Pitcher Sues His Catcher - What's Baseball Coming To?

You just have to love the Dodgers; they're just a fountain of stories this year.  It will be almost a shame to see the McCourts divorce ever get settled.  Now, the amazingly bizarre stories have spread to the dugout.  Former Dodger pitcher Chan Ho Park has sued his former batterymate, claiming that catcher Chad Krueter stiffed him on a $460,000 loan. 

Park, now pitching for the Phillies, loaned the money to Krueter in 2005.  Krueter signed a promissory note but according to Park's complaint, made only one payment of $290,000.  Park wants the balance together with unpaid interest and fees totaling $226,358.76.


I wonder if the Dodgers can negotiated a bulk rate on court costs with the LA County Superior Court.

Happy Holidays

I'll be traveling with my family between now and New Year's so expect posting to be sporadic if at all.  In the meantime, gorge yourself on eggnog and bowl games and I'll be back with you in full force come the new year.


Best wishes to all of you for a belated Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas and for all of you my hope that you have a safe, happy, prosperous and above all, healthy new year to you and your family.


Finally, I can't wait to see Fitz lead the Cats win their first bowl since 1949, on New Years Day no less, when the War Eagles go down in flames.

NFL Finally Acknowledges Long Term Effect of Concussions

Reality, this is the NFL; NFL, this is Reality, now shake hands and come out with real plans to deal with concussions.  After years of studies that were performed in a manner similar to those conducted by cigarette manufacturers into the safety of long-term tobacco use, the NFL has finally acknowledged that concussions can lead to long-term problems in the brain. 
 
In a telephone interview on Sunday, league spokesman Greg Aiello said, “It’s quite obvious from the medical research that’s been done that concussions can lead to long-term problems."  Of course, he wasn't referring to the league's own studies which have been so badly mismanaged and biased that the league has been forced to suspend them and receive the resignations of the co-chairmen of its concussion committee.



The NFL has finally begun to revamp its rules regarding concussions.  Players now must be cleared by brain-injury experts unaffiliated with the team, and cannot return to a game or practice in which they have shown any significant sign of concussion.  Hopefully, these rule changes will be implemented at all levels of football and other contact sports including hockey and maybe even lacrosse, although the incidents of concussion in lacrosse are certainly not as frequent.  The long-term cost of concussion is present no matter what, the severity of the brain damage is usually determined by the frequency of the concussions or the closeness in time between multiple concussions.  Any rules and practices that can minimize those factors should be welcome by all sports administrators for the benefit of the sports and all those who play them.

Books for the Holidays

Since Christmas is fast approaching, and you may be running out of ideas for gifts, I thought I would share a list of some of the sports and sports business related books from 2009 that I have enjoyed this year and found worthy of recommending.  There are in no particular order and in the case of The Blind Side, was just reissued in 2009 to tie-in with the movie (which you should go see if you haven’t).

If you have any other suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi

When the Game Was Ours by Larry Bird, Earvin “Magic” Johnson with Jackie MacMullan

Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itselff, by Michael Shapiro

Never Make the First Offer: (Except When You Should) Wisdom from a Master Dealmaker (Portfolio), by Donald Dell with John Boswell

What Were They Thinking?: The Brainless Blunders That Changed Sports History, by Kyle Garlett

The Blind Side , by Michael Lewis

Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the Worlds Most Popular Sport by Simon Kuper and Stefan Syzmanski

The Beckham Experiment by Grant Wahl

Chinese Investor Finalizing Purchase of Interest in Cleveland Cavs

The NBA should soon have its second major international owner, as Chinese investor Albert Hung has finalized a deal to purchase a fifteen percent in the Cleveland Cavaliers, which would make him the team's second largest owner behind the club's principal owner Dan Gilbert.  The sale needs to be approved by the league's Board of Governors.


The sale to Hung is likely to accelerate the expansion of NBA activity in China, especially that of the Cavaliers and LeBron James.  It may well become a factor in the free agent wooing of James at the end of the season.  James has extensive endorsement activities in China which would undoubtedly could be enhanced through the connections possessed by Mr. Hung.  Since LeBron is on a quest to become a billionaire, that endorsement edge in the Chinese market combined with the Cavs ability to pay more than any other team and the Cavs hometown appeal may all combine to keep LeBron in Cleveland.  At least Dan Gilbert hopes so.

Tiger Endorsements Update: Accenture Departs

With this Tiger story it doesn't seem to matter when you decide to write a story, pen a post or whatever, it will be out of date almost as soon as it is released.  No sooner had I posted yesterday's post on the impact of Tiger's behavior on his endorsement empire, then Accenture announced it was terminating its relationship with him.  Of course, this had been foreshadowed by his disappearance from the company's website as I reported yesterday, but Accenture's announcement marks the first company to publicly break with Tiger.

