Fiesta Bowl scandal could put BCS game in play
THURSDAY, 14 APRIL 2011 11:26
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/fiesta-bowl-scandal-could-put-bcs-game-in-play
New Jersey would be viable location for one of college football’s biggest games
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
College football media partners, marketing partners, boosters, and politicians should be circling the date of April 28 for a meeting near the site of the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. That's the day when a subcommittee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association reviews the license that the group has given to Fiesta Bowl operators to run the annual game in Glendale, Arizona.
The Fiesta Bowl is part of the Bowl Championship Series with Glendale hosting a national championship game every four years. The Fiesta Bowl, South Florida's Orange Bowl, Pasadena, California's Rose Bowl and New Orleans' Sugar Bowl are college football's big events and are worth a lot of money. Each bowl is a fiefdom and one of the reasons that there isn't a college football championship is that none of the powers to be behind those particularly bowls wants to cede one iota of importance that those bowls have.
Until the NCAA gets all of the fiefdoms to agree that a college football championship game that makes (financial) sense, the system will not change. That is unless Congress decides to remove the NCAA’s tax exemption status and the part of the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 that applies to the group.
Neither action seems to be very likely.
The sacking of Fiesta Bowl chief executive John Junker along with two other top officials could open a Pandora’s Box of problems for Glendale, the Fiesta Bowl and the (college football's) Bowl Championship Series for Arizona politicians who allegedly accepted gifts from Junker.
Arizona elected officials have to abide by state laws, which included an “entertainment ban” that prohibits, state employees and elected officials from accepting tickets or "admission to any sporting or cultural event" for free.
The Fiesta Bowl organizers have been summoned to New Orleans to meet with NCAA members and will be given a day in the NCAA courtroom to explain away a 276 page report by a Fiesta Bowl Special Committee that provided unique details of "excessive" spending on employees and the relationship between Arizona politicians and bowl officials. Apparently Arizona elected officials had no problems accepting gifts from Fiesta Bowl organizers which is a violation of Arizona laws if the gifts bestowed on the elected officials were more than $500.
The Fiesta Bowl organizers seem to have thought the best way to keep their fiefdom going was to have Arizona’s elected officials at their side.
Some Arizona lawmakers are "amending" their campaign financing reports to reflect that they suddenly remembered they took money from Fiesta Bowl officials or got tickets for the game or went on Fiesta Bowl related trips or received campaign contributions from Fiesta Bowl employees.
The Fiesta Bowl officials apparently knew which palms to grease. Among the politicians that got some benefits from the Bowl hierarchy include Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, Senators John McCain and John Kyl, Congressmen J. D. Hayworth and Shadegg. McCain's Political Action Committee — Straight Talk Express — also got some money from bowl officials. Additionally, there were Fiesta Bowl employees who gave $46,000 to 23 political candidates who were reimbursed for their campaign contributions by the Fiesta Bowl.
Interestingly enough, The Goldwater Institute is not involved in any complaining against the Fiesta Bowl which seems to be a contradictory stance for the conservative fiscal watchdog group. The Goldwater Institute doesn't want Glendale to sell bonds to help complete the sale of the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes to a Chicago businessman, Matthew Hulsizer, nor do they seem to care that things didn't work out attendance wise for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox during the 2011 Cactus League Spring Training part of the baseball season at the new Glendale baseball park.
Glendale had an open checkbook for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill (a new stadium), former Phoenix Coyotes owner Richard Burke (a new arena), Jerry Reinsdorf's White Sox, the McCourt family's Dodgers (a new spring training facility) and the city is attempting to work with Jerry Colangelo to build the headquarters for USA Basketball in Glendale.
The Goldwater Institute is nowhere to be found on this issue. Meanwhile, another watchdog group — the not for profit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics of Washington, D. C. — has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission and asking the agency to investigate whether any laws were broken in the Fiesta Bowl's campaign contribution acts.
It will be interesting to see how the NCAA will put together the investigation. Will the NCAA consult cable TV partner, the Walt Disney Company, on this matter? Does the NCAA really want to go after the Fiesta Bowl and pull the license or will they slap someone on the wrist and say don't do that again knowing that every bowl committee does what is best for them not the "game" of college football?
