have filled IOC coffers with billions of dollars, and American corporations have thrown billions to put their logo next to the Olympic rings. Canada changed laws protecting Olympic sponsorship during the lead up to the 2010 Vancouver Games.
The Olympic aura is just too strong for political and business leaders who are attracted to the five interlocking rings like a magnet.
The International Olympic Committee spited women softball players globally by dropping the sport because the Americans women were too good and the IOC could not get Major League Baseball to shut down the season, like the National Hockey League does, and send baseball’s very best players to the Olympics.
The IOC leaned on the United States Congress to make Major League Baseball change drug policies that were collectively bargained to suit Olympics needs. The IOC didn’t care if baseball players were taking banned substances and some of those banned substances were legal in a number of players home countries like the Dominican Republic and Mexico; the IOC was bigger than Major League Baseball and flexed the group’s collective muscle.
There seems to be just one organization that intimidates the IOC: FIFA, the governing body of football (soccer). Football’s World Cup is a much bigger event than any Olympics, and the IOC knows that. FIFA calls the shots in football, not the IOC.
The International Olympic Committee now holds the same United Nations status as the Holy See or the Vatican. The United Nations is supposed have have sovereign states, and while Vatican City is a sovereign state that has diplomatic relations with other countries, the Vatican is a non-member permanent observer state, a status it gained on April 6, 1964.
The Holy See can attend United General Assembly sessions as well as the United Nations Security Council meetings and the United Nations economic and Social Council. The Holy See is allowed to speak before the General Assembly but cannot co-sponsor UN drafts or resolutions. The Vatican can also vote on international treaties. Popes have been invited to speak before the General Assembly, so it would not be a shock to see Rogge address the UN in a formal setting when the group opens the 2010 session next fall.
Since October 19, 2009, the International Olympic Committee has had virtually the same rights as the Holy See at the United Nations, as incredible as that might seem. Apparently the IOC is not allowed to vote on treaties, but as far as the United Nations is concerned, the IOC is a sovereign state. No wonder the IOC can demand that Lula, Obama and world leaders like then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin come before them and make them beg to host an Olympics as Blair did in 2005 and Putin in 2007. The IOC thinks it is more powerful than world leaders, and world leaders allow it.
The IOC is some sort of artificial royalty that now has United Nations status, just like the Holy See except the Holy See has an embassy in New York and the IOC has yet to open one up.
The International Olympic Committee is supposed to run the Summer and Winter Olympics along with the Paralympic Games. It is a sports body, that is all it is yet diplomats have give IOC President Jacques Rogge and his cohorts a seat at the table.
The IOC, which has never been shy in demanding host countries build Olympic cities for its Games, almost immediately swung into action before the General Assembly as it got Canada to introduce the “Olympic Truce Resolution” asking UN members to promote peace during the 2010 Vancouver Games and the 2010 Vancouver Paralympics along with the Youth Olympic Games, which will be held in Singapore in August.
When John Lennon sung Give Peace a Chance in 1969, it was thought he lost his mind. Yet when the IOC presented the proposal before the General Assembly, it was adopted because the IOC presented it.
There is a partnership now between a private sports organization which acts like a government. Rogge in 2006 suggested to Italian authorities to let the IOC handle illegal drug possession in the Olympic Village in Turin because the possession of illegal, performance enhancing drugs (some of which are legal in parts of the world) should be an IOC matter and the IOC, not the Italian drug enforcement officials, should hand out punishments.
Perhaps the United Nations ought to convene the General Assembly and grill Rogge about the real value of the Olympics and how Australia, Greece, apparently Canada and in the future, England and Russia were fleeced by the group to the tune of billions of dollars. But that is not going to happen, the IOC is not going to have to answer any of those questions from their new diplomatic friends and there will never be any sanctions against the IOC because the IOC is not a sovereign state.
Yet somehow, the IOC has a seat in the world body in Manhattan.
Apparently the IOC and IOC delegates have been reformed and the days of corruption and bribery have been forgotten along with the IOC turning a blind eye to human rights violations in China in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The private organization, which has the same status as Vatican City, has been praised by diplomats because of the IOC’s contributions to the UN Millennium Development Goals in peace-building, education, gender equity, environment and the fight against HIV/AIDS. But the IOC did not come down on Canada for failing to include legally blind cross-country skier Brian McKeever on the country’s cross country skiing team. McKeever was passed over despite qualifying for the team and was on the alternate list. After all, Canada wanted medal winners on the podium and got some, including the Gold Medal in men’s ice hockey but leaving McKeever off the team despite qualifying by winning a 50-kilometer race is inexcusable for an organization who has UN “Special Observer” status in part for allegedly living up to the UN Millennium Goals.
So much for the IOC equity policies.
The Paralympics event is underway in Vancouver with far less flash than the recently concluded Winter Olympics.
The IOC runs roughshod over governments with the promise of the Olympics and world leaders respond by giving the sports governing body unprecedented respect, so much so that the IOC is part of the United Nations as a permanent observer.
The IOC is a private sports organization; it is not a sovereign state like Vatican City. Yet diplomats treat Rogge, his associates and the group like royalty.
Evan Weiner is a radio/TV commentator, author and lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business.”
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