Daily Round-Up Feb 26: Spring Training Begins and Play-Off Runs Heat Up...

It’s that special time of year again. The bats are lined up in the dug-outs, the jerseys are being dusted off, the baseballs are brought out of their boxes, and it’s time to finally play some ball! Last night marked the first game of the 2011 Spring Training season for Major League Baseball (MLB) with the San Francisco Giants taking on the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Giants kicked us off in the same winning fashion as they closed out last year. Buster Posey, the recently crowned NL Rookie of the Year, went 2 for 3 knocking in a couple of runs for San Fran. Justin Upton came out of the scuffle with a 2 for 3 night of his own while putting one on the board for the D-Backs. Both Tim Lincecum and Joe Saunders looked shaky for the Giants and Diamondbacks respectively, both were hit for a few runs. If the results of Spring Training are any indication of where these players will finish over previous years, they’ll be just fine. A larger slate of games is up today including the Tigers and Blue Jays annual start against each other as well as the Yankees facing up against a fully re-tooled Phillies team.

In the NBA, the Miami Heat continues to assert their dominance over lesser teams by beating the Washington Wizards 121-113 in South Beach. Dwayne Wade smashed home 41 points individually to lead his team to the W. The Los Angeles Lakers proved to be just as much in the running by dropping their in-city rivals, the Clippers, last night 108-95. Unfortunately for the New York Knicks recently acquired offensive help Carmelo Anthony tweaked his elbow last night forcing him to play the final quarter of their game against the Cleveland Cavaliers with a numb right arm. Eventually Anthony fouled out of his second game with the Knicks (both of which were losses) at a time when New York needs wins now. Chauncy Billups provided some much needed offence in the fourth with Amare Stoudemire but it wasn’t enough to rally the Knicks to victory. After missing out on the Lebron lottery this past summer, New York is going to have to start changing to winning ways. There’s definitely going to be a teething period given the amount of personality now on this team but the nucleus should start to gel by the end of this season.

The race for a post-season spot in the NHL has begun to seriously heat up and this coming week’s trade deadline will be sure to fuel that fire. The New Jersey Devils have seen their hot streak doused by the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Devils have moved up to 56 points in the Eastern Conference and are knocking on the door step for a Number 8 seed only 11 points away. The recently fired up Toronto Maple Leafs are also inching closer and closer to that Number 8 seed as they have been racking up wins lately. With a lot of roster shuffling going on by General Manager Brian Burke it remains to be seen whether he has yet to put a team together to challenge for a spot in the post-season. With veteran blue liner Tomas Kaberle out of the mix and the Kris Versteeg experiment rolling along to Broad Street, I personally don’t think Toronto’s their yet. It takes a certain type of player to succeed in the environment Burke and Head Coach Ron Wilson have put together and they are just not there yet. With so many young players becoming the faces on this team it’s going to be a while before they have the right mix of experience to make that leap. They need a more natural leader than Dion Phaneuf leading the Blue and White onto the ice too.

On this side of the Atlantic there’s a solid amount of Premier League action happening including Manchester United looking to extend their lead at the top of the table against Wigan Athletic. With the shear amount of fixtures occurring over the next two weeks it’s going to take a lot of talent by the managers of these big teams to keep sides winning. This applies the most to Arsenal who have their first opportunity to win a major trophy this Sunday in the Carling Cup final against Birmingham City. As the first Wembley final of the year it obviously has people excited (especially in London where Arsenal is based). The Gunners should have no problem racking up a victory, even with Cesc Fabregas ruled out because of a minor hamstring tear. The form of Robin Van Persie should be enough to end Arsenal’s trophy drought and give them the first of their potential four competition trophies this year.

Daily Round Up Feb 23rd: Chelsea, Phoenix, and a man called Volquez

Another day of sports has come and gone and it looks like things have been shaken up. There were two different Champions Leagues in action last night on both sides of the Atlantic, baseball’s spring training is now in full swing (forgive the pun), and the Phoenix Coyotes have won…..again.