A question that should be directed to NCAA delegates deciding the weighty matter of bowl licensing is this. Do they want a championship game in Glendale or can they line the coffers with another organizer in a bigger market?
Will the NCAA revoke the license and then put the fourth game of the Bowl Championship Series up for bid? If the Super Bowl can be played in East Rutherford in February in 2014, why not a Bowl Championship Series game at the Meadowlands in January? Think of the money that could pour into the BCS if New Jersey, Jerry Jones and his Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas or Dan Snyder's and Washington Redskins stadium in Maryland outside of the District were involved in a bidding war for that spot in the Bowl Championship Series?
The NCAA more than likely should not be trusted with a real investigation of a bowl and corruption. After all this is a body that created the term "student-athlete" to get out of paying disability benefits in the 1950s after a Colorado football player could not work because of an injury suffered on the football field. This is an organization that pockets billions in television money yet limits players' off field, off court, off ice, off diamond earnings to be $2,000. This is an organization that receives a tax exemption from Congress and colleges whose football teams appear at say the Fiesta Bowl don't have to pay taxes on their take from the game.
School presidents and chancellors shop around looking for conferences that will further exposure (big money TV contacts).
This is an organization that has somehow convinced people and politicians that "student-athletes" should be lucky to get a scholarship and feel fortunate that they can play for good old whatever university and entertain stadium or arena audiences, boosters, advertisers, politicians and have their talents used by coaches who earn millions annually from schools, marketing partners and TV partners.
In New Jersey, the state's highest paid employees are the Rutgers football coach and the men's and women's basketball coaches. Go around the country and you will find that college football or basketball coaches are the highest paid employee in a good number of states.
College sports is nothing more than a business.
Congress holds hearings on college sports every so often and generally these hearings go something like this. Congressmen genuflect in front of NCAA honchos then complain about the unfairness of the Bowl Championship Series in that only BCS members have a real shot at a title and that outsiders are just that outsiders with a limited chance of ever winning a NCAA football championship.
Never once do these hearings ever produce anything worthwhile for the "student-athlete" who has to prove to a coach annually that he (or she) is worth the scholarship and if a marginal player gets hurt and is unable to return to sports, that athlete loses their scholarship. The myth of the student-athlete is just that.
A myth.
In Arizona, politicians are scrambling for cover. In New Orleans, Fiesta Bowl officials might be scrambling for the cover of Bourbon Street if indeed the NCAA pulls the bowl game license. The NCAA doesn't seem to be too concerned ever with "moral" problems. The group has pulled two bowl licenses, the Seattle Bowl and the Silicon Valley Football Classic, because the games were poorly attended.
The NCAA is acting because people were caught with their hands in the cookie jar and dispensing money to court politicians. The whole college sports industry needs a review but as long as there is money to be made and college presidents and chancellors looking for the yellow brick road for that pot of sports gold, nothing will change. The Marx Brothers lampooned college football in 1932 in “Horse Feathers,” a remarkable movie that hit on corruption in college football and nothing has changed in 79 years since that Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S. J. Perelman, and Will B. Johnstone came up with a screenplay that had Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) recruiting players for Huxley for their big game against Darwin. The plot and the jokes of "amateurism" in 1931-32 could easily be used today.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Why Jim Balsillie should scare local politicians across the United States as well as newspaper executives
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7297
Why Jim Balsillie should scare local politicians across the United States as well as newspaper executives
(New York, N. Y.) -- The guy who was generously helped by Canadian taxpayers in becoming a billionaire named Jim Balsillie should be scaring all of those local and state politicians who pushed for publicly funded sports facilities along with newspaper executives who are ignoring a developing story that could have political implications across the United States.
Balsillie is pursing a scorched earth policy in trying to purchase the National Hockey League's Glendale, Arizona-based Phoenix Coyotes. The hockey team's owner Jerry Moyes declared bankruptcy and Basille has decided to overpay for a fiscally distressed business and now the whole dispute is paying out in a bankruptcy court. While newspapers executives met in Chicago on Thursday discreetly in a session that might have violated American antitrust laws to discuss a plan to save themselves by charging for newspaper content on the web, their papers are missing the opportunity to report on what is the sports industry's biggest story since the 2004-05 National Hockey League lockout. The newspaper and media industry under reported that story, no wonder why newspapers are suffering.
