Let’s get this out of the way: This is in no way, shape, or form, a political blog and it will not become one.
I am not a political commentator and will never pretend to be. I read and watch and form opinions on issues.
I have my leanings and opinions, you have yours and that is absolutely fine with me. And I don’t care to discuss them in this space. Not that I don’t CARE about politics…it’s just that I don’t wish to be involved in the political dialogue.
What I do write about and discuss, quite often, is the business of sports.
So that’s where we’ll go with this, OK? Let’s rock it.
Comedian Bill Maher is quite vocal on his political thoughts. I very rarely watch his HBO show, but was flipping around the channels this weekend and caught the last few minutes.
He went on this rant about the economic differences of the major political parties in the United States. [Remember - watch this for the SPORTS, not the politics. And please remember the opinions of Maher are his and his alone and I am not stating they are my views by showing this clip. Also, it is unedited and quite...vulgar. If you are sensitive to these things, feel free to skip it.]
Whew…there’s a lot in there, right?
The points that interest me are, obviously, not the political analogy he was trying to make.
However, the NFL as socialists vs. MLB as capitalists debate is a VERY interesting one.
Baseball is our national pastime…the sport GENERATIONS of Americans grew up loving.
Football is the biggest sport in the country, crossing every barrier that divides us.
Baseball’s economic system, with a luxury tax, no salary cap and little revenue sharing favors the big pockets, which tend to be in the biggest cities.
Football’s hard salary cap and revenue sharing helps each team have top-shelf stars every year.
To me, it is the construction of the stories of the leagues, since fans follow the stories.
For MLB, the storyline is about dynasties and “empires.” Can you topple the Yankees, Red Sox or Phillies? Some years, teams do…most years, the biggest payroll wins. But what a rush it must be to be David defeating Goliath!
On the NFL side, every team has a chance every year…and nothing is promised. Over the course of 16 games, funny things happen. Take a look at the Cowboys, this year’s preseason favorite. They failed miserably, with injuries, fired coaches and embarrassment at every turn. Teams can fall from grace, just as easily as they can skyrocket to the top, like the Bucs this season.
Both sports are wildly successful, despite what Maher said. MLB attendance is sky-high, players are more and more marketable…the World Series TV rating is a small piece of the success puzzle.
The NFL season is 1/10th as long as the MLB season, so everything is more…intense. Each game has more impact on the standings and the Super Bowl is one of the few cultural touchstones in existence today.
But does that beat the ability to see your favorite baseball team nearly 50% of the days in a year?
What do you think? Which economic system is better for sports? (Remember, please leave politics out of this!)
In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama implored politicians to work together to move our country in the right direction. Financial responsibility, education and business growth were the main topics. He urged the discourse to be civil and productive.
However, there was one thing he should have added:
“Can’t we all get along, no matter what football team we favor?”
This week, a successful Chicago-area car salesman was fired from his job because he was wearing a Green Bay Packers tie. He had no idea that the dealership spent a significant amount of money sponsoring Bears radio broadcasts, and there was no mention of such things in the employee manual.
Apparently, he was given the choice to take the tie off or lose his job. And his love of the Packers came before his love of a paycheck.
Much like the Democrats and Republicans (and the “media” industry around them) tend to get hyped-up like a kid on Red Bull about issues, sports fans can be even worse.
Bears/Packers, Red Sox/Yankees, Celtics/Lakers…these rivalries are so intense that they are bigger than themselves. Even if you dislike both teams, you pick a side when they play each other. Every contest is a chapter in an ongoing morality play where you are part of one side or the other – middle ground just doesn’t exist.
Have you ever met a “moderate” Red Sox fan?
Once you find one, I’m sure they will be riding a unicorn with a leprechaun.
The good thing is that sports rivalries don’t have to be civil. We can yell, scream and be as passionate as possible without getting violent or offensive.
So while it’s imperative to keep our political debate on a certain level, remember that in the United States of America in the year 2011, a man was fired for wearing a Packers tie in Bears territory.
I love sporting events with a good back-story to them.
And the Baltimore Ravens vs. Pittsburgh Steelers AFC Divisional Playoff game Saturday has LOADS of storylines going into it. The easiest one revolves around the fact that the teams just plain old don’t like each other, which makes it bonkers-level fun to be a fan of either squad right now.
In #SportsPRChat (Tuesdays 9pmET, BTW), we focus less on the actual competition, and more on the business and marketing side of the game. So let’s do just that today to preview the contest:
Ed Reed. Ready to play?
- Playing Through Tragedy – Baltimore safety Ed Reed briefly left the team this week to be with his family after his brother disappeared after jumping into the Mississippi River, avoiding the police.
How will Reed, one of the most dominant, focused players of all time, respond on the field in light of the chaos in his personal life?
- Hall of Famers – Football fans must be salivating at the chance to see some of the greatest defensive players in the sport’s history.
Reed, Ravens LB Ray Lewis, Steelers Safety Troy Polamalu – three of the league’s marketable icons. (Sub-plot here: Lewis endorses Old Spice while Polamalu does spots for Heads & Shoulders). Those three are first-ballot Hall of Famers, leading squads of others who may be Canton-bound, like Haloti Ngata and James Harrison.
