Dan LeBatard --Owners get a free pass from fans

MIAMI -- Page by astounding page, this month's Vanity Fair - and every month's, really - details how dumb some rich people can be while squandering their fortunes. You know, the usual stuff - like the Sultan of Brunei buying $8 million in luxury watches. In the issue, there are sloppy hedge-fund managers, farmers, lawyers, politicians - all of them making you wonder how they were ever smart enough to build mountains of money in the first place.


And it got me to thinking about sports owners.


Page by astounding page, Business Insider chronicles what it calls the 14 worst business practices of Washington Redskins czar Daniel Snyder, as if there were only 14. You know, the usual stuff - such as using cancer patients and diabetics as target groups to grow his direct-marketing business; allegedly having football vendors at games sell recycled peanuts made and packaged for an airline that had gone under a year earlier; and adding a $4 "security" charge to football tickets after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks while also selling $23.99 commemorative Sept. 11 hats, too.


And it got me to thinking about how often fans side with sports owners in financial disputes.

Page by astounding page, I read about the life of the partying Maloof brothers who own the Sacramento Kings. You know, the usual stuff - such as appearing in videos for Ludacris, Lil Wayne and Katy Perry; running skateboarding and casino ventures after making their money in beer; and making reality TV with Lindsay Lohan. The Maloofs are in enough financial trouble now that, even as their sport is shut down by mismanagement, they're trying to hop on a skateboard and take the team to another basketball-hungry city that will dilute their debt.


And it got me to thinking about how often fans accuse players of being greedy and spoiled and entitled.

Basketball and football are out of work, owners wanting to take back some of what they've already given, and there can be no dispute on whose fault that is. The players are fine with the systems, the pay, everything. The players want to work. It is the owners, and only the owners, threatening to keep us from our games while fighting over our dollars. Why are we here? Well, here's a symbol: Buffalo's 92-year-old Ralph Wilson emerged from football meetings the last time a contract was collectively bargained and admitted he had no earthly idea to what he had just agreed.


I get why fans tend to side with owners during things like contract disputes, holdouts or strikes, even though it is the rare instance in public opinion when siding with management is popular and even though a fan base comprised mostly of underdog employees ends up rooting against underdog employees. Fans just want their players on the field, period, helping their team, their city and, by extension, the people in the stands paying and cheering. They just want their entertainment. Will Smith and Lady Gaga don't go on strike.


So owners and fans can unite then in filing their own self-interests under the utopian "team." The fan's interest mirrors the owner's interest, even though it is an illusion because the owners' primary interest is usually the fan's wallet. The player, meanwhile, has to care about himself first, because a bank teller can't do anything with all that conditional fan adulation, and because loyalty in sports is something that lasts only as long as the player's production. But I understand why striking players are hit with "greedy" while owners get the public-perception benefit of filing a lock out under "business."


Here's what I don't get: How much less respect athletes get for "earning" their money than owners do. Not less worshipped or praised or celebrated. Respected. And how much does that lack of respect have to do with whose side fans take during disputes between the two groups?


I believe it is more difficult to be an elite athlete than it is to be sports-owner rich, more difficult to be Albert Pujols than the guy with enough money to sign his checks. But even as our economy crumbles with fraud and foreclosure, even as the Los Angeles Dodgers file for bankruptcy, there is this ill-informed illusion that sports owners persevered with elbow grease/bootstraps/grit to build an empire while the athlete just got lucky and won a genetic lottery. Making money on Wall Street is viewed as "earning" your wealth in a way dunking a basketball isn't, even as our economy shakes under the weight of a million Madoffs.


An owner's way of "earning" is somehow more noble, right? Even when it is James Dolan or Donald Sterling or George Bush or Marge Schott or William Clay Ford?


Granted, LeBron James had to be born into 6-8. But Jerry Jones also had to strike gas on the first 13 wells he drilled. There is luck involved in making it anywhere. And sometimes all you need is one good idea to get rich. Ask George Foreman which is more difficult - the hundreds of millions he made taking punches to the face or the hundreds of millions he made putting his name on a grill. Once you hit on that idea, like the Seattle Mariners owner did on Nintendo, you can flop the way he did with investments in taxi services, instant rice and short-stay hotels and have your baseball team cover other losses.

(Short-stay hotels! How do you fail at the sex business?)


I suppose you could argue that Peyton and Eli were lucky to have the QB chromosome hand-me-downed from Archie Manning, but they are no luckier than Twins owner Jim Pohlad or Chiefs owner Clark Hunt or Heat owner Micky Arison - all of whom inherited teams and family businesses from their fathers. Risk? There's a financial risk owners take in investing and re investing in your team that athletes don't have? Yes and no. The risks Browns running back Peyton Hillis takes with brain injury - as an investment, as a way of earning - are vastly more dangerous than the risks Browns owner Randy Lerner takes with the dollars and team he inherited from Dad.


There is no real risk in owning an NFL team. It is our most popular and profitable sport. NFL teams appreciate every year. That talking gorilla starring opposite Kevin James in Zookeeper could profit owning an NFL team. Jones bought the Cowboys for $150 million. And now he is one of the few billionaires among American sports owners - most of that money derived from what the Cowboys are worth.


And, unlike owners, players don't ask taxpayers to help them build their homes.

'Making money on Wall Street is viewed as "earning" your wealth in a way dunking a basketball isn't.'


Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/...l#ixzz1RwQywTjh