Thursday, September 09, 2004
Jackass of the Week
This award was going to go to Cheney for threatening the American public, however something more important came up.
The NHL owners and players met Thursday with the players offering their first proposal since last October. The proposal was rejected and with just a week to go it appears clear now that there will be lockout. Morons.
I've listened to all the arguments for both sides and I'm sure in some ways both are right. The owners probably aren't losing as much money as they say they are and I'm certain that the players are correct in asserting that the current system would work if the owners just showed some discipline. Who cares? I don't. And that alone should concern them greatly.
I am a huge hockey fan. I buy the hockey package on Directv. I watched 82 Flyer games last year plus every playoff game they played and I can tell you that I don't give two shits (or even a single crap) who's right or who's wrong. They need to settle this before next week or they'll do damage to the sport that they can't even comprehend.
The owners and players seem to exist in a vacuum. Either that or they only receive the papers from Canada because the United States (you know us, we're the ones with all that money) doesn't care. Hockey keeps getting mentioned as one of the big four sports along with baseball, football and basketball, but that is fallacy. Hockey isn't top five, it's barely in the top ten. The three aforementioned sports all get much better ratings than hockey, so does NASCAR and golf and figure skating. Let's not forget college football and, oh yeah, poker. ESPN isn't going to miss hockey. Neither is NBC. There are those few hardcore fans who will lament it's losing a whole season (which is likely to happen), but on the whole most people will just replace it with something else and forget.
Because we are creatures of habit, you can expect even fewer people to care about hockey when it ultimately does return. Oh, and when it does it will be short a couple of franchises. This will mean fewer jobs for the players, but I'm sure that the union will be proud that they kept their salaries up at the levels they are now. Way to take a howitzer to your nose. Your face has learned a lesson. Morons.
The owners, meanwhile, are convinced that the public will come back. They probably will in Boston and Philly, but do you really think people in Atlanta will fill their building? What about Florida or Nashville? The owners and players have this inflated idea of just how important their sport is. I don't know where they get it from. It's not from their television contract which went from $600 millions dollars over three years to $60 and all the games on ESPN2. The NHL actually gets $0 from the NBC deal. It's a revenue sharing contract. The same type Arena Football gets. This isn't surprising since the ratings the two sports get are similar.
Speaking of which, it wasn't from TV ratings because event he Stanley Cup Finals struggled to beat the WB and UPN. It's not from media because hockey really gets little coverage in the media unless someone swings a stick or a bench clears for a fight. It sure as hell isn't from my friends. They really don't care. They couldn't talk hockey if I paid them. They don't know any names of any of the players and wouldn't pay a penny to sit in the front row if that chance came up.
We hear this all the time, but revenues for the NHL are more than a billion dollars every year. You'd think there would be some way to make everyone happy and profitable, but then again most of us get by on only five figures of income every year. We'd probably be confused with a billion dollars too.
A tree is set to fall in the forest next Wednesday. It may make a sound, but instead of a crash, it will probably sound more like the spinning of two opposing sides of lawyers all justifying something that isn't justifiable at all.
The NHL owners and players met Thursday with the players offering their first proposal since last October. The proposal was rejected and with just a week to go it appears clear now that there will be lockout. Morons.
I've listened to all the arguments for both sides and I'm sure in some ways both are right. The owners probably aren't losing as much money as they say they are and I'm certain that the players are correct in asserting that the current system would work if the owners just showed some discipline. Who cares? I don't. And that alone should concern them greatly.
I am a huge hockey fan. I buy the hockey package on Directv. I watched 82 Flyer games last year plus every playoff game they played and I can tell you that I don't give two shits (or even a single crap) who's right or who's wrong. They need to settle this before next week or they'll do damage to the sport that they can't even comprehend.
The owners and players seem to exist in a vacuum. Either that or they only receive the papers from Canada because the United States (you know us, we're the ones with all that money) doesn't care. Hockey keeps getting mentioned as one of the big four sports along with baseball, football and basketball, but that is fallacy. Hockey isn't top five, it's barely in the top ten. The three aforementioned sports all get much better ratings than hockey, so does NASCAR and golf and figure skating. Let's not forget college football and, oh yeah, poker. ESPN isn't going to miss hockey. Neither is NBC. There are those few hardcore fans who will lament it's losing a whole season (which is likely to happen), but on the whole most people will just replace it with something else and forget.
Because we are creatures of habit, you can expect even fewer people to care about hockey when it ultimately does return. Oh, and when it does it will be short a couple of franchises. This will mean fewer jobs for the players, but I'm sure that the union will be proud that they kept their salaries up at the levels they are now. Way to take a howitzer to your nose. Your face has learned a lesson. Morons.
The owners, meanwhile, are convinced that the public will come back. They probably will in Boston and Philly, but do you really think people in Atlanta will fill their building? What about Florida or Nashville? The owners and players have this inflated idea of just how important their sport is. I don't know where they get it from. It's not from their television contract which went from $600 millions dollars over three years to $60 and all the games on ESPN2. The NHL actually gets $0 from the NBC deal. It's a revenue sharing contract. The same type Arena Football gets. This isn't surprising since the ratings the two sports get are similar.
Speaking of which, it wasn't from TV ratings because event he Stanley Cup Finals struggled to beat the WB and UPN. It's not from media because hockey really gets little coverage in the media unless someone swings a stick or a bench clears for a fight. It sure as hell isn't from my friends. They really don't care. They couldn't talk hockey if I paid them. They don't know any names of any of the players and wouldn't pay a penny to sit in the front row if that chance came up.
We hear this all the time, but revenues for the NHL are more than a billion dollars every year. You'd think there would be some way to make everyone happy and profitable, but then again most of us get by on only five figures of income every year. We'd probably be confused with a billion dollars too.
A tree is set to fall in the forest next Wednesday. It may make a sound, but instead of a crash, it will probably sound more like the spinning of two opposing sides of lawyers all justifying something that isn't justifiable at all.
