The State of American Sports in 2012

(From RealClearSports)

Editor's note: In advance of President Obama's State of the Union address next week, RCP is rolling out daily "state of" reports to better frame the issues facing the nation. Today: The state of American sports.

On so many levels, most sports fans are happy to see 2011 in the rearview mirror. Both the NFL and NBA had prolonged work stoppages that threatened their seasons. Two major college programs - Ohio State and Miami - were exposed for rampant cheating involving criminal elements. And on top of all that, the alleged child rape scandal at Penn State not only obliterated its football coaching staff, but shook the entire university to its core.

So 2012 should be a stroll in the park then, with a restoration of the usual fun and games, right? While things can’t possibly be as bleak as they were last year, there are some dark clouds looming. Here’s a look ahead:

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

The NFL resolved its labor crisis with no loss of regular season games, and its perch as king of American sports was not threatened by the lockout - in fact, it might have become more entrenched. The $9 billion industry now is guaranteed labor peace for the next decade, and has further stuffed its coffers with a nine-year TV contract extension, worth $3 billion per year. Interest in the league is at an all-time high, buoyed in recent weeks by Tebow-mania, which just adds an embarrassment of riches to a league that hardly needs more publicity.

So the rest of the sports leagues will have to fight for the NFL’s leftover scraps. Major League Baseball managed to secure its own long-term labor peace without any rancor, though performance-enhancing drugs continue to cast a shadow on the sport, both in terms of Hall of Fame enshrinement of alleged PED users and the recent revelation that NL MVP Ryan Braun had failed a drug test.

The NBA had its own labor dispute, with the season saved by a last-minute deal that still came with a cost: the loss of about 20 percent of the games. But the sport with trouble ahead is the NHL, which already had one entire season wiped out in 2004-05. Donald Fehr, who spearheaded several of baseball’s labor wars, is now the head of the NHL players’ union. He had fired a shot across the owners’ bow last week by rejecting a realignment proposal, setting the stage for turbulent times ahead as the current deal is scheduled to expire in September.

COLLEGE SPORTS

NCAA President Mark Emmert might just have the most thankless task in sports. He has to navigate a billion-dollar industry masked as amateur athletics. The scandals at Ohio State and Miami (among others) demonstrated that the difficulties of maintaining a flawed system whose entire labor force is undercompensated 18-to-22-year-olds who can easily fall prey to nebulous outside influences.

A new proposal is on the table to pay compensation to college athletes in the form of a $2,000-per-month stipend. But that’s akin to patching up a gunshot wound with a Band-Aid. Emmert is considering more sweeping reforms that may more adequately address systemic issues facing the NCAA, which still operates an antiquated model that is no longer compatible - economically or otherwise - with the times.
(From RealClearSports)

College football, the real cash cow in college athletics, has specific problems to address that fall outside of the purview of the NCAA. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is universally derided, with criticism only intensifying after the most recent championship game that pitted two schools (Alabama and LSU) from the same conference. The BCS also has done its part to destroy century-long rivalries by ushering in a conference realignment frenzy. With its current TV deal scheduled to expire after the 2013 season, the BCS will be forced to contemplate a dramatic shakeup, likely as soon as this summer.

THE OLYMPICS

If it’s a leap year, it must be time for the Summer Olympics. The 2012 London Games are facing numerous challenges, not the least of which is measuring up to its predecessor. The 2008 Games were orchestrated nearly flawlessly by China’s communist government, which spared no expenses or manpower to make sure everything went smoothly in Beijing, including an event-best 51 gold medals for the Chinese.

The U.S. team finished a distant second with 36 golds, though it did garner a Games-high 110 total medals. The Americans are favored to top both standings this year in England, with high hopes for a number of athletes, particularly swimmer Michael Phelps, who is expected to add to his record 14 gold medals in his final Olympics.

SPORTS MEDIA

For the first time since 1988, the Olympics broadcast will not have Dick Ebersol at the helm, and that’s a good thing, as his insistence on tape-delaying live events had caused a steady decline of TV ratings on NBC, for both Summer and Winter Games.

NBC’s new owner Comcast will instead use the Olympics to increase viewership and visibility for its family of networks - especially the NBC Sports Network (formerly Versus) - and Web properties by making nearly every event available live, either on TV or via live-streaming.

