The 10 Most Disliked People in Sports

Forbes recently released its list of the 10 most disllked people in sports and surprisingly neither A-Rod nor T.O. topped the list.  I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at the guy at the top of the list, but he hasn't even been in sports for the last 23 months so you tend to forget about him.  So, with that, and without further guessing games, here is the list:

1. Michael Vick - 72% of the poll disliked him, along with 100% of PETA members;

2. Manny Ramirez - 57% but the number in Boston is considerably higher

3. Alex Rodriguez - 53% but that doesn't count the Yankees locker room

4. Terrell Owens - 45% - think he'll go over in Buffalo

5. Kobe Bryant - 42% he ranks ahead of Iverson?

6. Allen Iverson - 38% - has any team he's been on ever won?

7. Isaiah Thomas -36% - he had to go all the way to Florida International to get a job

8. Stephon Marbury 36% - not many New Yorkers must have voted

9. Nick Saban 35% - must not have many voters in Louisiana

10. John McEnroe - 31% does he still play enough to be considered

So there you have it, with only maybe McEnroe as an exception, they all probably belong on the list although everyone could quibble about the order, after all that's what makes a good bar conversation.

Book Review:You Bet: The Betfair Story

I almost never review or recommend books on this site that I haven't read but I'm going to make an exception this time.  I came across a review in The Economist that intrigued me as the reviewer described the book as recounting the beginning of online betting.  Now, I don't know about you, but personally, I think online sports betting has been one of the great benefits bestowed on fandom by the Internet.  Why deal with a bookie and all the uncertainty of getting paid or the possibility of having body parts broken if you happen to fall short on your payments when with the swipe of your credit card you're playing this week's NFL card?

So, how did it all begin?  Was it dreamed up in the office suites of a casino in London or Las Vegas, perhaps Monaco?  Nope, as recounted in You Bet: The Betfair StoryYou Bet: the Betfair Story, it was the idea of an eccentric British computer genius and gambler who, over bridge, got together with a banker from JP Morgan and founded Betfair, which went on to become the world's largest online betting exchange.  It is Betfair's structure as an exchange that is unique, as most of its competition operate as traditional sports books, where the bettor is playing against the house and not exchanging bets against another gambler.   How and why that model was chosen and came to prevail and how Betfair came to control 90% of the sports betting exchange market should, and, according to The Economist, does make for fascinating reading.

Why Big Ten Expansion Not Likely

Many fans and even a few coaches, notably Joe Paterno and Minnesota's Tim Brewster, have been agitating for the Big Ten to pick up an extra school so that it could hold a championship game just like those other conferences do.  Well, folks, it's not likely to happen anytime soon and that's not just because the conference is still smarting from being jilted by Notre Dame a few years back.

My friend, Adam Rittenberg, ESPN's more than able Big Ten blogger, has shown the reason why expansion is not likely to happen - the conference is gushing money without it.  What's a championship game worth - a couple of million dollars per school at most, right?  If you look at the numbers in Adam's post, you'll see that a couple of million won't mean too much to most of the schools on the list, except maybe Northwestern, Indiana and Illinois.   Even then, it's important to note that these figures are from the 2007-2008 season, before the Big Ten Network really got started throwing off a lot of cash.  While we don't have last season's numbers yet, I suspect that they are substantially higher even in the face of the Great Recession.  Expansion, why bother - it only dilutes the pie.  

Besides, that whole championship game thing is really pretty much of a joke anyway, a game totally created for TV which diminishes the season's accomplishments, often forces fans to choose between it and a bowl game and more often than not penalizes the conference if the goal is to win the BCS Championship (which I would contend should not be any school's goal anyway, but that's a whole other post).

NFL and Company Go After Delaware

What accounts for the phenomenal growth of the NFL in the last 20 years? Certainly television played a major role and in that regard one of the great decisions the league made was to divide the TV money up equally, going a long way towards ensuring parity, or something close to it. That competitiveness helped keep the league in front of sports fans.

The other major if unacknowledged factor was gambling. Football is perhaps the ideal sport on which to gamble. It is spaced out and does not have too many games, so a bettor can plan money management easily. It is a sport that lends itself fairly easily to points spreads and is so evenly matched, that parity thing again, that the favorites with the line, win only 50.1% of the time. Without gambling, professional football would never have become the dominant sport in America and would likely now fall somewhere the NBA and the NHL.

