AB Newswire - Athletic Business

Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Pro Bowl Is Stupid. Kill It Already.

Andrew Cohen

All-Star Games have all outlived their relevance, but the Pro Bowl, which is kicking off any minute now, is by far the dumbest of them all, and made even dumber by its being contested today, one week before the Super Bowl.

If that's possible. It's true that, in its normal slot one week after the Super Bowl, it was a colossal afterthought — and worse, a game that nobody really wanted to play, with the specter of injury leading to many no-shows, both literal and figurative. This year, the game is being played without representatives of the league's two best teams, including the two best quarterbacks. Why bother?

A little history: America's Pastime held its first All-Star Game in 1933. The sport needed the money and it needed to get fans, most of whom didn't have two nickels to rub together, to spend the one nickel they had on a ballgame. The idea made some sense: Gather all the sport's biggest stars on one field, and watch two veritable Dream Teams go at it. Prior to that, the only way fans ever got to see representatives of the two leagues on one field was during the World Series. But also, baseball's mano-a-mano of pitcher vs. hitter is singular among the team sports, and really makes for made-for-TV All-Star Game moments (if only they'd had TV!).

In short, back in 1933, you'd need a hell of a lot of luck to see Carl Hubbell face Babe Ruth. Major League Baseball foresaw the possibilities, and in its second-ever All-Star Game, in 1934, the league got a tremendous stroke of luck: Hubbell, in a second-inning jam, fanned Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx to retire the Americans, for good measure striking out Al Simmons and Joe Cronin to lead off the third. That, right there, was the essence of fans' endless arguments about which was more important, pitching or hitting.

Other sports just don't accommodate the would-be dream matchup. The NBA's one-on-one is always between two scorers (Kobe vs. LeBron...lol), which is why that sport's All-Star Games always end up 139-138. Football, both American and World, are the ultimate team sports — statistics, especially defensive statistics, are completely team-oriented. You want to see the best offense against the best defense? You saw it when the New England Patriots fell to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII, not when Tom Brady went one-on-one with Justin Tuck.

Added to which, who cares whether the NFC or the AFC wins? In a week we're going to crown the real champion, which for most fans will settle the debate over which conference is stronger. And, did you hear? Peyton Manning and Drew Brees will start.

Posted At 5:32 PM • Comments (0)

Friday, January 29, 2010

They Couldn't Sell Their Sol

Andrew Cohen

When Women's Professional Soccer's second season kicks off April 10, it will have two new teams in Philadelphia and Atlanta and an expanded 24-game season schedule. What it won't have is its most popular team, the Los Angeles Sol, which yesterday the league decided to fold and disperse its roster (which includes Marta, the world's most accomplished player) among the league's other teams.

A lot of stupid things are bound to be said and written over the next few months about this turn of events, but at least we know that Tonya Antonucci, the league's commissioner, has her head screwed on right. Antonucci noted yesterday that the Sol was one of the league's strongest clubs financially, and that the team had proved that the L.A. market was viable for women's soccer — and said, furthermore, that WPS hoped to have a team there again in 2011.

So, what the hell happened? How can a team that compiles the league's best record, averages 6,300 fans a game at home compared with the other WPS teams' 4,600, boosts league-wide road attendance by 25 percent and finishes one goal short of being crowned the WPS' inaugural champion, fail?

Simple. Anschutz Entertainment Group, the team's owner, decided it wanted to sell the Sol after the season, in spite of the fact that the company's owner, Philip Anschutz, is a billionaire. Unable to find an immediate buyer, Anschutz transferred the rights back to WPS, and for some reason WPS decided to fold the team rather than operate it as Major League Baseball did with the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals.

And why did the league decide that no Sol was better for the league than a league-operated Sol? Probably because the team, no matter what Antonucci says, was losing money — in which case you'd have to ask yourself just how shaky the WPS's finances are. Frankly, I'm not that keen on calling them for a comment, after dutifully publishing the optimistic statements of the WUSA in 2000 and the WPS in 2009. I know this: Folding your start-up league's version of FC Barcelona doesn't bode well for women's soccer in this country.

Posted At 2:07 PM • Comments (0)

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Cheaters Proof

Paul Steinbach

Nearly a third of the top 100 runners to finish a marathon in Xiamen, China, earlier this month were disqualified for cheating, with several of the cheats turning out to be students from a middle school in Shandong province.