NBC, as well as Fox and CBS, are trying to maintain their influence in a sports media landscape increasingly dominated by ESPN, which raked in $8.5 billion in revenue in 2010 for parent company Disney. ESPN has been able to dramatically increase its cash flow by extracting ever more subscriber fees from cable and satellite operators to supplement its advertising revenue.

As a result, bidding wars for sports programming have caused rights fees to skyrocket. In just the last year, NBC paid $4.3 billion to the International Olympic Committee (for four Olympics through 2020); Fox, CBS and NBC paid $28 billion to the NFL while ESPN paid $15.2 billion for its own separate “Monday Night Football” deal (through 2022); ESPN also paid $500 million to the NCAA for non-football and non-basketball championships (through 2024); and CBS and NBC paid an undisclosed amount to the PGA Tour (through 2021).

All that cost of doing business will eventually be passed on to the average sports fan, even if he or she decides to forego paying escalating ticket prices and instead watches everything from home.

But the good news is that - other than, potentially, the NHL - there will be plenty to watch in 2012. And if we’re lucky, we won’t have to deal with learning a new household name, as we did in 2011 with Jerry Sandusky.

Could Lost NFL Season Cost Obama His Job?

(From RealClearPolitics)

Will Barack Obama take it upon himself to end the National Football League impasse?

For reasons both atmospheric and economic, he should at least think about it.

With Monday's ruling from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that keeps the owners' lockout intact, there is a possibility that both sides will dig in, thus putting the upcoming season in peril. More than two months into the lockout and just two months from the scheduled start of training camp, the NFL is already way behind in preparing for the upcoming season.

Any lost games -- even preseason ones -- have an economic cost to the teams and the cities they do business in. The NFL Players Association estimated that each NFL city stands to lose $160 million over the course of the season, or $16 million per home game. Though these figures may be greatly exaggerated (the most conservative estimate is at $35 million per city for the season), there is no doubt that millions of dollars and thousands of jobs will be lost should the games be canceled.

A number of NFL teams, the Miami Dolphins among them, have already drastically reduced their staff or cut pay during the lockout. Keep in mind that each team and its host city hire a large number of people, from full-time employees who work in custodial, food service and media relations at the training facilities, to contract workers who sell souvenirs, clean up and provide guest services at stadiums. Not to mention thousands of cops and firefighters who depend on overtime income from working on game days.

The economy and jobs. Now do they sound like something President Obama should worry about? Left unmanaged, the damage from a lost season may very well negatively affect his re-election chances in 2012.

In 2008, Obama won 365 electoral votes, comfortably beating John McCain for the presidency. But since the Democrats' 2010 midterm election wipeout, combined with the reallocation of electoral votes following the 2010 Census, his prospects have arguably worsened already. And that doesn't even take into account the bleak employment picture that has persistently dogged his presidency.

Six states, each home to at least one NFL franchise, may just hold the key to his bid for a second term.

These six (North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Colorado) all went for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004, and they were also the states where Obama's winning margins were the smallest in 2008, ranging from 0.3 percent in North Carolina to 8.9 percent in Colorado.

Nine NFL teams reside in these six states (the Washington Redskins are headquartered in Ashburn, Va.). And if you take the NFLPA's estimates at face value, a whopping $1.44 billion worth of economic activity, not to mention tens of thousands of jobs, may be lost in these states from a canceled season.

If Obama should lose all six states (not a stretch, since neither John Kerry nor Al Gore carried any of them), his electoral vote total would plummet from a census-adjusted 359 to 264 -- the difference between winning the future and winning funds for a presidential library.

Moreover, even states the president won more comfortably in 2008 may be in play in 2012 after the GOP landslide of 2010. A total of 40 electoral votes could be up for grabs in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania -- home to the Vikings, Green Bay Packers, Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles.

Given this landscape, should the current impasse persist, it may behoove Obama to pick up the phone and -- to paraphrase the 44th president himself when he spoke of college football's lack of a playoff -- "throw my weight around a little bit." Obama can call any number of people, and it's reasonable to surmise that he may have DeMaurice Smith's number on his BlackBerry.

It's not that the head of the NFLPA contributed to the Obama campaign (he did), it's that "De" Smith was elected to head the players' union last year on the strength of his legal and political connections. He was largely unknown by the players he sought to lead, but Smith is a former colleague of Obama confidant and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and he's a former partner at Patton Boggs, a powerhouse law firm with an extensive lobbyist operation and strong ties to the Democratic Party. Three months ago, Patton Boggs adviser Frank Wisner was sent to Egypt as Obama's personal envoy to deal with Hosni Mubarak.