Accenture found itself in a no-win situation.  It had built its entire marketing campaign around Tiger, with its ads carrying the tag line "Go, Be a Tiger" for the last six years.  It has been a highly successful campaign according to the company and the company is now forced into a high stakes rush to find a new marketing campaign.  In the meantime, I would assume that airport billboards around the world will be changed to remove Tiger and replace that picture with something carrying just the company logo.

As I suggested yesterday, Gillette announced that it won't air advertisement featuring Tiger nor use him in any public appearances for an unspecified time.  We can safely read that to be at least until this blows over, he returns to playing golf and winning majors and we can see if he retains any appeal to women despite the fact that he markets men's shaving products.

Tiger Departs the Scene But Will His Endorsements Follow Him Offstage?

I've refrained from commenting on the ongoing Tiger affairs, since so long as they were nothing but tabloid  fodder, I felt no reason to add anything to a story that I felt, and still feel, is mostly personal and not worthy of the attention it is receiving.  Now, that Tiger has announced his temporary suspension of play on the Tour, and it appears that his centi-million endorsement empire is beginning to implode, it becomes a story worthy of our attention.  I hope that Tiger and Elin find a solution that works for them away from the prying eyes of the public; I'm somewhat doubtful that will be the case.

Even before Tiger announced yesterday that he was taking time off from the Tour to work on repairing his marriage, the vaunted Tiger Woods Inc endorsement empire appears to be imploding.  Quietly, without any fanfare or public announcements of any kind, starting on November 29, advertisements featuring Woods vanished from the airwaves.  While he received the vocal and not too surprising support of Nike, no other major company with whom he has an endorsement deal has committed to maintaining a relationship, at least publicly.

In fact, he has disappeared from the website of Accenture, a company which had called him the "centerpiece" of its advertising campaign.  Indeed, large Accenture ads featuring Tiger can be found in most major airports.

Meanwhile, in Australia, Tag Heuer, the watch company, has pulled all of its advertisements featuring Woods, although the company claims it is unrelated to the recent activities.  That claim might be more believable if the campaign had been in use for, say, six months or more; but the in-store placards had only recently been distributed.  In addition, AT&T has announced that it re-evaluate its relationship.

Gillette, has announced that it will limit Tiger's role in its marketing while he is on hiatus.  That means, given that Gillette is a Proctor & Gamble company, his role with Gillette is at an end.  P&G is not going to jeopardize its main market, women, by keeping an endorsement with a serial adulterer.

An early example of how far, how fast he has fallen comes from the Davie Brown Index, which is a measure of a celebrity's ability to influence shoppers.  Tiger dropped from number 6 before the car accident to number 24.  With more of his endorsements going away by the day, expect that number to drop further.

For companies, Tiger Woods is yet one more cautionary tale about the inherent danger of celebrity endorsers.  Market positioning of your product is critical and when a celebrity endorser goes off the rails, as it were, an entire campaign comes crashing down around him or her.  As Tiger proves, even the most focused and straight-laced appearing people can be hiding secrets that can devastate a company.  In Tiger's case, almost all of his deals are with large companies that can afford to absorb whatever the blowback might be, but certainly that is not always the case and one needs to be hyper-vigilant for those situations in which the misdeeds of a single individual can lead to a disastrous quarter, year or worse for a company you are invested in, work for or manage.

It is not a completely hopeless situation from Tiger's standpoint.  Regardless of how his efforts to save his marriage turn out, the public fickle affections, and with them his endorsement contracts, can always return.  For proof of that one need only ask Kobe Bryant, who faced a much swifter and more complete drop by his companies following a rape allegation, but has since returned to where his endorsement income is at a level close to what it would have been in the absence of the Colorado incident.  In Tiger's case, it may take a couple of years of laying low and doing little but winning golf tournaments, especially majors, without being seen as an endorser for a year or two, while anger about these revelations blows over.  Then, he can reap the benefit of what all good athletes fundamentally know: winning cures everything.

Pacquaio-Mayweather Title Tilt Purportedly Set for March

Manny Pacquaio and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. have purportedly agreed to all of the major terms of a deal to fight each other on March 13, with an announcement coming as soon as Tuesday.  Top Rank is promoting the fight which may turn out to be one of the highest grossing fights on record.  For Bob Arum and Top Rank's sake, it better be.

Each fighter will earn $20 million for the fight, with the possibility of earning as much as $40 million, depending on the pay-per-view returns.  Interest in staging the fight has come from  Las Vegas, Dallas and New Orleans.  Las Vegas was originally thought to be the site, as the MGM Grand has hosted several fights for both fighters, but there has been interest in placing the fight in new Cowboys Stadium, which I'm sure intrigues Arum. 

