Some Things Make you Think—the Sterling Farce.
Bill Maher has a way of coming at you from behind, out of your mindset. His take on the Sterling episode is something that requires thought and some digestion, neither of which have I completed. Below is one such video:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/10/bill-maher-donald-sterling_n_5301576.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
I recall thinking that Sterling is what we often get when we let the richest men in America own our professional sport teams and have Congress give them anti-monopoly protections, let them police their own operation, give themselves the power to select any new owners, let them be judge and juries regarding all matters relative to their sport—including salaries that have no limits, to grant no place at any bargaining table for anyone who might represent the fans or the cities in which they play. It is a setup guaranteed to crash. Unlimited greed and power always crashes. When enough is never enough a bad ending is inevitable.
Maher has convinced me, on first read, that he is probably right, that we need a right to privacy regarding speech made in our own home. Of course, if that right were enforced, how would we ever get rid of any bad owner? Well, any cursory examination of Sterling’s past would give plenty of cues that he is not exactly an upstanding citizen and never should have been allowed to own a professional sport team——and never should have any of the others. “On top of all that, Sterling attempts to paint this controversy as an isolated incident rather than the latest event in a long history of marks against the owner. Sterling has paid out a record settlement in a housing discrimination lawsuit, been accused of fostering a "plantation mentality" by longtime general manager Elgin Baylor, and generally been seen as a problematic part of the NBA for years. As Adrian Wojnarowski reported at the beginning of this most recent ordeal, the NBA believed that Sterling would die before they had to deal with him directly. This incident is only his first mistake if we define the term as "doing something that compels the NBA to try to kick him out." (Of course, Sterling is a lawyer by training, and in a legal sense he may be right.)”
However, the League has known for years what kind of person Sterling was, but unless it were to publicly and unavoidably hurt the image of the League, it was ok. That shouldn’t be ok at all.
Imagine if we started from scratch on who should own our professional sport teams. Would we really jump at the opportunity to let the richest people vie to own these teams, and after that let these same people choose the next owners and then have Congress give this cabal carte blanch to do pretty much whatever they wish, and call their wishes “in the best interest of football”. Does anyone really believe these owners put anyone else’s interest before their own financial interests?
Of course early on these leagues were new, bush, and risky. That’s why no one objected. But times have changed and these professional sport teams are some of the largest financial enterprises in the country, have no competition, and have no regulation, and no limits. The early owners, as a group, may well have been innovative, self accomplished talented individuals who used their talents to make the leagues succeed. But that situation has long gone, and they are all dead.
Today we have owners, a precious few of whom may still fit the mold of the early owners, but a majority of them either inherited the team, earned their wealth in nefarious ways (like Sterling who is a slum lord), or simply see ownership as the safest and fastest way to pile their wealth higher and higher. It is the most expensive and most outrageous example remaining of any so called ‘good ole boys club’. Any other group, even if protected by Congress, is still subject to media criticism. Not this cabal, every major media group depends on professional sports, especially the major ones, to enrich their own media outlet. That is why during every football game we have the obligate video pan of the owner in his luxury box with the affectionate and revered comments by the broadcasters about the owner. To do otherwise would jeopardize any future contracts by that network. This completes their protection. The fans have no control over anything, the cities who host them have no control, the courts have relinquished control absent some owner murdering or raping someone, and the players are subjected to an arbitrator who is the commissioner who is in turn hired by the owners. Of course, we need not weep too excessively for the athletes since they do have a union and at the bargaining table the only question is always just how much of the unlimited financial pie does each side get.
While professional athletes should be richly rewarded, and most probably are, there need to be limits. Right now there are no limits and the salaries naturally increase exponentially every year. Salary caps do not control how high salaries can go. Salary caps are in place year by year. If they wanted, for the sake of illustration, to double all salaries they could just double the salary cap and pass the cost on to the public. All this vast amount of money being gathered up, roughly half going to the owners and half to the players comes, in one way or another, from the public. Thus presently, only the affluent can afford to attend games, the cities are bilked millions by threats to leave if the city can’t come up with their demands, and the players are stuck with contracts which are only binding to the players, not the owners.
Were we to start from scratch the whole situation could be vastly improved.
For a start the teams should be publicly owned, and not in any phony sense like the Green Bay Packers. Considering how much time most the of public spends listening to, talking about, or attending games, this seems an area in which the public, in some form or fashion, can have real input. Of course professional sports are going to generate huge profits, even if there are limits, and these profits ought to be plowed back into the society from which they were extracted. Practically every city which hosts a team could use some additional revenue. Or maybe it should be the state in which the team plays, or maybe it should be a general fund dispersed to all the states. There is no logical reason why such huge profits gained from a monopoly should be pocketed by those already embarrassingly rich and often ethically bankrupt.
Then legitimate salary caps would be in place for all professional sports. And contracts would be binding to both the player and the management—and, salaries pegged more realistically to recent performance. There is nothing wrong with all players earning a salary commensurate with their recent performance. While this kind of relationship cannot be exact, it would avoid, minus a one year lapse, a top player in one position making a high salary and a top player in the same position making a barely minimum salary. Fair is fair and there is no ethical reason to operate a salary system so patently unfair to so many. When roper salary limits are in place, then increase them as the cost of living increases and do away with all the bickering.
Fines, suspensions, etc. would be adjudicated by an independent arbitration board not connected to management or the player’s union.
All major media outlets should be overseen by an independent Board of Media Ethics. There needs to be an elimination of ‘unknown’ informants providing information used to character assassinate a particular player. This is a difficult area, but professional players are under a lot of pressure without giving sport commentators a green light to character assassinate them without clear evidence for the assassination. The players may be financially rich humans, but they are still human and need some sort of protection from media assassination.
Stadium expenses could be more even for the different sites. There is no reason why one team gets a state of the art stadium and another team gets a more modest stadium.
There may be other areas in need of more fairness but those above suffice to point out areas in need of improvement. Professional sports is a public service, and should be run in such ways as to maximally benefit the public, the players, and the cities in which they play. Then, none of us need care what Sterling and others of his calibre are saying about other people. Limiting the greed of the wealthy is a government function and not limited to just the wealthy owners of football teams. To exempt wealthy owners of professional sport teams from the government's obligation to limit excessive hoarding of our national wealth is ludicrous.
History has shown clearly enough that when the wealth of any society becomes too concentrated amongst a few, at the expense of the many, that society will collapse. Enough is enough is not only an ethical principle, but it ensures all segments of society benefit and prosper. This, of course, is a broader question than who owns professional football teams.
