A Modest Proposal: How to Save Sports

Team owners suck.

Seriously, every owner of every sports team in North America is horrible.  EVERY owner.  So let’s get rid of ‘em. 

Well, I mean lots of them are, that’s true.  I mean, that John Fisher fellow, the owner of the Oakland A’s, is definitely something of a rapscallion.  But the owner of MY favorite team isn’t so bad.

Yeah, they are.  Seriously. 

Every. Single. Owner.  Sucks.

Think of the best owner in whatever sport you follow.  Hold that person in your head.  Now: what are the traits that makes that owner good.  Let me guess: it’s some variation on “They hire good people.  They open their wallet to make the team better.  They let the football people make football decisions.” 

OK, fair enough.  Let’s break that down.  They hire good people.  Sure.  But it doesn’t take an owner to do that.  Power structures vary with different teams, but it isn’t at all uncommon for a single person, some variation on a general manager or team president, who reports directly to the owner.  Then at person hires other people.  In that structure, they hire good people becomes they hired one good dude.  Now, that dude’s skills absolutely matter.  But why can’t that decision be made by, say, a board of directors, like most businesses?  So we don’t need an owner to hire good people.  In fact, there’s a team that doesn’t use its owner to hire people, but we’ll get to that later.

They open their wallets.  What you really mean is that there’s money available to pay good players and coaches.  We give owners enormous credit for being willing to spend a portion of their massive profits to maintain their investment.  Once again, you don’t need an owner: you need a bank account and a comptroller.

And that brings us to my favourite argument: They let the football people make football decisions.  Essentially, you have proven my point.  Another way of saying this is that the less involved the owner is in running the team, the better.  So…what’s a better way to ensure that an owner doesn’t meddle than to get rid of them entirely?

In fact, there is really only one purpose for an owner, and it has nothing to do with any of the discussion above:  Owners provide a revenue stream in times of economic downturn.  If a league is struggling, it can continue to play games for as long as the owners are willing to keep writing checks.  Being the owner of a team gives access to profits, but it also comes with a guarantee of financial solvency.  Thirty or so billionaires can band together and save a league for a year or two if ticket sales plunge. 

But here’s the problem: that scenario actually happened recently, and the owners absolutely failed the test. 

Way back in 2020 was this tiny little pandemic that caused a bit of a hubbub around the world.  Thanks to the unpoetically named Covid-19 virus, which killed over 3 million people worldwide, the 2020 Major League Baseball season had to be postponed and then curtailed.

Okay, before we keep on this, let’s do a quick tangent.

In the 14th century, there was a pandemic that swept through Europe.  It was called…The Black Death.  I mean, that name is a little on the nose, but it’s undeniably an evocative name.  Maybe the reason people were willing to deny the severity (or even the existence) of this particular global catastrophe was because we kept calling it namby-pamby names like “The Covid-19 Epidemic” or “The Covid Pandemic.”  Why didn’t somebody get the marketing people who came up with the name “The Black Death?”  Nobody is going to be scared of SARS-CoV-2.  But what if Fox News reported that doctors were getting concerned about a new illness, which is being dubbed “The Certain Death Virus?”  Even the Christian Scientists would be duct-taping the windows. 

Anyway, just a thought.  Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

So the 2020 MLB season was in jeopardy.  There was no obvious solution to run business as usual.   There was no plausible way to allow crowds into the stadiums without risking a massive outbreak.  MLB team balance sheets are notoriously kept private (more on that later), so there is no reliable way to determine what percentage of a team’s revenue is from ticket sales and concessions, but it undoubtedly meant a loss of billions of dollars.  Television rights would be unchanged, but without the income from tickets and overpriced hot dogs, it was likely that baseball teams would lose money in the 2020 season. 

The three involved parties, the MLB commissioner, the 30 team owners and the MLB Players Association (which represents the major league players), started haggling over what to do.  Ultimately, the season was reduced to 60 games, and player salaries were pro-rated to match the smaller season.  Games were played in virtually empty ballparks.  The Dodgers won the World Series, and the next season things began returning to normal.