One method used to fix the China results dates back to the early 1900s — circumventing a substantial length of the racecourse by car. Another involved much more modern technology. Some competitors gave their radio-frequency timing chips to faster runners, who either served as imposters or carried multiple chips, including their own, across the finish line.

Why were so many looking for an illegal leg up? Runners believed to finish the race in less than two hours and 34 minutes stood to gain extra points toward China's highly competitive university entrance exams, according to a report last week in England's The Guardian.

When asked whether such chip switching occurs here in the states, Sean Gavigan, owner of Milwaukee-based PrimeTime Race & Event Management LLC, says, "We've never run into any blatant cheating where we've actually caught anybody. It's something that we perceive as possible, but we don't want to talk about it too much, just because we don't want to give people any ideas."

Runners would be unwise to even think about it. PrimeTime integrates its chip-based timing with photographic evidence of who is actually finishing the race at the time a particular chip crosses the line. This is precisely how officials in Xiamen uncovered the rampant fraud at their race. In fact, they have vowed to enhance future video surveillance of the event, which draws 50,000 participants.

"For the average community road race, it isn't such a necessity, because generally there isn't much motivation to cheat," Gavigan says. "When there are bigger stakes on the line in a larger race, our policy is to focus particularly on the top 100 finishers to make sure everything is very clean at the finish line, that the correct people cross at the time their chips are read. Cheating can be easily prevented with a comprehensive timing plan."

Posted At 3:00 PM • Comments (0)

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Still Believing

Paul Steinbach

For nearly 30 years now, the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team has been an off-and-on obsession of mine. Every Feb. 22, I'm taken back to that Friday night in the dead of winter when my mom and I watched a tape-delayed and condensed hockey game from Lake Placid, N.Y., on ABC. We didn't know the game was tape-delayed or condensed, and just as Al Michaels stated during the pregame, we were among those in the television audience who didn't know a blue line from a clothesline. But we knew we were witnessing something unlike anything we had ever seen. When Team USA defeated the Soviet Union, 4-3, in the medal round's semifinals, this impressionable 13-year-old fell in love with a sport and a historic sports spectacle.

I got the jump on that nostalgia this year, having read a Boston Globe Sunday Magazine article profiling Mike Eruzione, the 1980 team captain who scored the game-winner against the Soviets. Written by Billy Baker (though not the Billy Baker who scored in the waning seconds of the Americans' tournament opener to tie Sweden — a goal many consider as important to the team's golden fate as Eruzione's), it is one of the best pieces on that moment (and, in this case, its aftermath for one man) that I have read, and I think I've read them all. It rivals E.M. Swift's Sports Illustrated Sportsmen of the Year article from December 1980, which still warrants an annual reread.

In his piece, Baker refers to the HBO Sports documentary "Do You Believe in Miracles?" which premiered in February 2001. If you haven't seen it, find it. I borrowed a copy from a former coworker who had played women's hockey at Northeastern and nearly made the Olympic team but who wasn't old enough in 1980 to appreciate what was taking place. I watched her DVD three times before I returned it, and now own a copy complete with the Soviet game as it was broadcast. A video introduction of Eruzione every time he speaks borrows a few of HBO's sound bites, and we again saw the goal scored and number 21 pumping his arms and legs as if running up along the boards, before he spoke at the Facility of Merit reception during the 2004 Athletic Business Conference.

It was there that I got the chance to chat him up. I told him I started playing ice hockey because of that team. "How many times have you heard that?" I asked the captain. "Only about a million," Eruzione said. I offered to bring him a drink. Vodka, club soda and Diet Coke. Still downing the Russians.

Earlier that year, Disney released "Miracle." I own that DVD, too, though I don't watch it. While SI's Swift praised the movie and Kurt Russell's "spot-on" depiction of coach Herb Brooks, I don't think it captures the dirty-slush dinginess of Lake Placid or the country's collective mood. The Olympic Center is too well lit. The ice too white. Jack O'Callahan's hair is all wrong. (I did mention the word "obsession," didn't I?) I told Eruzione that, of the two, I thought the HBO documentary was superior. He agreed.

To this day, I'm glad for my brief face time with this hero from my youth. Having heard during a radio interview 10 years ago that Eruzione travels the country reliving his moment — the country's moment — in front of corporate audiences, I lobbied to bring him to our show. I thought the release of "Miracle" might be our last chance, the last time Eruzione and his underdog story would be relevant. After reading Baker's piece, I realize nothing could be further from the truth.