This could be Paquaio's last fight for some time as he will be returning to the Phillipines following the fight to run for Congress.  That race, if successful, is preparatory, many believe, to a run for the President.  With his popularity and charisma, he will make a formidable politician.

8 Franchise Relocations That Didn't Happen

In the spirit of my earlier post about markets that would be able to support major professional sports franchises, here is a list of eight franchise relocations that fell through.  In several cases, we can all consider ourselves blessed that the proposed relocations collapsed (the Saskatoon Blues?).  Then, there are the novel franchise swaps that in one case happened and in one case didn't.  In the one that didn't, can you imagine what it might have been like if The Great One had been plying his trade in the renamed Maple Leaf Forum in Toronto rather than Los Angeles after being traded from Edmonton?  Gretzky was already a huge hit with the Toronto media but had he been playing for the hometown team, it would have been rock star like - Beatles proportion.

NCAA Discusses Expanded Men's Basketball Tourney with TV

The NCAA currently has an 11 year, $6 billion deal with CBS to broadcast the men's basketball tournament. It has an escape clause that allows it to terminate the agreement after the 2010 Final Four. According to an article in the Sports Business Journal, the NCAA has begun the process of shopping the tournament to broadcast and cable networks to determine the interest level in the event it decides to open up bidding. It is also trying to gauge the impact of moving the tournament to cable.
 

Also under consideration and discussion with the television networks is an expansion of the tournament to 96 teams.  While the NCAA is not committed to expansion, it is favored by coaches for obvious reasons.  Expansion, under current NCAA thinking, would mean an additional week added to the tournament with the top 32 teams receiving byes.

Theoretically, an expanded tournament should result in a larger TV contract as there will be more games and more selling opportunities for broadcasters.  Whether that would actually result in additional revenue to any one school would be determined by how many conference members reach the tournament in its expanded format.  The power conferences are only likely to favor expansion if they believe that their relative position in the tournament will be maintained so that they will not suffer any revenue loss.  The public is likely to favor an expanded tournament in general and particularly if the additional teams are weighted more heavily in favor of the mid-majors and lower level conferences to enhance the possible Cinderella effect.

Whether CBS wants to commit an additional week to the tournament remains to be seen.  ESPN, which has made no secret of its desire to land the tournament, would presumably welcome an additional week, seeing little problem in selling the inventory and seeing it as an additional reason to pass along a higher subscription fee to the cable operators.

So folks, the next few months promise to be interesting in Indianapolis as the NCAA looks to make the deal that funds its operations while without an Executive Director.  One would think the deal would wait for an Executive Director to be named but since there is a deadline for opting out of the CBS deal, it would depend on how long the NCAA takes to find Myles Brand's replacement.

Where Should the Major Professional Leagues Expand and Which Markets Are Overextended?

The five major professional leagues, yes sports MLS is a major league - live with it, are currently located in most of the major metropolitan areas of the country with one glaring and obvious exception.  The NFL has been working to remedy that exception for the last twenty years.  Of coure, we're talking about Los Angeles and while, more progress has been made on a stadium there in the last 12 months than in the previous ten years, the prospect of a franchise moving to LA does not look all that great at the moment, and since the NFL has no intention of expanding, it will take a franchise relocation for a team to play there.

In a recent study conducted by Portfolio.com/bizjournals Los Angeles was rated as the most attractive city in which to locate a professional sports franchise.  Since the Southland already boasts multiple franchises in each of the four sports other than football, it's the NFL that is so attractive.

From the same study, it was determined that the financial base necessary to support a team was highest in baseball, followed by football, and hockey and then basketball and finally soccer.  The study used a metric it called available personal income to determine its rankings.  Available personal income is determined by first calculating the total personal income of the metropolitan area (simply, the sum of all money earned by all residents in a year) and subtracting for that sum the minimum income base needed to support the particular franchise, which was determined by reference to ticket prices and team revenue.

Using that metric, Portfolio.com came to the conclusion that each of the five sports could do as follows:

1. MLB.  Could only expand into two markets, both of which are existing markets: New Jersey and Southern California

2. NFL.  With the popularity of the NFL, could expand almost at will.  As noted, LA is almost a "no brainer" by their standards and Portfolio.com also suggests Montreal and Sacramento.  I would add Toronto and Vancouver, although Toronto could be a relocation spot for Buffalo.

3. NBA.  Expansion by four would be feasible and suggests Louisville, Las Vegas, Tidewater, Va and Seattle.  There are arena issues in both Louisville and Seattle but this study didn't deal with that factor at all.

4. NHL.  The best American markets would be Hartford and Portland, Ore, with as many as three Canadian cities capable of supporting franchises: Quebec City, Hamilton and Winnipeg.  At least and possibly as many as three or four of those cities is likely to get a relocated Sun Belt franchise in the next several years.