That is what makes the action taken by the NFL, and its other three pro league cohorts, in filing suit against Delaware so hypocritical. Delaware's lottery game based on NFL game results will be a fraction of the action in Las Vegas and a very small fraction of the action worldwide. How it is supposed to poison the supposed purity of the game I'll never know. This from a league which is actively seeking marketing opportunities with state lotteries around the country. As for the integrity of the game, ask David Stern about his referees.

Let's get past that this is the NFL's second attempt at halting Delaware's game. In the first suit, the Delaware Supreme Court unanimously found the game to be constitutional. Look, it's not Delaware's or any other governmental body's responsibility to ensure the honesty and integrity of a professional sporting event; that is the league's responsibility. It's not Delaware's obligation to police the athlete's; that belongs to the league and its teams. It's time the NFL got off its high horse, accept sports betting for the benefit to its popularity that it really is and join its fans in petitioning Congress to set up a federal regulatory scheme to license Internet sports betting in the same way that it has allowed Internet horse racing pari-mutuels.

It would be good for the leagues by increasing fan interest, and it would be great for the fans. Just look to Europe, where sports betting has been legal and common for decades, to see that it has no real effect on the outcome of games. In fact, the sports books are usually the ones who are first to spot betting anomalies that lead to uncovering point shaving or match fixing. In addition, by legalizing sports betting and then taxing the hell out of it, the government would be creating a new revenue source for states, which, as we have seen with the California budget crisis, are in great need of whatever source they can find. In short, it's a winning proposition all around (no pun intended), which is probably why it has little chance of passing Congress anytime soon.

NCAA Has Spent $84 Million on Lititgation

The NCAA, which can't seem to keep itself out of court or out of its own way, has spent at least $84 million on litigation in the last 10 years, according to a study done by the Indianapolis Star.  This figure includes the reported costs of any settlements during that period. 

That number may pale in significance to the costs which, both financial and to the way in which the NCAA operates, if the organization is not able to win all three of the pending suits which we have recently discussed here, here and here.  The O'Bannon class action has the potential for the largest financial hit but the Ohio case has the potential to be the most significant in the terms of the way in which the NCAA operates and the balance between the NCAA and its member institutions on the one hand and the student athletes on the other.  We'll keep an eye on all three and keep reporting on their progress.

Are the Nets For Sale?

The New York Post is reporting that Bruce Ratner, the commercial real estate developer and majority owner of the Nets has put the team up for sale.  While the Nets deny this, as would be standard operating procedure, Nets officials confirm that the team is seeking investors, usual code speak for a sale.  The Nets have been systematically lowering their payroll in the last couple of years in an effort to stem mounting losses while they await the seemingly chimerical moving date to Brooklyn.  Having now offloaded Vince Carter, the Nets should have the lowest payroll in the league.

Several investors have taken a look at the team, including, of great interest, the Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who has been to the States recently to meet with David Stern and Ratner to discuss his purchase of a NBA team.  Prokhov is familiar with the basketball business as the money behind CSKA Moscow, one of the Euroleague's powers.  He would be the first non North American owner of a team in any of the four old line major leagues (MLS has a subsidiary of an Austrian company - Red Bull New York).  The other two leading candidates appear to be Terry Semel, the former CEO of Yahoo and Vince Viola, currently the second largest equity owner behind Ratner.

Ratner is a commercial real estate developer who bought the Nets to be the anchor of his Atlantic Yards multi-use, multi billion Brooklyn redevelopment project.  With delay after delay, and the financing issues brought on by the Great Recession, I'm sure Ratner is desperate to staunch the Nets' cash flow drain.  A condition of any sale will be that the move to Brooklyn proceed assuming the Barclay's Center is actually built within a reasonable time, not necessarily a given.  After what Ratner has done to alienate the New Jersey fan base, a move to Brooklyn and new ownership, even Russian ownership, can't come fast enough.