Professional sports are hardly on the same level as Middle East peace, but Obama can pick up the phone and lean on another Patton Boggs man to break the impasse in pro football. That isn't always enough, even for a president of the United States. Bill Clinton learned that lesson when he tried unsuccessfully to mediate the baseball strike of 1994-1995. But voters gave Clinton credit for trying.

If Obama does call and push him to make a deal, even the heretofore stubborn Smith will have incentives to comply. After his grand strategy of litigating instead of negotiating was shredded by the 8th Circuit, Smith doesn't have a lot of options left. Given his track record, it's doubtful that he'd be an NFL lifer, as his predecessor Gene Upshaw was. So his best course of action might be to cut a deal quickly, proclaim it was done in the interest of the fans, tell the players it was all worth it, before exiting gracefully.

Perhaps just in time to land a gig on Obama's reelection campaign.

Top 10 NFL Quarterback Busts

(From RealClearSports)

"Don't f***ing talk to me! Knock it off!"
- Ryan Leaf to San Diego Tribune's Jay Posner

It was the defining moment and the epithet on Ryan Leaf's unfulfilled NFL career. It was replayed on TV, over and over again, even a decade later, long after Leaf has departed the scene, having moved on to the coaching staff of West Texas A&M and perhaps, jail, in the near future.

By all accounts, Leaf is the gold standard of pro football busts. Drafted in 1998 by the San Diego Chargers with the No. 2 overall pick, he was supposed to compete with Peyton Manning on the highway to Canton. Instead, Leaf serves as the biggest cautionary tale in recent NFL history.

The lesson? Don't waste your high draft picks on quarterbacks. Most of the time, it's just not worth it.

It's a lesson, however, mostly ignored by NFL teams. And they do so at their own peril.

From the first common draft in 1967 through 1997, only eight quarterbacks were taken first overall in those 31 years. Since 1998, however, a quarterback has been taken first overall nine times in just 12 years, including five in a row from 2001-2005.

1967-1997
1970 Terry Bradshaw
1971 Jim Plunkett
1975 Steve Bartkowski
1983 John Elway
1987 Vinny Testaverde
1989 Troy Aikman
1990 Jeff George
1993 Drew Bledsoe

As you can see, teams didn't blow their top pick on a quarterback unless they felt they had a sure thing. More than half of these quarterbacks are either enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame or led their teams to Super Bowl glory, and the rest had long and productive careers.

Now look at this list:

1998-2009
1998 Peyton Manning
1999 Tim Couch
2001 Michael Vick
2002 David Carr
2003 Carson Palmer
2004 Eli Manning
2005 Alex Smith
2007 JaMarcus Russell
2009 Matthew Stafford

Among this bunch, only the Mannings own Super Bowl rings and Peyton may be the only one headed to Canton. Two are already bona fide busts. Another one is just coming back to the league after spending two seasons in prison.

And those are just the No. 1 overall picks. Between 1998 and 2009, teams invested 33 first-round selections on quarterbacks, a higher percentage than any 10-year period in NFL history. Despite a mountain of evidence suggesting the contrary, teams continue to spend their most valuable draft pick on a highly risky proposition.

In 2009, of the 32 quarterbacks who started the majority of their teams' games, fewer than half (15) are first-round draft picks. The other 17 came in the second round (3), third round (2), fourth round (2), fifth round (1), sixth round (4), seventh round (1) and undrafted free agents (4).

That's right, nine starters came from the sixth round or later, or altogether undrafted. And put this list up against the one you just saw:

Tom Brady (sixth round, 2000)
Kurt Warner (undrafted, 1994)
Tony Romo (undrafted, 2003)
Marc Bulger (sixth round, 2000)
Matt Hasselbeck (sixth round, 1998)
Jake Delhomme (undrafted, 1997)
Matt Cassel (seventh round, 2005)
Derek Anderson (sixth round, 2005)
Shaun Hill (undrafted, 2002)

Among them, they've been to nine Super Bowls with four rings. Six of them were selected to the Pro Bowl. And you still want to waste that first-round pick, let alone No. 1 overall, on a quarterback?

Since what's done is done, we decided to conduct a thorough examination of these first-rounders during what we shall dub "The Quarterback Decade," that began in 1998 when Manning and Leaf went 1-2 in the draft. We want to find out, at least statistically, if Leaf was indeed the biggest flop.