Here is the story the media is missing. If Jerry Moyes is successful in unloading his team and break a multi-decade lease with Glendale, taxpayers are left holding the bills to pay off a building that will become a white elephant. If Moyes is successful, what would stop Charlotte Bobcats owner Bob Johnson, who has announced his intentions to sell the five year old franchise playing in a municipally funded new arena from doing the same thing? Johnson could theoretically sell the team to Chinese interests who could move the team to Beijing in a bankruptcy proceeding and until the question of whether a league has the right to approve territories is resolved, there is nothing taxpayers, municipalities or leagues can do but watch.
Balsillie, whose Research in Motion company came up with BlackBerry, has gotten Hamilton, Ontario elected officials to pony up more than one hundred million dollars, Canadian, to renovate the city's arena should he be successful in getting the Coyotes franchise and is able to move the team to the city. Hamilton elected officials will soon find out that the actual bill when the debt is factored in will not be the figure that they think it is. Balsillie, the white knight of Canada, has the Canadian sports media waving red and white pom poms and cheering make it seven, as in a seventh Canadian National Hockey league franchise. There has been no due diligence about Balsillie and how he made his money in the back of Canadian taxpayers.
That would ruin the narrative of the white knight rescuing Canadian hockey from the evil American Sun Belt cities. It would also require some work on the part of writers who cover hockey in the Toronto area although this New York-based writer knows the Research in Motion subsidy story.
A newspaper editor curiosity should take hold and someone should have been assigned to see just how Balsillie made his money but the thought of Hamilton getting an NHL team is enough.
The newspaper executives who met in Chicago are missing an opportunity to talk to the two New York senators about their support for the NHL by laws which give the league's owners the right to assign territories and how the courts and possibly Congress may have to get involved in the business of sports to protect taxpayers who have put up billions upon billions of dollars for major and minor league sports facilities around the country.
The Charlotte Bobcats story is simple right now. Johnson is looking for a buying and has not threatened bankruptcy. Charlotte has had a mixed history of success in the NBA. The original Charlotte Hornets franchise was a major success. George Shinn's Hornets began in 1988 and at one time sold old the Charlotte Arena for 358 consecutive home games or almost nine seasons but off court activities including the death of a player and sordid details of Shinn's personal life turned people away from the arena and eventually Shinn asked for a new, publicly-funded, arena complete with numerous luxury boxes and club seats to replace the Charlotte Arena which opened in 1988. Charlotte voters said no to a new arena by a 2 to 1 margin in 2001.
Shinn moved to New Orleans in 2002 but city leaders and NBA Commissioner David Stern didn't believe the results of the referendum were totally reflective of the feelings of Charlotte residents. After Shinn left, the city's mayor Pat McCrory set out to build an arena with taxpayer’s dollars without going to the voters to ask them if they wanted a new arena. McCrory and Stern worked out a deal and the city promised it would build an arena if the NBA would return. Johnson bid for the franchise and won spending about $300 million for the right to run the franchise.
The return of the NBA to Charlotte has not been as warmly received as the original Hornets franchise was back in 1988.
Charlotte is not the only financially distressed NBA franchise. Memphis has been struggling since Michael Heisley moved his Vancouver Grizzlies to the city in 2001. Despite playing in a new, taxpayers funded, arena, Heisley has not been fiscally successful. There are other NBA franchises looking for new arenas in Sacramento and Milwaukee. If Balsillie is successful in his bid to take over the Coyotes, what would stop other owners from going Chapter 11 if there is someone willing to take a debt ridden team off there hands in a bankruptcy proceeding.
Could New York Islanders owner Charles Wang, who admitted that he regrets buying the money losing franchise, do the same thing if he doesn’t get his Lighthouse Project approved? The Moyes/Balsillie tactics could echo from community to community that put out public money for sports facilities both on the major and minor league level.
