In recent weeks, the sporting scene has been dominated by the National Football League Playoffs. Under the present system, playoffs are the most important part of the long NFL schedule. The regular schedule is largely incidental.
Teams play a 16-game schedule starting late in August. Each team is given a bye week when no game is played. Prior to the schedule, two exhibition games are played, so it is an endurance to last from the first game to the final encounter. Now that is the regular schedule.
Ah, but the last game is only the prelude to the playoffs. Curiously and cruelly, playoff games when the players and the clubs have most at stake, are played in the cold and snows of January. This year, there were games in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Boston, Massachusetts, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. None of those towns qualifies as a resort area with placid weather. In the final games at Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the weather registered less than 20 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. Snow in great quantities fell the Saturday before the Sunday game. The player’s hands were clearly affected by the cold. Throws from quarterbacks often fluttered in the brisk wind as they were released.
These are inhumane conditions for the players as well as for the fans. And it all happens because of greed. In former days, the team that led the win-loss column at the conclusion of the regular schedule was crowned the champion of that particular year. The season ended in December. Then because of greed, a playoff system was installed, with a Super Bowl as the climax. If a team successfully negotiated the playoff routine, it will have played as many as 22 games before the season is finally ended.
A long season dictates injuries to the players and cuts short their careers. But it means many more bucks for the owner’s wallets. The need to be bigger and stronger and to have more endurance is a set piece for drug ingestion by the players.
The point is simple. To drain more revenue from football fans, the playoffs were invented as a post-season device. As a result, the most important games of the season are played in sub-freezing temperatures often in rain or snow storms. Observers will note that when the ultimate game is played, that is the Super Bowl – the site becomes a more temperate location in Florida or some other warm place. Philadelphia and Boston are the contestants in the 2005 Super Bowl. No one in his right mind has suggested playing the game in those two Northeastern cities. If that is true, why is it that the games that precede the Super Bowl are played in the frigid temperatures of January? The only answer is greed. Injuries to players and the deleterious effects on their careers take second place to the inordinate desire to fill the owner’s coffers with dollars. The same desire applies as well to the television networks.
The answer, my friends, is greed, greed, greed. There is no other answer to extending the season far past its logical and normal limits. If the players falter, the owners say, “Let’s get some new players.” In the end, greed makes this an immoral system. Some people are reminded of the old Grecian and Roman games done for the entertainment of the royalty. In those games, some contestants lost their lives. In the course of thousands of years, some progress has been made. Players don’t lose their lives; many of them hobble from injuries for the rest of their lives.
The Canadian Football League wraps up its season in November. We have a lot to learn from our northern neighbors.
We turn now from football in January to the baseball World Series which comes to an end, given a share of luck, the last days of October or in early November.
All of the disabilities of the post season football playoffs are found in the current playoff system in baseball. Each league, the National and the American, competes in three divisions. The team having the second best record then becomes the fourth playoff team. That is called the “wildcard” team. If they have a string of successes, they can become the champion of baseball, regardless of the standings of the other clubs after a 162 game schedule. The Boston Red Sox did exactly that in 2004.
The most important games are played – AT NIGHT – in late October to determine the winner. Playing night baseball in October means an inferior brand of baseball because of the cold. Pitchers who can’t get a proper grip on the ball are often wide of the strike zone. Performing in cold weather at temperatures of 40º or less is nothing short of asking for an injury. But the playoffs put big money into the owner’s pockets. It is a system of absolute greed. The television networks share in this greed.
To keep up with the pressures of professional baseball, players often resort to drugs. This year we find admissions by Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees and Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants. Gary Sheffield of the Yankees has long been suspected of taking performance enhancing drugs. Ken Caminetti who had a Most Valuable Player career in baseball, lost his life at age 41. Caminetti admitted using drugs. Jason Giambi has developed a tumor. His output has diminished severely. The Yankees owe Caminetti $80 million dollars under his contract which they cannot shed. The point is that greed is driving the players and the owners. That is a deplorable development.