LPGA Leadership Challegene

We have discussed here before the players revolt that led to the resignation of former LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal ran an excellent story summarizing the challenges facing any new commissioner that the LPGA ultimately hires. The Tour has been hit hard by the Great Recession, recently losing seven tournaments. While a new television pact with the Golf Channel does much to provide stability by securing the Tour's consistent broadcast presence in the US for the next 10 years, the diverse interests of the players, sponsors and tournament owners has never been more evident than during the current economic downturn.

It will take a uniquely talented individual to balance those competing demands. The players convinced Annika Sorenstam to come out of retirement to act as a consultant to the Tour during the battle over Bivens resignation and this interim period. It would be in the Tour's best interest to convince Annika that her retirement should wait. There would seem to be no better commissioner candidate than Annika.

Former UCLA Star Files Class Action Against NCAA

It's July so it must be time for the NCAA to be hit with another class action suit.  The organization that can't keep itself out of the courtroom is at it again.  This time, former UCLA basketball Ed O'Bannon filed suit in US District Court in California seeking damages for infringing on players' rights by using the likenesses for commercial gain.  The complaint alleges antitrust violations in that all of the member institutions have joined together to pursue the commercial exploitation.  The complaint also names Collegiate Licensing Company,  a company which markets branded apparel and other items for the NCAA and most universities.

This is not the first suit of the summer over this issue to hit the NCAA. Earlier, Oklahoma quarterback Sam Keller sued the NCAA and EA Sports for using his likeness in EA Sports' NCAA Football video game.  Yet another suit is pending against EA Sports to which the NCAA has yet to be made a party.  While the Keller claim has merit, the O'Bannon suit poses the biggest problem for the NCAA.

The NCAA has traditionally relied on its defense of the amateurism of student athletes as the principal reason for not sharing revenue with them.  The athletes are attending school and participating in athletics is just another extracurricular activity - you know, like, oh, the dance marathon.  Plus, if the athletes are allowed to make money from their images, how will the NCAA police the extra benefits that may allow a SEC school from having boosters spend vast sums for football calendars while the rest of the football suffers from more reasonable prices. However, that justification, weak though it may be, does not fit athletes, like O'Bannon,  who are no longer in school.  

All student athletes are required to sign a release form as a condition of participation.  The release waives all rights in perpetuity to any revenue from the commercial exploitation of their names, likenesses or  images. To say that the release has been coerced would be like saying that Miranda was never read his rights.  In addition to the coercive factor, the students do not have access to lawyers, are young - many under 18 - and many come from underpriveleged backgrounds and not at all used to dealing with forms like that one.  Also, remember that the NCAA has already lost one case on the rights of a student athlete to be represented by a lawyer. Admittedly, it was a District Court case and not binding on another District, but it still carries persuasive weight.

The stakes are enormous.  If the NCAA loses, the potential damages could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, especially since damages are trebled under antitrust law.  In addition, the way colleges deal with athletes would be forever changed as the athletes right to a a lawyer would have to be observed.  All things considered, if I were the NCAA, I would be calling O'Bannon's lawyers to see how much it would take to, and how fast, get this thing settled.  Thanks to the participation of Sonny Vacaro, the former shoe company rep who now has made taking on the NCAA his life's mission, O'Bannon has a high powered legal team that includes David Boies, one of the lawyers who represented Al Gore in the legal battle with George Bush.  Given these circumstances, I don't think the settlement will come cheap.

Cubs May File Bankruptcy to Expedite Sale

When the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection, the Chicago Cubs, one of its subsidiaries was deliberately left out of the filing to facilitate its sale and not unduly complicate the Chapter 11 process. Now, The Chicago Cubs are exploring the possibility of becoming the first Major League Baseball club in 39 years to seek bankruptcy protection in order to expedite the sale of the club to the Ricketss family for $900 million.

A bankruptcy filing now would allow the purchase of the club to be free from any liabilities of the Tribune Company. While the Cubs believe that the stay in bankruptcy court would be brief - just long enough to conduct a sale and confirm the Chapter 11 reorganization plan which would be presented at the outset in a "pre-packaged" filing - the best laid plans of debtors are sometimes waylaid in bankruptcy proceedings.

The bankruptcy judge is likely to want to conduct a public auction of the club. Although unlikely, it would then still be possible that another bidder could emerge offering a higher price than the Ricketts family. If accepted by the judge, the new high bidder would then have to obtain approval from Major League Baseball to become an owner.

