February 16, 2003 7:29 AM

It's all about the Benjamins

Sports no longer a refuge amid troubling times

Time was when sports were a diversion, a means for taking out of the dreariness and stress of our otherwise miserable existence. After 9.11, most of us recognized sports for what they really are: games that, while entertaining and healthy diversions, have no real bearing on any aspect of our day to day lives. The Houston Chronicle's Dale Robertson attempts to put things into perspective- and it's not pretty.

Remember that outpouring of "perspective" after 9/11, when athletes adamantly insisted they knew their place in the grand spectrum of real and faux heroes? While it made for some great sound bites, the words were apparently only that -- words. Ostentatious displays of greed and narcissism abated briefly, then continued as if the world hadn't changed one iota.

Except the world has changed because, all the insane terrorists and lunatic dictators notwithstanding, it's still the economy, stupid. And with the North American equity markets having shed countless billions on Bush's watch, even the lords of ball -- and puck -- will find themselves more strapped than they're accustomed to until Dubya can push his tax relief for the needy (rich) through....

The NHL is in the early stages of what could become a full-bore financial collapse, one that might end up making baseball look like a model of business acumen. And the latter is really no better off today than it was before the new collective bargaining agreement came down, not that the players' agents can see this.

Amazingly, these pin-striped, cell-phoned ostriches are grumbling about collusion among the owners and threatening combat of their own because the likes of Dave Mlicki (4-10, 5.34 ERA) won't be earning -- excuse me, stealing -- $6 million again next season....

The NBA stumbles along as well, trying to reclaim the niche it began losing when sullen teenagers -- inordinately talented to be sure, yet sorely lacking in both fundamental people and basketball skills -- sold in tandem with mortgage-sized season-ticket packages became its "future."

It's not just the kids who are to blame, though. Noxious behavior is everywhere. We've come to expect it from the glib, ever-charming Rasheed Wallace, but Jerry Sloan?

Meanwhile, over in the NFL, they keep printing money. Bob McNair's record investment of nearly a billion dollars in the Texans hasn't lost any luster and has probably even already appreciated in value. Nonetheless, kindly old Al Davis will go to court in a few weeks to try to pry millions from Oakland's almost bankrupt coffers, saying he was deceived and misled by the city fathers when they lured him back to the Bay Area.

Davis says playing before empty seats at Network Associates Coliseum, a decent baseball stadium that was ruined to accommodate him, has cost him $1 billion in revenues since 1995. He says he was promised eternal sellouts and, because they didn't materialize in those years when the Raiders were rubbish, he wuz robbed.

Yet according to documents leaked during his most recent suit against the NFL, he turned a $2 million profit in 1999, and today his franchise is valued at $351 million, or probably some $350 million more than his original investment.

And Oakland's taxpayers -- we're not exactly talking Beverly Hills, Fifth Avenue or River Oaks here -- already have spent $150 million to make up shortfalls in bond repayments caused by those unsold tickets. A fine man, that Al Davis.

And then there's the looming threat to Title IX, which is only the best thing that ever happened to little girls who desired to play with something other than Barbies. Never mind how innately fair its purpose was -- and remains. Meanwhile, the pro league Title IX made possible, the WNBA, fights to survive yet gets pilloried by the hypocrites for daring to open a branch office in a casino on an Indian reservation.

Gambling underwrites sports in this country. Anybody who doesn't acknowledge that is burying his or her head in the same sand as the aforementioned agents.

Anyway, if we simply must have this war, maybe it will at least briefly put our games and the haughty people who play them for truckloads full of money in their proper place. Maybe the carnage can serve to remind folks all over again what matters and what doesn't.

But don't count on any permanent paradigm shifts. Those who gorge themselves at the sporting trough, as well as those who indulge them, are an exceedingly forgetful lot.

Robertson makes some excellent points. Money corrupts, but truckloads of money is really what it's all about. Mere corruption would be a step backward. Perhaps at some point, way back in the dark reaches of history, these were games in the purest sense of the word. Really, though, sports has ALWAYS been a business. It's just that now, with the vast sums of money floating around our arenas and playing fields, the venality, corruption, and attitudes of entitlement are impossible to camouflage.

Perhaps at some point, sanity will return to professional and major college sports. My suspicion, though, is that it is going to take an event or series of events of cataclysmic proportions to inject some sanity back into the business of sports. I don't pretend to know what that event might be, but I'm pretty certain it will involve someone losing a lot of money. I'm not necessarily certain that will be such a bad thing, either.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 16, 2003 7:29 AM.

Spring Break will never be the same was the previous entry in this blog.

Well, they have to do something with their free time is the next entry in this blog.

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