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The Rice Thresher
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Commentairy by SUNIDH JANI
That's right, the Jets traded away arguably the best receiver in the game. To fans who still don't understand the numbers game, that may be a surprise. But to the rest of us who have noticed this increasingly ugly trend, the move was just another example of how money is now the key ingredient in most sports teams' decisions. The sad truth is that in today's world, sports = business = making money. And nowhere has this become clearer than in sagas such as the Jets trading Johnson or the Astros trading Mike Hampton. It works like this: A team signs a young, relatively unproven player to a three-year contract worth $12 million. After the deal's first two years, the player establishes himself as an all-star or even a superstar, forcing the team to make a tough decision: sign him to a contract extension at market value - somewhere around $18 million over two years - or risk losing him to free agency and getting essentially nothing in return. Well, if the team owner is a multi-billion dollar corporation like Fox or an individual with bottomless pockets like George Steinbrenner, the contract extension will surely come. But more than likely, the owner can't afford to pay market value, so he decides instead to trade the player, either before or during the final year of the contract. In return, the club gets young and, more importantly, cheap talent. What it all comes down to is that already astronomical salaries are still climbing at an alarming rate. As a result, the cleft between the teams that can compete and teams that can't will continue to widen. Basketball and football have salary caps, but franchises still have to unload potential free agents due to salary cap pinching. And in baseball, with no salary cap, the gap between the haves and have-nots is enormous. The teams owned by corporations or by guys like Steinbrenner and Ted Turner fit into the first category, and they have the luxury of having the chance to compete year in and year out. But most teams aren't even in the same financial league. So if corporate owners can spend $300 million a year on salaries, what's an owner worth only $200 million to do? The easy way out would be to sell the team to www.imadeabillion.com for a large profit and retire. But these are businessmen we're talking about. And if they haven't already thought of this, they soon will - rather than selling the team entirely, why not just rent it out? If companies are willing to shell out millions for the naming rights to an arena or stadium, how much would they drop for the naming rights to a team? Would an owner be greedy or needy enough to sell his team's nickname? Are we really to the point where the Houston Microsofts will play the Pittsburgh Pepsis? Probably not. If anything, most fans associate teams with their nicknames more than their cities - it's not Dallas that they care about, it's the Cowboys. So why not sell name of the city? Let the fans in Chicago have their Cubs, but call them the CNN Cubs. From a business perspective, it's a win-win situation for both partners. For CNN, coughing up whatever amount - say $50 million a year - is pocket change. And for the Cubs' owner, the additional $50 million just might let him re-sign that young superstar. Sure, it's a bit of a stretch. But you would have said the same thing 20 years ago, before Candlestick became 3Com and the Summit became Compaq. So don't forget the days when the St. Louis Cardinals visited the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. Because when you take your kids to watch the Toyota Cardinals play the Yahoo.com Dodgers at E bay Stadium and they ask you, during the Pennzoil Seventh Inning Stretch, about baseball when you were their age, you'll be able to tell them it wasn't always this way. It used to be just a game, you'll say. But that was before your time, too. Sunidh Jani is a Sid Richardson College junior. - back -
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