A further delay could be possible if the creditors of the Tribune Company object to the reorganization plan offered by the Cubs. They will be entitled to most of the proceeds of any sale and their consent will be needed for the approval of any reorganization plan. For an example of how badly the bankruptcy process can upset a sale of a franchise, one need only look to the Phoenix Coyotes and the pitched battles taking place between Gary Bettman and Jim Balsillie, a process which has only just begun.

In any event, this is a bankruptcy filing that is intended to be a short process in the same manner as the GM filing. If it all goes according to plan, the Cubs could be in and out with a new owner, clean of all liabilities in about the same time it took GM. The filing would also provide interested
bystanders (like the readers of this blog) with a rare look into the finances a Major League club, and a wildly successful at that.

Mountain West, WAC Lack Cojones; Sign BCS Deal

For months, nay years, now we've been hearing nothing but whining out of the Mountain West and the WAC about the unfairness of the BCS and how the whole system reeks of antitrust violations. How the big boys have gotten together with ESPN to screw them out of the possibility of ever winning the national championship, not to mention those big paydays the power six routinely take home. Hell, this year, the downtrodden University of Utah managed to get Senator Orrin Hatch to have the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which he is the ranking Minority Member, conduct a show hearing on the possible antitrust violations being committed by the BCS and the power six. Nothing new, of course, was trotted out at the farce of a hearing.

Well, the Mountain West and the WAC had the opportunity this past week to make a real statement about their commitment to this fight for equality and opportunity. The new BCS television deal with ESPN, taking effect following the 2010 season, was to be ratified no later than July 7 and each participating conference had to sign off on the deal. It was the perfect opportunity for the MWC and the WAC to stand by their principles, forego their share of the WWLS's millions and make a better case for their contention that they are being unfairly excluded from the national championship and the riches of the BCS power six. So, what did they do? Did they stand up to ESPN and the Big Six conferences?

Are you kidding? There was money on the table, however small and those leagues were not about to let the scraps the BCS has been feeding them slip away in the name of principle. So, of course they signed and with those signatures went their entire justification for complaining about their treatment by the BCS or the Big Six conferences. We should never again hear about how a Moutain West school or Boise State has been unfairly excluded from the national championship game despite being undefeated. You had your chance guys but the table scraps were too inviting - so be happy with your $200,000-$300,000 and quit complaining already. The rest of us are tired of hearing it.

US Olympic Committee, Comcast Form Olympics Network

The US Olympic Committee and Comcast earlier this week announced the formation of the Olympics Network, something which USOC has been working on for several years without success. Funny thing though, I thought we already had an Olympics Network - Universal Sports, owned in part by NBC. Apparently, both NBC and the IOC thought so too, because the suits at the network and the IOC are, to put it mildly, plenty pissed at USOC about this announcement.

NBC had been in talks with USOC about combining its network with USOC's proposed network but broke off the talks in April over, what else, money. On Monday, the IOC notified USOC of serious question it had with the proposed network; on Wednesday, USOC made its public announcement of the network. Needless to say, sitting down with the IOC to discuss its issues and hammer out a solution did not take place in the interim.

The timing of the folks at USOC could not be worse. We are in the late stages of the selection process for the host city for the 2016 Summer Games and Chicago is a finalist. Announcing this network now has certainly done nothing to enhance Chicago's chances of being selected. You just don't go around pissing off the people who will be voting on granting you the privilege of hosting the world right before the vote is scheduled to take place. Why not wait until the selection process is over, especially since the new network is not going to launch until after the 2010 Vancouver Games are finished. The vote is scheduled for October 2.

LPGA Commissioner Is Out In Response to Player Revolt

It's US Open Week on the LPGA tour and instead of the focus being on the players and the difficulty of the course and how treacherous the USGA has made the greens and how tall the USGA has let the rough grow, all of the focus has been on the fate of LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens. Last week, key members of the tour met and signed a letter calling for Bivens' resignation in the wake of the tour's loss of seven tournaments since 2007. Among the players attending the meeting were several of the tour's biggest names, including Lorena Ochoa, Morgan Pressel, Natalie Gulbis, Cristie Kerr, Yani Tseng and Michelle Wie.

