Geoff Decker’s whereIstand blog

Even before he breaks baseball’s most revered record, Bonds’ place in history is set in stone. And if you think an invitation to Cooperstown is going to change all that, you’re crazy.

Bonds is MLB’s unofficial poster boy for the steroid era. Say what you will about his talents and abilities, but no one has been so closely linked to cheating in baseball than him: BALCO, Game of Shadows, Flaxseed Oil, the cream and the clear, amphetamines — the man is associated more with steroid allegations than with baseball achievements.

So do you think these associations and allegations will magically disappear when he is inducted into the Hall? They won’t. His name will forever be a red flag to anyone discussing home run records.

Then why are we so concerned with Bonds’ place in history next to the greats?

Sports Illustrated is making sure that Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record and his place in history is remembered by conveniently putting him on their cover this week just as Bonds closes in on the mark.

I propose that we follow suit and remember this era for what it was: a cheater’s era that inflated statistics and made power-hitting records look run-of-the-mill.

Look, from here on out, anytime an argument comes up about Big Mac, Sosa, Bonds or Palmeiro and their rightful place as the all-time sluggers, is there any chance the whole ‘juiced’ factor will just slip our minds? Absolutely not! Anyone with a finger to the pulse of the sports arena understands that the steroid issue has tainted the game in ways that will be felt for generations.

So put Bonds in the Hall. Hell, put Sosa and Big Mac if you really wanna. I don’t really care. I’ll even go so far as to say an asterisk is unnecessary next to Bonds and Co.’s tainted records.

Why, you ask? The asterisk exists in our dialogue. Seriously, is there anyone in the world who would even attempt to argue that Bonds was the greatest baseball player ever to live…and then leave out the whole steroid issue?

We’re not going to instantly feel better if and when Bonds is rejected from the HOF and an asterisk is put up next to his records. We can’t just right things this way. Clean our hands and forget it ever happened.

The records need to exist as a constant reminder of how even the most truly gifted athletes in the world can forget that it was their natural abilities that propelled them to sport’s greatest stage and essentially made them rich to play a child’s game. It will remind us of baseball’s most ingrained flaws.

When our children and grandchildren swap their father’s and grandfather’s old baseball card collections and look at the astounding HR and Slugging % totals that these seemingly innocent men amounted, they won’t need an asterisk to tell them the story behind the statistics. All they’ll need is the legacy of the game. The same legacy that told us that Babe Ruth loved food and booze and women; that told us Ty Cobb was a virulent racist; that Jackie Robinson was the first black player in a white man’s game.

….and finally this same legacy will tell us that Bonds was once a great ball player…before he became a cheat.

whereIstand Tags

• SportsIllustrated
• BartGordon
• BarryBonds
• Should Barry Bonds be voted into the Hall of Fame?

Wait, what am I missing here? I though that, by definition, if you bet money on sports, its called gambling? And if you don’t bet money, its not gambling, right? In fantasy sports (if its being played for money), you’re betting money on the individual performances in competition. It’s gambling.

Look, I’m just going by what wikipedia has under sports gambling. I think we can all concur that wikipedia knows more than you or I and should never be questioned. Amen.

I just hope its not banned by law the way other online sports gambling has been. Fantasy Sports is one of my life’s highlights. Thanks to the modern development of a quirky new technology known as the “Internets“, I can be part of a league with friends from all over the country, keeping in touch 12 months a year. More than ever before, in an effort to capitalize on the popularity of online social networking, fantasy sites are making interaction simple and fun.

If nothing else, its a useful way to keep in touch. (So any facebook and/or MySpace users that just scoffed at the above paragraph needs to go eat a slice of hypocrisy pie.)

Here’s where the gambling element is involved: One weekend every year, my high school buddies, many of whom I am actually seeing for the first time in a year, get together to draft our fantasy “teams”. We pay $200 for the rights to a team, with a potential pay out of a couple thousand dollars.

On “draft day” we dress up like grown-ups and act like complete idiots. We talk about drafting valuable keepers in our dynasty auction draft, then say things like “He’s gonna be good for team morale, a real ‘locker room guy’ in every sense of the word” without actually having any sense of the word.