Glendale, Arizona, on behalf of taxpayers, should unleash a super lawsuit against Moyes for breaking his lease and when that happens, taxpayers will learn whether a lease agreement signed between a franchise holder and the municipality is worth the paper it is written on. Moyes broke the lease. Balsillie's legal team is promising an antitrust lawsuit against the NHL if the league says no to his bid. The NHL, NBA and National Football League do not have antitrust protection, Major League Baseball does and that is keeping the Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff from moving his team to San Jose and it is why the New York City market has not has three teams since 1957. National League baseball owners in 1957 scoffed at the idea of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh from relocating to New York for the 1958 season.
It is a shame newspaper executives continue to miss stories and maybe they should start examine why they have become so inept and why people have turned away from the industry. Senior citizens are the last generation who are still wedded to newspapers for information. Newspaper execs have lived in a bubble forever and are in denial. Perhaps if they followed the Balsille/Coyotes/NHL saga and explained the implications to taxpayers who are paying extra fees for hotel and motel rooms, for car rentals, for restaurants, for alcohol, for cigarettes, for sewer and water and general sales taxes for these facilities, they would get more readers.
Balsillie's scorched earth policy should scare the living daylights out of elected officials who pushed for stadium/arena building as an economic engine and for newspaper executives whose papers are missing a huge story. Instead, the newspapers are asleep at the wheel saying woe is me. New York's two senators are not fighting for the Phoenix Coyotes but they want to keep Balsillie out of Hamilton because it might hurt the Buffalo Sabres franchise. Strangely quiet on the issue is Arizona's two Senators, John McCain and John Kyl. Perhaps Arizona's newspapers ought to make a call and ask what the two senators are thinking. But that might be wishful thinking asking newspapers to do more than some crime stories, some fluff entertainment stories and some mayhem stories.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Why Jim Balsillie should scare local politicians across the United States as well as newspaper executives
(New York, N. Y.) -- The guy who was generously helped by Canadian taxpayers in becoming a billionaire named Jim Balsillie should be scaring all of those local and state politicians who pushed for publicly funded sports facilities along with newspaper executives who are ignoring a developing story that could have political implications across the United States.
Balsillie is pursing a scorched earth policy in trying to purchase the National Hockey League's Glendale, Arizona-based Phoenix Coyotes. The hockey team's owner Jerry Moyes declared bankruptcy and Basille has decided to overpay for a fiscally distressed business and now the whole dispute is paying out in a bankruptcy court. While newspapers executives met in Chicago on Thursday discreetly in a session that might have violated American antitrust laws to discuss a plan to save themselves by charging for newspaper content on the web, their papers are missing the opportunity to report on what is the sports industry's biggest story since the 2004-05 National Hockey League lockout. The newspaper and media industry under reported that story, no wonder why newspapers are suffering.
Here is the story the media is missing. If Jerry Moyes is successful in unloading his team and break a multi-decade lease with Glendale, taxpayers are left holding the bills to pay off a building that will become a white elephant. If Moyes is successful, what would stop Charlotte Bobcats owner Bob Johnson, who has announced his intentions to sell the five year old franchise playing in a municipally funded new arena from doing the same thing? Johnson could theoretically sell the team to Chinese interests who could move the team to Beijing in a bankruptcy proceeding and until the question of whether a league has the right to approve territories is resolved, there is nothing taxpayers, municipalities or leagues can do but watch.
Balsillie, whose Research in Motion company came up with BlackBerry, has gotten Hamilton, Ontario elected officials to pony up more than one hundred million dollars, Canadian, to renovate the city's arena should he be successful in getting the Coyotes franchise and is able to move the team to the city. Hamilton elected officials will soon find out that the actual bill when the debt is factored in will not be the figure that they think it is. Balsillie, the white knight of Canada, has the Canadian sports media waving red and white pom poms and cheering make it seven, as in a seventh Canadian National Hockey league franchise. There has been no due diligence about Balsillie and how he made his money in the back of Canadian taxpayers.
That would ruin the narrative of the white knight rescuing Canadian hockey from the evil American Sun Belt cities. It would also require some work on the part of writers who cover hockey in the Toronto area although this New York-based writer knows the Research in Motion subsidy story.
A newspaper editor curiosity should take hold and someone should have been assigned to see just how Balsillie made his money but the thought of Hamilton getting an NHL team is enough.