In one of the swiftest revolutions in history, the LPGA board this week concluded that it would buyout the remaining two years of Blevin's contract and Blevins has apparently accepted the buyout, reportedly at $500,000 per year. Now that tour politics has been settled perhaps we can all just enjoy golf for the balance of the week. After the first round of play, 21 year old, second year player Na Yeon Choi tops the leaderboard with 3 under 68. One stroke behind her are Number One ranked Lorena Ocho, 2007 Open winner Christie Kerr and qualifier Jean Reynolds. Another stroke back with a 70, came another South Korean Hee Young Park.

Tribune and Rcketss Family Reach Deal on Cubs

The Tribune Company and the Ricketts family have signed a term sheet on the sale of the Cubs to the Ricketts and forwarded it to the Commissioner's office for approval by the owners. This will end, for now, the Tribune Company's flirtations with other buyers as the deal hit a snag over the last couple of months. The deal is not closed however and requires more than just MLB approval. Details between the parties remain and a definitive agreement has yet to be hammered out. The deal will also require the approval of the bankruptcy court as the Tribune Company is in Chapter 11. Given the tortuous course that negotiations have taken so far, I would not be willing to say that this deal is a sure thing yet. In fact, with this cast of characters, it won't be a sure thing until it closes and the keys to Wrigley are handed over to the Ricketts.

College Football Players Sue NCAA, EA Sports for Royalties

The NCAA, which proclaims itself the guardian of amateur athletics in this country and the protector of the rights of the student athlete, has been called to account once again. This time by student athletes, several of whom have filed class action lawsuits against the NCAA and Electronic Arts for appropriating their likenesses for commercial use without their consent and without compensation. Two of the more popular video games produced by EA Sports are NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball (along with its spinoff, March Madness). Both games use characters that so closely resemble their live counterparts as to be virtually indistinguishable despite the lack of names used in the games.

While it's true that NCAA athletes sign a waiver as freshmen stating that they will not benefit from their names or their athletic success, all that does is prevent the athletes from competing with the NCAA and its member schools, which don't want any competition in the market for licensed apparel, games or other items. The field is too valuable to the schools, which make a considerable amount of money selling jerseys and other items featuring the jersey numbers (but not the names) of their most popular athletes.

So, what are the plaintiffs chances here? I would think the NCAA and EA Sports have a real problem on their hands. For one thing, as pointed out in the New York Times article, the NFL players association recently settled for $26.25 million, a similar case with its retired players, following a US District Court Judge's award of $28.1 million following the trial of the retired players' claim that the NFLPA failed to include the retired players in its licensing agreement with EA Sports for the Madden NFL Football franchise. While this case is somewhat different, it is, if anything, even more egregious. Not only is it a blatant appropriation of the student athletes likenesses without compensation, but it violates the NCAA's own rules and regulations. NCAA Bylaw 12.5 specifically prohibits the commercial licensing of a student athlete's "name, picture and likeness."

A loss by the NCAA in this case will have reverberations throughout the entire commercial licensing scheme currently employed by the NCAA. A win will certainly mean that in addition to determining the value of damages to student athletes from EA Sports, the court should also be involved in calculating the damages the student athletes have suffered from the sale of the licensed merchandise carrying the jersey number or other identifying characteristics of a student athlete. After that comes the nightmarish problem of determining who, and for how much, student athletes are entitled to receive under a judgement or settlement. If I were representing the NCAA, based on what I know now, I would not want to see this case go to trial and would actively pursue a settlement. You don't want to see an adverse judgement entered - it would be just too expensive.

Tacos Replace the Big Mac at NBA Games

Twenty year sponsor McDonalds is out at the NBA and Taco Bell is in as the league's fast food partner. The amount of the deal has not been announced but the deal has been confirmed by several sources and first reported by Sports Business Journal. It's a four year, all inclusive deal, containing ads on ABC, ESPN, TNT and title sponsorship to the All Star Saturday Night Skill Challenge and store promotions. It is a wider ranging package than McDonalds had and is likely to involve a significantly higher dollar value. Assuming that is the case, the NBA is to be congratulated on pulling that off in today's economy - any sponsorship increase is rare indeed.