5. MLS.  Given the relatively low costs of operating a MLS franchise, almost any decent size metropolitan area with an interest in soccer could support a franchise.  The most likely locations for upcoming expansion are: Montreal, Rochester, St. Louis, Miami and Atlanta, all of whom  failed to land a franchise in the most recent round of expansion, which saw MLS grant franchises to Philadelphia, Portland and Vancouver.

While I'm not so sure I would use the same metrics to determine the capacity in a particular market, I don't particularly quibble with the results.  To me, a better measure of a market's capacity to support a professional sports franchise is to first look at its corporate community and see what public corporations have either headquarters or very significant regional or subsidiary headquarters in the market.  Then, look at the private corporate community for similar sized private companies that have been large supporters of United Way or the local collegiate athletic department and may be reasonably thought to become sponsors or suite holders of a professional sports franchise.  It is the suite sales and sponsorships that make or break a franchise more than it is the sale of tickets, although a significant amount of tickets do need to be sold.  The personal income of the market is important but the corporate community is probably more important.

Cats Land New Years Day Bowl

Congratulations to Pat Fitzgerald and the Northwestern Wildcats for receiving the school's first ever bid to the Outback Bowl and the Cats first bid to a New Years Day bowl since the 1997 Citrus Bowl.  The Cats will be facing the Auburn Tigers who gave the number one Alabama Crimson Tide a scare in the Iron Bowl, a week ago.

NU finished the season 8-4, 5-3 in the Big Ten. The Wildcats handed Iowa -- ranked No. 4 at the time -- its first loss of the season Nov. 7, and they beat No. 16 Wisconsin 33-31 in their season finale.  The Cats and Wisconsin finished tied for fourth in the conference.

Auburn led Bama until the final two minutes before losing 26-21.  The War Eagles finished 7-5, 3-5 in the SEC and tied for fourth in the tough SEC West in coach Gene Chizik's debut season.  Auburn runs a spread offense, as does NU so it will be interesting to watch the two teams go at it.  They certainly ought to be somewhat familiar with defending the spread.

So, congrats Cats and I look forward to spending New Years Day watching the purple mop up Ray Jay with Auburn, even if 11:00am  is a little early for New Years Day.

Louisville Looks to Strong

The Louisville search for a new football coach appears to be rapidly narrowing to down to Florida Defensive Coordinator Charlie Strong.  Cardinal Athletic Director Tom Jurich spent several hours on Sunday talking with Strong and acknowledged:  "I was very, very impressed by him," Jurich said. "He's a quality guy."

Even so, Jurich said that there was more work to do and that no offer was made.  However, Jurich also noted that during the course of his research, he had received several recommendations on Strong, including one from former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy.  "Not a bad recommendation," Jurich said.

It seems clear from Jurich's comments that Strong is the leader in the clubhouse.  Florida, however, will try to keep him and depending on how the dominos fall this week with other coaching vacancies, Strong may also wind up a candidate elsewhere, although it appears that he and Louisville are the only ones talking to each other now.  Given the manner in which Jurich has conducted past coaching searches, Strong has to be his number one guy, and he must feel fairly confident about getting him.  Jurich doesn't reveal information about prospective hires until he is ready for it to go public.

The Yankees Take On A Blogger

Do you enjoy Major League Baseball?  Are you enough of a fan that you want to start a blog and share your enthusiasm with your friends, neighbors and the friends you haven't me yet that are out there in the ether somewhere?  Well, if so, be very, very careful about the name you choose for your blog.

If you choose a name that includes the name of your favorite team, or prominently display the logo of that team somewhere on your site, as most fan blogs do, then Major League Baseball may send the lawyers after you.  That is just what happened to a poor hapless Yankee blogger, Moshe Mandel,who put up a blog, together with some friends, to share his Yankees love.  He wasn't looking too cash in on this site.  In fact, there were only a few sidebar ads to try and pay hosting fees; but the Yankees and MLB didn't care.  All they cared about was the purported infringement of their trademark rights.  So, he receives a letter from one of the MLB lawyers demanding that he cease and desist from using the trademarks.

In response, Mandel has removed the Yankee logos from the site but it's still called the Yankee Universe, which the Yankeees also claim.  A copy of the cease and desist letter is here - I suggest reading the whole thing to get the complete flavor of what MLB is doing.  Then, go to the Yankee Universe and read their response.  If that doesen't satisfy the Yankees, and if you believe everything that was in the lawyer's letter, it won't, a very interesting lawsuit is about to take place.  Maintaing a trademark in something as broad as the Yankee Universe seems to me to be a difficult case, especially against a blogger who should receive some working media consideration.  Stay tuned.