Posted At 12:54 PM • Comments (0)

Warning to Sports Fans: You Might Spot Them in *Ethnic* Restaurants

Andrew Cohen

Okay — I will not be laughing if terrorists bomb one of Vancouver's Olympic venues. But the U.S. government's warning to American sports fans traveling to the 2010 Winter Games to (as a report on CTV's Vancouver 2010 site put it) "watch out for al-Queda and other extremists, especially on transit and in restaurants, churches and other areas outside official venues" strikes me as a bit loopy. How does one pick out an extremist from among a group of thousands of sports fans (someone wearing a burkha)? Something tells me Eric Rudolph wasn't wearing a ghutra when he bombed Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics.

Nothing wrong with staying vigilant; Richard Jewell, the man who found the bag containing the bomb in Atlanta, probably saved thousands of lives with his quick thinking (and look what it got him). But in the absence of a specific, credible threat (the U.S. State Department has denied any), the warning only serves to remind me of Bob Dylan's classic, "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues," here rendered as "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues." Any extremists in your toilet bowl?

Posted At 7:24 AM • Comments (0)

Thursday, January 07, 2010

A Rose By Another Name

Paul Steinbach

The college football season reaches its climax tonight when Alabama and Texas meet in the Citi BCS National Championship Game — Pasadena Tournament of Roses. The actual Rose Bowl Game Presented by Citi was decided between Ohio State and Oregon six days earlier. Whether or not you consider all of this confusing, it's that four-letter word attached to both the wordier-titled title game and the grander reference to "The Granddaddy of Them All" that most of us should find most annoying, if not outright vulgar.

According to Houston Chronicle business columnist Loren Steffy, title sponsor Citigroup has accepted roughtly $50 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to remain in business, paid less than half of it back, yet continues to underwrite the staging of sporting events. Citigroup also ranks among the nation's top underwriters of private student loans, which Steffy points out are offered to students at adjustable rates that start lower than federally backed student loans, but then balloon typically before they can be paid off. "In other words, a lot of students are getting suckered into paying more than they should for college," Steffy wrote yesterday. "By sponsoring the Bailout Bowl, Citi is using our money to exploit college students."

Citigroup — which stirred nationwide controversy with its purchase of naming rights to the year-old home of the New York Mets (slightly less controversy arose when the company bought my mortgage) — has to advertise, Steffy wrote, or we taxpayers may never see our money again. "But sponsoring college bowl games isn't typical advertising," he added. "It's another example of finance companies worming their way into the lucrative college market, associating their names with institutions of higher learning."

Of course, creation of an NCAA Football Playoff could solve this problem. NCAA, remember, is not a four-letter word.

Posted At 1:28 PM • Comments (0)

Monday, January 04, 2010

The Cheesiest Sponsorship of All Time

Andrew Cohen

When I first saw the news a couple weeks back that Waste Management Inc. had become the sole title sponsor of what will henceforth be known as the Waste Management Phoenix Open, I was convinced that the 20-year-old trend of stadium and event naming rights had finally, inexorably, sunk to the bottom of the cesspool. It's obvious what Waste Management takes away from the deal — the company doubtless sees the upscale PGA Tour as the route by which it can flush most people's association (fair or not) of its services with those cesspit-sucking trucks in favor of its Think Green® sustainability solutions. But what on earth, besides money, does the Phoenix Open get? Six years' worth of jokes about its crappy tournament?

In any case, I was wrong — to paraphrase Frank Zappa, the trend isn't dead, it just smells funny. News broke on New Year's Eve that Kraft Foods will pay the city of Irving, Texas, $75,000 and make an additional $75,000 contribution to local charities in return for being named the title sponsor for the implosion of Texas Stadium. According to news reports, the company plans to launch a campaign "linking the destruction of the former home of the Dallas Cowboys to its Cheddar Explosion line of macaroni and cheese products."

To send the event straight over the top, the company plans to have a nationwide contest to select a child to push the button that starts the implosion, which is scheduled for April 11.

Prior to the city council's unanimous thumbs-up of the plan, a straight-faced Maura Gast, executive director of the Irving Convention and Visitors Bureau, told councilors that Kraft's promotion of the event will "tell the story Irving wants to tell, which is really about the future of Irving and everything we are banking on happening in the redevelopment of this site."

How much of Marketing 101 did I sleep through back in sophomore year? Watching this video, and in particular listening to the whoops of that one crazed guy, I am not flooded with thoughts of either an explosion of cheese or the future of Irving. I'm left, frankly, with a bad taste in my mouth.

Posted At 2:15 PM • Comments (0)