Let’s look at this.

Why was the season reduced to 60 games?  There was nothing about the reduced season that provided any sort of protection for players from the virus.  There was negotiation back and forth between the owners and the MLBPA, and ultimately the owners got sick of hearing the players whine and simply imposed the 60-game season unilaterally.  Why 60?  Obviously, we weren’t in the room where it happened, but it is likely because the owners deemed they could recover most or all of their TV royalties with a 60-game season, while still slashing payroll.  In other words, the owners responded to the pandemic-caused economic downturn to their sport by sticking it to the players.

And before you shrug and say “It’s billionaires screwing millionaires,” I want to point out two facts:

1)     The vast majority of baseball players aren’t millionaires.  The minimum salary is currently $740.000, and according to 538.com, over 40% of MLB players made less than a million dollars last year.

2)     Even millionaires have to make mortgage payments.  If your salary was suddenly reduced by about two-thirds for a year, how long would it take for you to have trouble paying rent or your mortgage?  Why would you expect baseball players to be better able to handle that?

This was the chance for the owners to actually prove they were something more than mere parasites sucking revenue out of the sport.  Imagine what could have happened: a 162-game season, played in empty stadiums.  The owners would have swallowed the lost revenue, but the integrity of the sport would have been maintained.  Instead, the 2020 season will always have an asterisk next to it, because it didn’t even begin to resemble a normal season. 

When baseball expanded from a 154 games to 162, there was a huge outcry, and a belief among many that the records of the past could no longer be compared to the present day.  In 1961, Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, but the commissioner of baseball, Ford Frick, declared that the record would have an asterisk next to it, since Maris had the luxury of a longer season.  If Maris’s feat deserved scrutiny because of a change of eight games, what exactly are we to make of a season that was missing 63% of its games? 

This would have meant that, for the first time in generations, baseball owners might have risked losing money for a year.  I must stress the word might, because it’s entirely possible that they would still have made money, albeit less.  Baseball owners have jealously guarded their ledgers.  We have no idea how much 29 out of the 30 teams are making.  The only exception to this is the Atlanta Braves, who are owned by a publicly traded company, Liberty Media.  They still don’t itemize the expenses and income, but we know from their public filings that the Braves annually make about (does math on fingers) a sphincter-tightening amount of money. 

Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that the owners would have failed to turn a profit in 2020.  They wouldn’t have lost massive sums, because the television revenue would still be streaming in.  They could still have sold merchandise.  They would still be getting corporate sponsorships for the outfield wall.  They would have lost some money.  The owners could have absorbed that loss for the good of the game.  It is literally their only real function, and they refused to do it.  This, of course, is because owners don’t see themselves as guardians of the game.  They see themselves as plunderers of that game.  They bought in because it was an engaging hobby, and because it was a massive source of funds.  If those funds dry up, then screw ‘em.  Not their problem. 

Before presenting a modest proposal, I want to offer one more piece of evidence that owners are completely unnecessary.

There is, in fact, a professional sports team without an owner.  The Green Bay Packers are community owned, and have never had an actual owner, so far as I can tell.  How have they managed without an owner?  Very well, thank you.  As a life-long Lions fan, it pains me to say this, but the lifetime record of the Packers is  799-598 (with 38 ties), which is the best record of any franchise in football.  They have won 13 championships. They are absolutely the head of the class of the NFL, and they did it all without an owner.  Coincidence?  I think not.

So now that we have definitively proved that owners are worse than useless, here is my proposal to get rid of them:  have them be taken over by their respective cities.  The cities would assume direct control, which would allow the cities to fill their coffers with the profits from their local franchises.  It would also mean that the next time local officials try to convince the voters to accept a sales tax increase in order to finance a stadium, they are doing it in order to benefit those voters directly.  A better stadium means more ticket revenue for decades to come, which means better schools or whatever.  It would mean those benefits flow to the jurisdictions that pony up the money. 

