From: gritter@cs.purdue.EDU (Carl R. Gritter)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,rec.sport.hockey
Subject: Re: Greedy Athletes
Date: 8 Apr 92 17:16:20 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University

In article  <1992Apr8.130714.12076@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank) writes:
>Now, who are the fans paying money to see?  Wayne, or Jerry Buss?  So
>why does the owner get twice as much as Wayne?

The owner gets twice as much as Wayne because he/she is the one who is
taking all the risks.  Wayne gets paid even if the Kings don't win a
game and no one renews their season tickets.  The owner is also the
one who lost $2M a year before Wayne came to town.  Why is it so
horrible that an owner makes money from the game.  Everyone expects
the owners to smile when they suffer losses because of their "love for
the game".  But when they actually make money, all of a sudden the
players start screaming about how terrible they have it.  Bruce McNall
turned the Kings franchise (and possibly hockey in the USA) around
because of hard work and sound business sense.  Now the Kings
franchise shows a profit.  Something must be wrong.

True, most of the owners have large fortunes and can afford to lose
money.  Its probably also true that the owners are not losing as much
as they say because of tax writeoffs, clever writing of the books,
etc.   But this comes with the territory.  Its the American/Canadian
way of doing things.  A person is allowed to make money from a
business venture.  This same person can also go bankrupt and lose
his/her fortune.  

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that the owners are angels in all
this.  They are definitely not.  Many of the owners are still living
in the 50's and 60's when the sports world was radically different.
The free agent system in the NHL is a joke.  At worst it should be on
par with the NBA.  However, salary arbitration will kill the NHL (it
already has done serious damage to the baseball small markets).  The
owners should leave the hockey card thing alone.  It belongs to the
players.  They may be trying to use it as a bargaining tool but it
obviously hasn't worked.  There should also be more money incentives
for the players in the playoffs (reward hard work! -- why else would
the players be striking now -- they lose practically nothing
monetarily).

It seems certain that this season is over.  If I were an owner, I
wouldn't lock the players out next fall (if this would at all be
possible financially -- isn't the NFL doing this?).  If they don't
want a new bargaining agreement, let them play under the old one.  Let
them strike again before next year's playoffs if they want to (I
seriously doubt if they will).  Of course, this will never happen
because the owners will want the players to also feel the financial
sting.

Unfortunately, these days until one of the two sides stops losing
pocket change, serious bargaining won't even take place.

Get that Ziegler out of there!  Has he been a joke or what (for years
and years!).  The NHL needs strong leadership more than ever, and the
bumbling Ziegler is just making things worse.  Goodenow and the
players may just be playing this very smart.  Ziegler and the owners
have screwed up almost every decision in the past few years (TV
contracts, which cities should get the expansion rights, etc).
There's no reason why they shouldn't blow this one too.

Carl
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:17693 talk.politics.guns:11518