A Long Winter

I’ve been told by many friends they don’t read what I write about the NHL.  For reasons apparent to three year olds, the NFL garners way more interest on a national scale than my favorite sport.  And I’ve hit a point where convincing fans to appreciate hockey has no appeal anymore.  If you like the NHL, and want them to return, this will be a long, long winter.

News broke this past week that the NHL plans to cancel the Winter Classic, a New Year’s Day extravaganza featuring an outdoor game.   Bar none, the Classic provides the league with its greatest worldwide exposure, drawing many away from the recently disappointing slate of New Year’s bowl games.  Many remember the first Winter Classic featuring Pittsburgh and Buffalo, when Sidney Crosby scored a shootout goal in the middle of a large snowfall.  The magical effect spurred the NHL to bringing in bigger markets and more historic locations, like Fenway Park and Wrigley Field.  This New Year’s Day the Classic was set for the Big House, Michigan’s stadium in Ann Arbor, and would showcase a Canadian team for the first time.

The labor dispute, however, likely irrevocably changed all of this forever.  While the NHL has experienced amazing growth since the last lockout in 2004, the moving pieces required to set up the Winter Classis to its current popularity take lots of time.  Contracts with cities, stadiums, sponsors, and teams all will need to be re-worked or voided.  And, what’s worse, the game itself might never come back.

Consider this: as a CEO of a corporation, why would you agree to a long-term deal to sponsor a marquee event for the NHL after two lockouts?  The league contracts a case of the measles every seven years, after all.  Bridgestone, the biggest sponsor of the Winter Classic, won’t fall into that trap again.  Now that I think about it, would anyone lend their national name to a brand that disappears once in a decade?

But a better question is: will the fans come back?  For all the problems, inherent issues, and frustrations caused by the NHL’s labor disputes, will fans ever return?  After becoming the first American pro league to lose a full season due to labor disputes, the NHL charted a new course of life.  Games moved to Europe to start the season, money poured into the dedicated NHL Network, and the search for a marquee event was born.  The results deserve high praise, as hockey experienced a record $3.3 billion in revenue last year and has seen the salary cap almost double since 2004.  The upbeat style of play, eliminating antiquated rules like the two line pass and instituting delayed offsides, created more scoring during the average game. 

The potential for continued revenue growth wasn’t just there, it was inevitable this year.  Economic forecasters had the Winter Classic bringing in more money than any previous hockey event, cementing the annual contest as a transcendent institution that would interest even the casual sports fan.  Nobody seems to want to accept that cancelling the Winter Classic reinforces to all observers that there’s a sickness in the league.  Maybe there are a few owners who refuse to negotiate, maybe the players want too much every year…everyone wants to blame somebody, but by now we’re past that stage.  The players, who did nothing to create the Winter Classic as an institution, won’t push hard enough to save it.  The league, supposedly knowledgeable of potential fallout, likewise refuses to come to the table and talk.  No further talks have been scheduled as of now, and given what will be sacrificed the two parties need to at least come together.  I have put my lot in with the players before on this blog…no longer.  At this stage, both sides are royally screwing themselves and fans through this kind of tomfoolery. 

Both sides are throwing away great success.  The Winter Classic, the biggest manifestation of that success, was meant to feature prominently this year in front of almost 100,000 fans in Ann Arbor.  Instead, we must watch as both sides peck at one another without any prospect for reconciliation.  A heralded 50/50 split proposed by the owners received a sound rejection from Donald Fehr and the players.  With a quarter of the season now cancelled, one would think missed paychecks might give the players an incentive to negotiate.  For owners, the possible lost sponsorships as a result of this lockout should give them pause. 

Regardless of your personal preference for who might be right in this debate, hockey will reach a new level of irrelevance should the season be lost.  Perhaps not for the puckheads like myself, but the average fan who found a growing attachment to the game in the last five years will follow the star-studded NBA rather than wait for the NHL to screw its head on properly.  Americans are known for their short attention span, and sports is no different.  That pains me, but at this point, why should I care?

Bit #1: New York City Marathon?

For the first time in a while, the New York City Marathon actually received some press nationally this week, but not in the way it would have liked.  Large swaths of New York remain without power…my Facebook this week told tales of 30-block walks just to take showers and charge phones.  But, mayor Michael Bloomberg says the show must go on.