In another act of greed, the American League now has had for several years a system called the “designated hitter.” The pitcher, who is usually the poorest batter, does not come to the plate. His place is taken by a designated hitter. The DH has no other duties but to bat for the pitcher. He does not appear as a fielder. His only job is to bat in place of the pitcher.
The idea of the DH is to encourage home runs which allegedly draws more fans to the ball parks. In the American League, baseball strategy takes second place. Bunting, the hit and run, and the stolen base are concepts that give way to the desire for the long ball or the home run. Watching an American League game is an exercise in futility. Strategy is for that other league. In the American League, we employ hitters like Jason Giambi or Edgar Martinez or other washed up players who can no longer handle a fielding position. The game of baseball is greatly diminished when strategy gives way to the greedy desire for the home run.
Two other professional sports leagues exist in this country and in Canada. They are the National Basketball League and the National Hockey League. Each plays an 82 game schedule battling the inclement weather of winter when it comes to intercity travel.
The basketball league has by my latest count 30 teams. It includes teams such as Sacramento, Memphis and Charlotte. We are down to only one club in Canada, that being in Toronto. In college basketball, there is a tournament called the Sweet Sixteen which takes place late in March or early in April. Colleges may play a 40 or 50 game schedule. But the pros, after an 82 game schedule, are just warming up for the playoffs.
The fact is that a club which finished first in its division has to do it all over again in the playoffs. Playoffs my friends, are for greed. Long after the baseball season, which starts in April, we have basketball and its playoffs extending into June. If everything goes well, the basketball champions of the NBA are crowned in the first two weeks of June. With exhibition games and the regular season starting in September, the schedule goes on for nine or ten months, an inordinate amount of time. As in the case of professional football and baseball, all the drawbacks about players taking performance enhancing drugs to perform at peak levels for such an extended season apply. The same goes for player injuries. It is all done for lining the pockets of television networks and the basketball owners. When the players falter, the owners discard the players and find others to take their place. It is all about greed, greed greed.
Last year, the playoff system in the National Hockey League produced the championship round in the early part of June. The contestants were Winnipeg and Tampa Bay. The final games were played – in June – in Tampa Bay. Objective observers must find that the hockey championship in June in Tampa Bay is a ridiculous development. Ice hockey in June in Tampa Bay is perhaps the ultimate oxymoron.
There is no NHL 2004-05 hockey season so far this year. Greed has gotten to everyone. The players want to be free to earn unlimited salaries. On the other hand, the owners insist on a “hard cap” on salaries. All indications would lead one to predict that the NHL 2004-05 hockey season will be cancelled. That is somewhat of a crime, but clearly and unequivocally, the loss of the NHL season is a function of greed.
So we find greed everywhere in professional sports. Innocence is a forgotten commodity. The prospects are for more greed – not less. Just this winter, baseball owners, including the New York Mets, signed free agents to exorbitant contracts. So the owners desire for more revenues will continue to grow.
Where will it end? It will end with lesser clubs in such places as Oakland, Kansas City, Buffalo or Orlando with owners having to say – this game is too rich for my taste. Perhaps it will end with mega-millionaires such as George Steinbrenner or Madison Square Garden’s Jim Dolan controlling an unhealthy collection of players. If that is the way professional sports are headed, then good old fashioned greed wins the day.
But there is a lesson in the debate over the 2004-05 NHL season. Greed may well force a reduction in the towns where professional sports are played. Greed may force a season to be cancelled as in the case of this year’s hockey season. In the end, in spite of exorbitant fees to see a professional game, the losers will be the fans – who paid all this money to support the structures of professional sports. The fans don’t deserve that sort of treatment, but greed is the active ingredient here.
We will have to see what happens, but you may be sure of one thing. The fans who pay the bills will be the ones to be hurt. This is where greed has gotten us. If greed is one of the seven deadly sins, it richly deserves that designation.
E. E. CARR
February 5, 2005
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Seems like you could avoid most of these problems with climate-controlled stadiums. Or at least a change of schedules would make sense — if we have to have a nine-month season, why not START it in February, so you can wrap things up in October? That way you have increasingly good weather for the bulk of the season, ending in fall before it gets too cold. Having athletes play their most important games in the worst conditions doesn’t make much sense at all.