A Sporting Proposition

For some, not all, this is the season of doldrums for sports. Steroid controversy seems to be in hiatus. Yes, there’s the prospect of a couple of new great commercials in return for watching four hours of usually not too great football coming up a week from tomorrow. Pro basketball players are jetting around the country playing the last five minutes of each game. The NHL is putting on its all-star weekend here in Atlanta. It’s televised on the Versus cable channel. I believe I’ve made my point.

Having turned my attention yesterday to national economic policy, I find my head still pondering the dismal science.

Though there are no quadrillions involved, there are plenty of millionaires and a few billionaires available for examination in professional sports. First, let me say that I do not begrudge any of their riches, I just have difficulty understanding them. Take baseball. The minimum salary in 2008 will be $390,000.00. The average MLB salary in 2007 was $2,824,751.00. Yes, you have the years spent in the minors riding on buses and making peanuts - a thousand to a couple of thousand a month. But,, you also have players like Kevin Brown, a pitcher who in 1998 signed for seven years for a cool $105 million, becoming one of the first of the huge money players. He went 86 and 45. Good, but not superstar stats. Over his nineteen year career he has a .594 winning percentage.

A player like Brown would argue that years of playing well for not much money because of the restrictive collective bargaining agreement with its lockstep maximum salaries justifies the windfall at the end of his career. A team owner would say the lockstep system is needed so that the big packages can be afforded for the relatively small number of “superstars.”

I say that the “system” is the problem. Baseball and other professional sports would benefit from scrapping it and replacing it with the model used by most businesses: perform well and be paid well. Do poorly and you are shown the door. If multi-year contracts were banned along with the salary maximums for younger players, the bargaining power would be relatively equal. Player A has a great year and can command immediately, not five years down the road, a big yearly salary. Owner B can pay market price or risk losing A to a competitor. The next year A falls off in his performance and knows that his market value is not as great, as does B. The market price falls. The same pool of money is chasing the same pool of talent; but, the money is more “efficiently” spent on the talent.

How do you factor in the relatively short career span of players and the risks of injury? The same way that business does (or in some cases, should). Pensions and insurance, though here the greater market model is not perfect. Should a player who can’t get a job five years into his career at age 25 to 30 have been paid enough so as not to have to work again? I don’t think so, he can enter that greater market and sell another skill. But, should a player who suffers a catastrophic injury be thrown out with the trash? No. There insurance and pension funds should be available.

Enough contemplation – there’s hockey to be watched, except DirecTv doesn’t carry Versus.