And it actually means better run teams.  No more stories about Dan Snyder overruling his GM and drafting a local QB who went to school with his son.  No more owners throwing tantrums and threatening to move the team to Las Vegas.  No more reports of owners of majority-black teams using racist slurs. 

Now, I’m not naïve.  I am well aware that owners will not just give their teams (and related profits) to the cities, even though it would be better for absolutely everyone else.  I could suggest that cities use eminent domain to strip the owners of their teams, but that would result in massive lawsuits, and billionaires can afford a lot of lawyers.

So here is a very simple plan that will facilitate the transfer of teams to public ownership. 

First, an actor posing as an executive from the cable channel HGTV will reach out to all the owners of the professional sports teams in North America.  To assuage any suspicions, this actor should be White, male, mid-40s in age, and, for reasons that shall soon become obvious, SCUBA-certified.  Why HGTV?  Because it’s a mostly female-oriented channel, which means there is no chance any of the owners knowing a damned thing about it.  (There is a possibility Shiela Ford Hamp and Jeannie Buss will have to be drugged and kidnapped prior to execution of this plan.  I will need to investigate this point further and get back to you.  Regardless, it is an absolute certainty that none of the other owners will notice they are missing.)

The executive will explain that they are interested in a multi-billion-dollar investment in the various sports leagues.  The plan will not conflict with the TV rights of any other network.  Instead, they want exclusive rights to the various clubhouses around the leagues.  Specifically, the snack tables.  They want to televise and live-stream what the players eat after games.  They will explain that they will earn back the money spent on this investment through advertising and corporate sponsorships.  “The Mars company has already inquired about how much it would cost to get Patrick Mahomes to grab a Snickers after every game,” the fake exec with gush. 

The owners of the various sports teams will obviously think this is a terrific idea.  The fake executive will suggest a big signing ceremony to celebrate.  While discussing the details, the exec will say, “How about we do it on Jerry Jones’s mega-yacht?”  Jones, of course will happily say yes, because there’s nothing he likes more than showing off his mega-yacht to other rich folks. 

The owners will gather on Jones’s yacht, surrounded by smiling imposter HGTV executives.  The ship will set sail into international waters, and…

That’s it.  That’s the whole plan.  The HGTV executives do a reverse James Bond and strip off their suits to reveal SCUBA gear, and jump off the side of the boat to a waiting rescue dinghy.  Nothing more needs to be done. 

Before you say it, no, they will NOT simply pilot the ship to shore.  Do you think a single one of these bloated fat cats have ever learned to pilot a freaking mega-yacht?  Even if we are to assume Jerry Jones learned the basics of steering his own ship, it still wouldn’t work.  Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who runs Rocket Mortgage, would insist that Jerry drive HIM home first, before that asshole Mat Ishbia, who owns the Phoenix Suns and United Wholesale Mortgage.  Dan Snyder would suddenly emerge from where he was stowing away below deck to declare that he has a solution.  While everyone is bickering,  Jim Irsay, fresh off his eleventh martini, would slosh his way to the steering stick and crash the boat into a floating iceberg of whale chum and unrecycled plastic.  Simply put, you stick a few dozen billionaires onto a boat in the middle of the ocean and none of them is ever coming home. 

Every community would have a moment of silence for their local billionaire, and then the various municipalities would put forward legislation to “rescue” the leagues, agreeing to carry on the tradition of fine leadership that was demonstrated by their presumed dead former owners.  If any children of the owners object, well, there’s room in the closet for them where we shoved Sheila and Jeannie. 

Is this plan perfect?  Yes, actually, I think it is.  Would it be difficult to implement?  Possibly.  It really depends on how committed we are as a country to rescuing our beloved sports franchises from the feckless spittleheads who currently own them. 

I don’t expect you all to agree to this plan at once.  Mull it over.  But don’t take too long.  John Fisher still wants to move the Athletics to Vegas.  Ted Leonsis still wants to move the Washington Wizards out of the nation’s capital.  And Jimmy Haslam still owns the Browns, and is still cutting checks to a sexual predator who has forgotten how to throw a football. 

That’s my modest proposal.