For one afternoon, we can walk, talk and even curse like real life General Managers. Its the greatest day of the year in many ways. If they took that away from me, I don’t know what I’d do.

Thankfully, I don’t think breaking the law is my biggest concern. Fantasy sports is currently exempt from a law passed to ban online gambling web sites.

But the Fantasy Sports Trade Association faces its greatest challenge from the organizations that would benefit most in the long-term from its popularity. Major League Baseball and the National Football League are leading the crusade to control who has rights to players’ statistics.

Obviously, this raises a number of issues, not least ones dealing with Internet and Freedom of the Press.

Speaking of that, I think I just thought of a good issue to propose!

whereIstand Tags

• MLB
• MLBPA
• NFL
• FantasySportsTradeAssociation
• Should fantasy sports be classified as gambling?

I commented on this issue a while back on KyleSmith’s blog but felt its probably necessary to elaborate on what I was saying. You can read the thread and my comments here .

Basically what I was saying that yes, athletes are paid exorbitant amounts and yes, teachers and firemen probably aren’t paid what should be, but we’re underestimating the value that sports has on American society.

Personally, I turn to sports for a lot of things. Stress relief, entertainment, excitement, social interaction. No one complains more than me about the price of a jumbo hot dog at Yankee Stadium, but the reality is I’d probably pay twice that.

Kyle does a good job covering the economic reasoning behind the stand that ‘no, athletes aren’t overpaid’:

The issue of whether or not pro athletes are overpaid comes right down to a matter of free marketplace. The leagues these gentlemen play in make many millions of dollars through ticket sales, merchandising, television revenue and countless other ways.

And he’s right. Sport is a business and money is coming from a myriad of sources. Money comes from the Super bowl advertisements we see in between game action (provided to us for free, by the way). Money comes from on-site sponsor signage.

Ultimately, the money has to go somewhere, right? If not to the athletes, then who? Well, a huge bit of it goes to those physical marvels that play the game that we love to watch so much. If it doesn’t go to them, who gets it?

Peter King gushed in a 2005 column about Tom Brady’s selflessness and commitment to the team’s success. He was quoted in the column as saying:

“To be the highest-paid, or anything like that, is not going to make me feel any better,”

Read those words over again. I mean, how many guys in sports history, on the verge of signing the biggest contract they’ll probably ever negotiate, have said to the team: “Hey Mr. Kraft! I really don’t want that much money. Just be somewhat fair, OK? And have a nice day …”?

Brady backed up his words that off-season by signing a contract for $10 million a year…less than Peyton Manning (understandably), less than Vick and equal to Donovan McNabb and Chad Pennington.

By the way, this is a guy who had won three Super Bowls by the age of 27 and was MVP in two of those. You could argue that he’s one of the best quarterbacks ever to play the game.

Fact is, Brady’s an anomaly. To most athletes their teams are their employers. I know it is completely different, but put yourself in his shoes for a moments. Say in the last five years, you landed three of the biggest sales contracts in company history. Then, when it came time to renegotiate your salary, you turned down an extra $50,000 bonus in order to re-distribute that money elsewhere in the company to further help the bottom line. Does that sound sane? Or even necessary?

Who knows where that money would end up? For Brady and the New England Patriots, it didn’t immediately get used. Deion Branch, Brady’s only reliable receiving target, was traded halfway through the season, in part because he demanded more money for his efforts.

So who’s to say that the money that athletes are overpaid would be any better off elsewhere? Brady was also quoted as saying:

In this game, the more one player gets, the more he takes away from what others can get. Is it going to make me feel any better to make an extra million, which, after taxes, is about $500,000? That million might be more important to the team.”

I couldn’t disagree more. Here’s a novel idea: Why not take that extra million dollars a year, start a charity and use it to help under privileged children or something. God forbid, you take the money and do something charitable with it.

