Over the last two years the sports pages and bar room banter have turned into something that resembles the political pages and the Wall Street Journals. Yards per carry, goals and assists, and point spreads have been replaced with escrow payments, related revenue, and projected growth figures. With the NFL, NBA, and now the NHL having collective bargaining agreement disputes in a less then two year period business has become as much of a part of the games we love as wins and losses. The NFL managed to avoid losing games, but now is marred in a nasty labour dispute with its own referees that is giving the league a black eye as it trots out replacement referees weekly.
The NFL's referee dispute is entirely out of pride as the biggest sporting organization in North America that rakes in money like its going out of style can easily afford to break off a couple bills to its referees to maintain the "integrity of the game" they so often bring up when fining their players. It is a tad shameful that announcers are bringing up that middle school P.E. teachers are trying to officiate NFL season openers. After Monday's debacles on Monday Night football and the constant mockery of its officials it is time for the NFL to do the right thing and compensate the officials who clearly are missed.
As for the labour dispute that everyone north of the border is focusing its attention on, the NHL and the NHLPA have officially seen their old CBA expire and have locked out training camp and are in risk of cancelling preseason games. Not only does this affect fans in Saskatchewan as the annual preseason games in Saskatoon are in extreme danger of being cancelled, there is a very serious chance that Gary Bettman's third work stoppage in his tenure as NHL commissioner is on its way.
Now the issue of the moment is clear, the NHL wants more of the hockey revenue pie, the players have relented and are willing to take a cut. The problem is that once again Gary Bettman is not going to compromise and as we all know he is not afraid of seeing even an entire season go by until he forces the players into the deal that is best for his bosses, the owners. It is the classic labour dispute between a company and its employees, the employees threaten to strike and try to hold out, but at the end of the day the people cutting the cheques are going to get as close to the best possible deal as possible.
What is shocking about this is the stance large pockets of people take with the players in this current labour battle. Long gone are the mega deal contracts and unlimited salary caps of the old CBA, largely due to the fact that the NHLPA agreed to a massive paycut and scaling back on salaries already signed under the old CBA.
As the title of this weeks rant indicates I am not a business major nor a lawyer, but I know for sure that if I took a massive paycut on my current salary after losing a year of work, then returned to gain my employers a billion plus dollars in added revenues because of this, I sure wouldn't be coming to the bargaining table to take a beating the next go around. If anyone of the people I see on facebook/twitter/talk radio want to question the players for not conceding I want to see them in the position of the people they are calling out.
Yes the cliche that "I would pay the game they are depriving me of seeing for free" and the related generic rants about it are valid, but you are not lying to my face and telling me you would let a bunch of billionaires take millions of dollars out of your pockets. Yes they make millions of dollars for playing a game they love. But does that mean the guy who loves to go work on the oil fields or as a tradesperson should take paycuts everytime their bosses who make money off of them everytime it is time to talk salary?
Is it a game? Yes. Do fans pay their hard earned money to "pay" for the players contracts? Yes. But should the fans side with the owners, the billionaires who raise ticket prices and try to make a profit at all costs? We all know the answer to that. It is a resounding no. It baffles me that people make such strong opinions on something without sitting down and thinking through the perspective of others. It is easy to take some ones thoughts on an issue and align yourself to it, but it isn't right if you don't look at it from both angles. I am guilty of this just like everyone else and my stance on this issue is decidedly pro-player, but I have attempted to inform myself on both sides the best that I can before sitting down and mouthing my viewpoint.
That is what seems to be the separation from certain fans/media on this issue, on one hand there are the people who are making opinions based on emotion, and there is a camp of people trying to make sense of what will always be a complex aspect of being a fan. At the end of the day I am part journalist, part fan.
The Vancouver Canucks have been my team since I could barely walk or talk, let alone write these columns. They have won two straight Presidents Trophies and have a group of veteran players that stand to lose a lot from missing training camp, let alone a half season or a full one. I could take those emotions and go into the scathing critique of either side out of anger, but I try to refrain as much as possible. It serves no point to turn your back on players who give you eight months of entertainment a year and teams you have loved and followed your whole life because a bunch of suits can't use logic and numbers to meet at a fair agreement.
We do not have Harvard law degrees, we are not at the forefront of making business decisions that involve millions to billions of dollars. We are simply spectators of games and events that give us a distraction from our daily routines. To some it is an occasional fun distraction, to others it is passion that they have had their entire lives. But it is not a living. We, and I say we as anyone reading this is likely a sports fan, do not feed our families off of the NHL. We don't put our kids through college because the Minnesota Wild played their 82 games this season and everyone got paid. We don't have to find new jobs because Hockey Night in Canada didn't come on the first Saturday in October. We don't go bankrupt because the Columbus Blue Jackets need more hockey related revenue to keep the lights on and finish in last place every year. None of the issues of this lockout directly effect us and it is downright foolish that thousands of people feel the need to weigh in on this on a daily basis.
Go watch your local Junior team, go to the movies, support local youth sports. Watch something other than hockey. Find something to fill your hockey time for the time being. But lets all remember, we are sports fans, not negotiators. With that my NHL lockout talk is done from here on out, it is time to focus on sports that are currently playing and not dwelling on it.