The newspaper executives who met in Chicago are missing an opportunity to talk to the two New York senators about their support for the NHL by laws which give the league's owners the right to assign territories and how the courts and possibly Congress may have to get involved in the business of sports to protect taxpayers who have put up billions upon billions of dollars for major and minor league sports facilities around the country.
The Charlotte Bobcats story is simple right now. Johnson is looking for a buying and has not threatened bankruptcy. Charlotte has had a mixed history of success in the NBA. The original Charlotte Hornets franchise was a major success. George Shinn's Hornets began in 1988 and at one time sold old the Charlotte Arena for 358 consecutive home games or almost nine seasons but off court activities including the death of a player and sordid details of Shinn's personal life turned people away from the arena and eventually Shinn asked for a new, publicly-funded, arena complete with numerous luxury boxes and club seats to replace the Charlotte Arena which opened in 1988. Charlotte voters said no to a new arena by a 2 to 1 margin in 2001.
Shinn moved to New Orleans in 2002 but city leaders and NBA Commissioner David Stern didn't believe the results of the referendum were totally reflective of the feelings of Charlotte residents. After Shinn left, the city's mayor Pat McCrory set out to build an arena with taxpayer’s dollars without going to the voters to ask them if they wanted a new arena. McCrory and Stern worked out a deal and the city promised it would build an arena if the NBA would return. Johnson bid for the franchise and won spending about $300 million for the right to run the franchise.
The return of the NBA to Charlotte has not been as warmly received as the original Hornets franchise was back in 1988.
Charlotte is not the only financially distressed NBA franchise. Memphis has been struggling since Michael Heisley moved his Vancouver Grizzlies to the city in 2001. Despite playing in a new, taxpayers funded, arena, Heisley has not been fiscally successful. There are other NBA franchises looking for new arenas in Sacramento and Milwaukee. If Balsillie is successful in his bid to take over the Coyotes, what would stop other owners from going Chapter 11 if there is someone willing to take a debt ridden team off there hands in a bankruptcy proceeding.
Could New York Islanders owner Charles Wang, who admitted that he regrets buying the money losing franchise, do the same thing if he doesn’t get his Lighthouse Project approved? The Moyes/Balsillie tactics could echo from community to community that put out public money for sports facilities both on the major and minor league level.
Glendale, Arizona, on behalf of taxpayers, should unleash a super lawsuit against Moyes for breaking his lease and when that happens, taxpayers will learn whether a lease agreement signed between a franchise holder and the municipality is worth the paper it is written on. Moyes broke the lease. Balsillie's legal team is promising an antitrust lawsuit against the NHL if the league says no to his bid. The NHL, NBA and National Football League do not have antitrust protection, Major League Baseball does and that is keeping the Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff from moving his team to San Jose and it is why the New York City market has not has three teams since 1957. National League baseball owners in 1957 scoffed at the idea of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh from relocating to New York for the 1958 season.
It is a shame newspaper executives continue to miss stories and maybe they should start examine why they have become so inept and why people have turned away from the industry. Senior citizens are the last generation who are still wedded to newspapers for information. Newspaper execs have lived in a bubble forever and are in denial. Perhaps if they followed the Balsille/Coyotes/NHL saga and explained the implications to taxpayers who are paying extra fees for hotel and motel rooms, for car rentals, for restaurants, for alcohol, for cigarettes, for sewer and water and general sales taxes for these facilities, they would get more readers.
Balsillie's scorched earth policy should scare the living daylights out of elected officials who pushed for stadium/arena building as an economic engine and for newspaper executives whose papers are missing a huge story. Instead, the newspapers are asleep at the wheel saying woe is me. New York's two senators are not fighting for the Phoenix Coyotes but they want to keep Balsillie out of Hamilton because it might hurt the Buffalo Sabres franchise. Strangely quiet on the issue is Arizona's two Senators, John McCain and John Kyl. Perhaps Arizona's newspapers ought to make a call and ask what the two senators are thinking. But that might be wishful thinking asking newspapers to do more than some crime stories, some fluff entertainment stories and some mayhem stories.
eweiner@mcn.tv
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