Overall, this should be a defensive treat.
- Rising QB? – Joe Flacco has been seen as a caretaker with a strong arm. He has done several things this season to try to turn himself into an all-around game-winning quarterback. That was never more evident than his stand-out performance last week against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Flacco, already one of the winningest QBs after three years, is a playoff veteran, despite his relative lack of experience. Can he step to the next level by defeating their arch-rival Steelers? If he does, would that solidify his status as a “Tier 2″ QB in the league, with tons of marketing potential to go along with it? Maybe so.
- Troubled Big Ben – Besides Michael Vick, no NFL player has struggled with their public image over the past five years as much as Ben Roethlisberger. With injuries and allegations of sexual assault now mostly behind him, can he regain the favor of fans with a dominant performance against the stingy defense?
If he leads the Steelers deep into the playoffs, one would assume some of his marketing shine would return…at least a little bit of it.
Enjoy the games this weekend, don’t drink and drive, and join us for #SportsPRChat Tuesdays at 9pmET!
I won’t go into the stats of the situation, that’s not my forte…for those who haven’t participating in #SportsPRChat before on Twitter (Tuesday 9pmET!), we go through and discuss the marketing, promotional and communications aspects of sports.
Here’s my quick take on the McNabb & Grossman situation:
I really, REALLY wish everyone would say what they are thinking instead of trying to be politically correct!
Coach Mike Shanahan approved the plan of his son, offensive coordinator Kyle, to sit McNabb in favor of the embattled Grossman. Despite his past, Grossman HAS led a team to the Super Bowl, remember? And Grossman has worked in Shanahan’s system for a while.
Why in the world would McNabb stay in DC after this incident? His agent tore apart the ‘Skins, and rightfully so.
If you are going to sit a healthy, potential Hall of Fame quarterback, you’ve GOT to have good reasons, in the eyes of fans.
Shanahan saying he wants to see what Grossman and third-stringer John Beck can do in a game situation is nice, but McNabb is a winner and…well…let’s let Herm Edwards chime in:
Right…you play to win the game. Even if you are mathematically eliminated. If you are benching great players, fans have every right to revolt.
And to make matters worse, they TRADED to get McNabb from the Philadelphia Eagles. They gave up precious draft picks to bring McNabb in and basically force him to leave? Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Baltimore Ravens Have Open Wings
I did grow up a Redskins fan, but it’s days like to today that make me thank the stars I became a die-hard Baltimore Ravens fan in 1998. Say what you want about the Ravens. You don’t have to like them. But you have to respect an organization that has been a perennial contender for more than a decade, developing players through the draft and adding free agents as needed. And a bad year is normally followed by a dominant one. I can live with that.
Redskins fans, this is a jumping-off point. Nobody could blame you.
The line between hero and villain can be extremely thin.
One of my favorite definitions of a villain comes from the world of professional wrestling: A villain is someone who 100% believes his intentions are pure and noble and just.
Sounds pretty similar to how a hero interprets their own actions, right?
So, as a fan of a sports team, how do you know if your team is heroic or villainous? Sometimes it’s really hard.
There are some teams that embrace their status as villains, like the Oakland Raiders. They know exactly who they are and what they represent.
Other teams have a stark duality of identity. Case in point, the New York Yankees. Heroes to their fans, the ultimate bad guys to the rest of the world.
Which leads me to one of my favorite athletes on one of my favorite teams in the world, Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals.
In the Washington area, he is heralded as the star of the league, an aggressive playmaking icon, willing to put his body on the line to get a puck into the net.
His physical style is vigorously cheered, as he throws is body from crease to crease to assert his will upon is opponents. We see him as a middle linebacker on ice skates, the captain of a dangerous unit.
In contrast, the rest of the league views him as a reckless bully with no care for safety, an evil thug with a toothless grin. His countless suspensions are demerit badges, not their more positive opposite.
So I’ve come to the realization that there is a good chance that in the story of the NHL, Alex Ovechkin, my hockey hero, is a league-wide villain.
And I have a confession: I kinda like it!
What about you? Do you have a favorite team or player on the dark side?
Here’s the deal: The LPGA, the women’s professional golf tour, apparently has ruled that to be eligible to play on their circuit, you must have been born a female.
If someone undergoes gender reassignment surgery, they are doing just about everything possible to give up their previous identity. In fact, scientific advances may allow for child-bearing in transgendered male-to-females. Wild, right?
Back to golf.
The issue at hand is civil rights. Did the LPGA violate civil rights by prohibiting transgenders from playing on Tour? Kind of a loaded question. Does undergoing a gender reassignment switch your past genetics?
Said better: does changing your gender legally erase your original gender?
That seems like a really serious topic for a sports organization to be faced with.
So the LPGA stands between a rock and a hard place: their Tour was created to give a competitive golf experience to women…how do they handle excluding someone who is legally a woman under the United States government?
Let me turn this one over to smart people like you. How should the LGPA respond from a PR capacity?