This decision, quite simply, isn’t fair to New York.  The marathon depends on cooperation from law enforcement and fire departments, many of whom are patrolling the city trying to clean damage and prevent looting in areas without power.  Having to shadow the marathon will put a further strain on those resources.  While many think the race will boost the Big Apple economy, there’s no way the projected 47,000 runners will show, especially since flights remain limited and hotels filled to the brim (the Steelers will be unable to stay in New York prior to their game at the Meadowlands this weekend…hotels are turning away pro sports teams because they have so many tenants).  In short, the marathon might be an exciting event for New Yorkers, but diverting resources to it when so much of the city sleeps in the dark makes very little sense.  While city officials ensure the media they are not misplacing priorities, all effort possible should go into reversing the damage and turning the lights back on.

Bit #2: As usual, the panicky sports media

One of my biggest media pet peeves deals with the large amount of “Breaking News” or “Developing Story” tags you see when opening up a mainstream media website.  It might not happen 24 hours a day, but the bright yellow headlines on CNN.com occur enough to give you a seizure.  Similarly, ESPN’s Sportscenter always begins with either Breaking News or a Developing Story, the contents of which rarely justify the hoopla attached to them.

But, the Panic Meter is also a favorite for the 24 hours sports media.  And for the Lakers, that conversation has reached new heights after a tough 0-2 start.  I will admit, you can’t add the pieces the Lakers added and not see some ridicule, but the media really has taken itself to a new low.  Two games into an 82 game season and they are discussing the panic meter of the Lakers.  That’s right, the teams has completed 2.4% of their games, and should be panicked according to the L.A. media.

While I can’t deny we could see some changes early on if the Lakers struggle out of the gate, the attention paid to these guys is ridiculous.  As Kobe said yesterday, everyone needs to shut up and pay closer attention to the problems really affecting us right now (there’s an election on Tuesday, for example).  The Lakers will figure things out, as they always have.

Bit #3: Trade Deadline in NFL

One thing I dislike about the NFL is the lack of trade deadline acquisitions.  On Thursday, the Bucs traded troubled cornerback Aqib Talib to the New England Patriots, a refreshing breath of fresh air for a league fairly stagnant as far as trades go.  In the NBA or MLB, midseason trades make lots of sense.  For one, players have to do much less to pick up a scheme.  The NFL contains a myriad of defensive and offensive schemes, so just plugging a player in wouldn’t work as well.  Also, unlike the NFL, other sports consider expiring contracts and look to receive value in exchange for those contracts.  Almost any basketball trade, for instance, contains the flotsam and jetsam of journeymen who are in the last year of their deal (think Brian Cardinal as an example).  The NFL doesn’t do that, mainly for the reason given above.  The average football franchise prefers the familiar veteran to a rent-a-player who provides only about 8 weeks of production before leaving town.

So it makes lots of sense to set the system up as it’s currently done, but regrettably the NFL does not experience the kind of excitement that comes with shuffling talent around.  I’m not entirely sure what the point of this Bit might be, but many wondered this week why someone like Steven Jackson on the Rams didn’t move at the deadline.  It all comes down to how much he can produce in a different offense.  If you play in Jacksonville, it’s taken the whole team about two years to understand the offense.  Given that and the complexity of offense now, it makes total sense to not make large trades.

Bit #4: Biggest NFL game this weekend

The biggest game this weekend has to be Eagles-Saints on Monday night.  The two teams might not be the most explosive or most fun, but the loser of this game will be dead to rights in the tough NFC for the rest of the year.  The Saints, if they lose, will be 2-6 after giving up 474.7 yards per game this year.  The Eagles would drop to 3-5, a very low record and a long way from being in contention.  The NFC, at the peak of its powers this year, has effectively one playoff spot left open assuming the Packers make it.  That could go to the Eagles if they salvage a .500 record in the first half of the season.  That won’t be great, but it will be enough to build on (lots of inherent assumptions in that statement about the Eagles’ performance, but roll with me).  For the Saints, a marginally better defense that beats Philly can feel much better heading into a very tough schedule in the second half.  Drew Brees provides the firepower and has a sense of urgency about him to resurrect this team back to a playoff pulse.