by Barry Stagg
March 1997,
MONEY MELTDOWN
The Graham James sex scandal, the Dennis Rodman soap opera and the Bruce McNall imprisonment are black marks upon professional sports. Let there be no confusion. The James scandal coming out of junior hockey is as much a part of the professional scene as the Rodman and McNall matters.
The whole fixation on money and the cultivation of a virtual greed psychosis are making the paying customer and the loyal fan take a hard look at the objects of their support.
Players and their agents have taken players off their pedestal of sporting adulation and brought them down into the tar pit of celebrity. Likewise where owners once made a lifelong career of owning a sports team now they seem to shuffle teams around like junk bonds being traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
When a fraud artist like Bruce McNall becomes Chairman of the Board of the National Hockey League it is clear that the rot and criminality that has invaded professional sports rises completely to the top. Not only are there perverts and thieves on the fringes of the big show, there are criminals revealed at the highest level. All of this may bring the whole industry of professional sports tumbling down to the point where the industry experiences something akin to a stock market crash.
It really takes just a loss of confidence in the professional game for the industry or business of sports to take a dive into bankruptcy. For instance if people become complete disgusted with the behaviour of owners, players, agents and the nauseating sports memorabilia industries then the natural result is for the industry to collapse. There is no sports business without a willing and eager audience to watch games, buy popcorn and beer and purchase autographs, sweaters and caps at outrageous markups. If the legions of mammon who run the business poison the golden goose of fan support then the industry does a quick turn onto Receivership Road and Bankruptcy Boulevard.
The efforts of the tobacco industry to persuade Canadians that its departure from sponsorship of sport and cultural events will bring about the partial downfall of society is philosophically on the same plane as the overwrought showmanship of professional sport. It might be a far better purgative process for the tobacco industry to be turfed out of these sponsorships. The result would be that the sports and cultural organizations would have to find their own way without being tied to the partisan commerciality of tobacco promotion.
The partisan bray of the tobacco lobby is melodically similar to the cacophony of self-serving drivel that spews from the commission salesmen that we euphemistically call player agents. All purport that the withdrawal of their clients' services from the commercial arena will wreak havoc on civilization as we know it. More likely it will result in a few less lavender BMW's on the road.
A day of reckoning for professional sports may not be a bad thing. If the pathological obsession with money is curbed then somehow the business of sport may be forced back to the more amateurish principles of sportsmanship and honour. That would be quite a concept.
Regardless of whether or not the doom and gloom of this column comes to pass, the business of sport is suffering greatly from the proliferation of selfish attitudes and greed. The fans are everything when it comes to the industry of sport. If fans are turned off by sports that look more and more like some Hollywood Sodom and Gomorrah then the whole industry may suddenly find out about the commercial variants of Armageddon and Apocalypse.
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.