Our research would cover a 10-year period between 1998-2007, ensuring that we have the goods for at least 2½ seasons before calling someone a bust. Out of those 28 quarterbacks, we exempted those who have started at least 75 percent of their teams' games while maintaining a passer rating better than 75.0.

The following statistical information was then taken into consideration for the remaining 14 quarterbacks:

1. Winning percentage as a starter
2. Percentage of games started for original team
3. Career passer rating (through Week 8 for active players)
4. Draft position

We discovered that Leaf had some fine company, and that, if you remove all the off-the-field stuff, he wasn't even the worst of the lot. Of the 10 biggest quarterback busts in the past decade, only one had a career winning record as a starter; one started more than half of his team's games; one completed more than 56 percent of his passes, and none threw more touchdowns than interceptions.

Half of them are already out of the league. Of the other half, three have their butts firmly planted on the pine, one just got off, and only one started more than half of his team's games this season.

And this is how we ranked team, from the pretty awful to the absolute worst:

Continue to Top 10 NFL Quarterback Busts

Dishonoring the Game

By all accounts, Tony Dungy is a class act, a gentleman on and off the field. But what his Indianapolis Colts committed Sunday night was a fraud, and a disgrace.

Sure, the Colts had already advertised that they planned to play mostly backups. True, the Cleveland Browns have only themselves to blame after blowing a key game last week against Cincinnati and thus leaving their fate in someone else's hands. Yes, Indy has an obligation to make sure its injured players have enough rest to be ready for the playoffs.

But the Colts also have an obligation to the National Football League, the game itself, to do their very best. What happened on the RCA Dome floor Sunday night was a sham.

The Tennessee Titans were not capable of winning in Indy, if the Colts actually tried. Even with Indy playing primarily backups for the better part of three quarters, the Titans barely eked out a 16-10 win. In short, Tennessee is not a playoff-caliber team.

The game became such a farce that at one point NBC's John Madden quipped that it would be in the Titans' best interest to keep Indy backup QB Jim Sorgi in the game because Peyton Manning would have to return if Sorgi was hurt. Except that it was no joke.

Yet the Colts did not have enough respect for the integrity of the league to play their best. It would be understandable for the Colts to do what they did had the game been a meaningless one for their opponent. But it wasn't. In essence, with the Colts' blessing, the Titans made the playoffs with a 9-6 record plus an exhibition win.

Indy really should've taken its cue from bitter rival New England. Besides the Patriots' pursuit of a perfect regular season, their Saturday night game against the Giants was essentially meaningless. Yet, both teams played hard from beginning to end, with their best personnel. The Patriots honored the game by insisting that being 16-0 means something. The Giants, in turn, validated the Patriots' perfection by not handing it to them on a platter.

The Colts, however, failed to see how their actions might stain the game. Really, with the NFL's constant and maniacal effort to distance itself from gambling, it's ironic that one of its best team just threw a game in broad daylight with absolutely no consequences forthcoming.

No penalties from the league, that is. But the football gods will have other ideas. The Colts lost a lot more than a game Sunday night. They lost their honor.

Dog Day Afternoon

So Michael Vick enters his plea, and now his future, football and otherwise, is in the hands of U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson, who has a reputation as a tough hombre when it comes to sentencing.

Since I'm not a lawyer (and don't even play one on TV), my guess on Vick's sentence is as good as anyone on the street. But I'll guess anyway: I say he doesn't get more than 18 months. Even if Judge Hudson does not have to abide by the prosecution's recommendation, I think he'll decide not to destroy the young man's life by throwing the book at him, which would be a five-year sentence.

Of course, Vick's reputation will be forever tarnished -- as it should be. But we must keep in mind that as heinous as his crime was, it really was nowhere as notorious as say, what Rae Carruth did. And should Vick be able to come back to the NFL? Well, after he has paid his debt to society, I don't see why not, provided that somebody in the league is willing to give him a chance. At the moment, with him suspended indefinitely without pay, that's a long way away.

The bottom line, though, is this: What a waste. Michael Vick was one of the faces of the National Football League, right up there with Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and LaDainian Tomlinson. But he threw everything away because of his complete and utter lack of character and sound judgment. This is not a guy who just made one mistake. He willfully engaged in an illegal enterprise for a period of over six years. For that, he must now pay a heavy price.