My point is this. In the kind of economy that Kyle described America as, you can’t possibly target athletes for their pay. Because if they aren’t making the money, then someone else is. And I assure you it won’t be the people that deserve it.

whereIstand Tags

• kylesmith
• ABC
• CBS
• FOX
• NBC
• MLB
• NFL
• NBA
• NewEnglandPatriots
• PeterKing
• Are professional athletes overpaid?

The problem with preferential treatment in the admissions process arises when the theory is put in to practice. Who is to say a high school athlete with lower test scores doesn’t make up for his or her shortcomings in the classroom on the field? As a young professional, I’ve learned that qualities like leadership, sportsmanship and sound strategy are just as important to a job as is having a good vocabulary and knowing where the hypotenuse is on a triangle.

As the previously mentioned high school athlete is accepted and begins matriculating in college, the “student-athlete” term is flipped around. No longer is academics a priority as they are hoisted on a pedestal by athletic departments, by fans and by boosters. They become “athlete-students”.

In theory, the whole point of giving athletes preferential treatment in the admissions process is in finding an intangible quality in these individuals that can’t be found on test scores.

If you’re ready to say that even this theory is unfair and student participation in sports shouldn’t be considered, then you better be consistent and make the same case for students that play musical instruments, students who volunteer, students who participate in clubs. Because they receive a substantial amount of consideration based on these activities as well. Maybe not as much, but the precedent is there.

So only if you’re ready to say ‘no’ on this issue as it relates to all extracurricular activities can you avoid hypocrisy. Otherwise, you’re a walking contradiction,.

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel it’s necessary to get something off my chest. I am a former NCAA student-athlete. Specifically? I was a distance runner, competing in three sports (Cross-Country, Indoor Track and Outdoor Track).

But this debate isn’t about me. And it’s not about the Fencing team or the Crew team. The role we played, however, as student-athletes is an important one. For you see, we are the bottom feeder in the food chain that is a Division I athletic department.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved everything about my student-athlete experience. The commitment to team, the school loyalty, the ability to rub elbows with future NBA legends.

(That last part’s a joke, but all I know is that a certain Dunkin’ Dutchman made a pretty good name for himself as the last player from Marist College to make it to the NBA. Be on the look out for JJ. But I digress…)

The sacrifices I made for the program were self-induced. I wanted to run and would have done it for free. I might as well have. My compensation amounted to a jersey and about $10 a day in meal money.

So when a broad question like “Should student-athletes receive compensation?” is proposed, I don’t think dissenters have me or my meal money in mind when they say no, we shouldn’t. (Believe me, runners are skinny enough as it is.) So to answer this question in the broadest sense, Yes, of course student-athletes should be compensated.

The debate lies in revenue-generating sports at the major conferences. Particularly, men’s basketball and football. “Big money has changed college sports, transforming athletic departments into mini-industrial complexes,” writes L. Jon Wertheim in the March 5th, 2007 Sports Illustrated issue that outlines the good and bad of college sports.

Consider the revenue generated for the top five Division I programs.

$61.4 million (Notre Dame)
$60.9 million (Texas)
$60.8 million (Ohio State)
$58.7 million (Georgia)
$51.6 million (Auburn)

Be it from sponsors, boosters or ticket sales, these colleges are in the money and the athletes who are the main attraction are part of the debate that asks where the money should go. Rest assured, a huge fraction of this revenue goes directly back into the programs, funding facilities, upgrading equipment and financing far away trips.

But is it going too far to actually hand paychecks to participants?

That is the fine line and once it is crossed, the nature of amateurism is lost. Call me a traditionalist but even the most exciting draws in sports (the Greg Oden’s, the Brady Quinn’s, the Quentin Cassidy’s) are not above this.

I fall back on this reasoning and its a commonly shared one: Athletes of this stature are being compensated…over $200,000 in four years. Between books, housing, meals, classes and apparel, they are being afforded an opportunity to get a free college education.

I’m beginning to sound like my Dad, which is always a sign that I start wrapping it up. But there are plenty of student-athletes in non-revenue generating sports that would gladly play their sport merely for love and not receive a cent. I’m one of ‘em.

whereIstand Tags

• NBA
• NCAA
• JonWertheim
• Should student-athletes receive compensation?