UEFA Champions League is by far the most enjoyable soccer club competition in the world. No other tournament will pit the true powerhouses from every country in its fold on this scale. With two English clubs already completed their first legs, and with victories (Tottenham over AC Milan and Arsenal’s epic victory over mighty Barcelona) it was Chelsea’s turn to step it up. Away to Copenhagen, nobody predicted that this was going to be a difficult match for the Blues. The Danish squad was by far the best draw any team could have hoped for due to their inexperience. However; because of Chelsea’s recent downturn in performance pundits have begun wondering whether or not this match might be the forgone conclusion we all made it out to be two months ago. Chelsea answered that question in impeccable style. With Carlos Ancelotti employing a 4-4-2 pairing up Nicolas Anelka and Fernando Torres up front he was immediately paid the dividends. Anelka scored a brace to propel Chelsea into a 2-0 finish and an easy trip back to Stamford Bridge for the second leg in a couple of weeks. With Fernando Torres still not finding his way onto a score sheet patience is going to run out more and more with each passing game. He needs to start showing the Blues faithful and brass why he commanded a £50 million transfer fee from Liverpool. Chelsea brought him in to play in and help them win the Champions League this year and he’s lucky Anelka stepped up to the challenge last night.

Real Madrid also drew with Lyons last night. Karim Benzema managed to put Madrid up but was cancelled out late in the fixture. Although Real have been knocked out of the competition by Lyons twice recently, they seem to have everything well in hand with a trip back to the Bernabau and an even score line playing to their advantage.

In other Champions League news, the CONCACAF Champions League got back underway last night. The Columbus Crew was pitted up against Real Salt Lake in a quarterfinals match-up. These are the last two MLS teams left in the competition after its lengthy hiatus. It almost counts as the first MLS action of the new season…except that this competition is the continuation of last season, and the final standings of the season before that…it’s all very confusing. While they have opposite schedules and the tournament takes so long it starts to mess with your head a bit. A gritty affair between the two teams (there’s been no love lost in any match involving these two sides in recent days) they ended on a 0-0 draw. Neither side claiming a push over the other and no it comes down to the second leg with Salt Lake having the home advantage. Either way we’ll see an MLS team go through to the semi finals. It would be nice to see one of these two teams come out with the championship just to compare how they would play against some of the world’s best clubs in the following FIFA Club World Cup. You know…curiosity.

Keeping on the theme of soccer…what in world happened to Tottenham last night? We’re talking about a team that can hold onto a clean sheet and win against AC Milan at San Siro but can’t stop Blackpool from cruising to victory? With a 3-1 loss at Bloomfield Road last night Harry Redknapp has some explaining to do. If Tottenham want to hang onto that fourth place finish and find themselves back in the Champions League next year they cannot afford to be losing these types of games. Hats off to the Tangerines though for an impressive ability. Charlie Adam has been showing why his manager has put so much faith in needing him to stay in the top flight. It’s a foregone conclusion that Adam will find himself in a different team’s shirt next year based on his magnificent campaign this season. Ian Holloway had to fend off many bids for Adam’s services this past January convinced that he would be vital to Blackpool down the stretch. Adam’s corners are superb and precise, his penalty taking is spot on, and he reads the fields so well. Until the summer poaching season comes Holloway will look very wise indeed for making the kid stick around.

Changing gears back to North America a couple of revelations have been made. First off, the Cincinnati Reds officially named Edison Volquez as their opening day starter.  He must have seriously impressed the coaching staff to be named this early in the spring campaign. Of course, this is barring performance and injury woes throughout the course of spring games. With Dusty Baker making this choice so early you can’t help but wonder if he’s trying to light a fire under the likes of Arroyo and Cueto to get even better performances out of them this season.

In the NHL the Phoenix Coyotes won….again. This is the second major streak the “Yotes” have gone on this season and has catapulted them up to the division lead. It looks like they’ll be duking it out with the Sharks down the stretch which should make for some very interesting games. Could anybody see this coming given the problems this franchise faced just a couple of years ago? Going into bankruptcy, becoming owned by the NHL, and almost being moved to Canada by businessman and owner wannabe Jim Balsillie. The team is proving they were no fluke making their first play-off appearance last season and bringing the Red Wings to a seventh game in their series. It looks like Phoenix is going to be raring to go once the play-offs hit this year and I think they’ll be a force to reckon with. Maybe a good solid trade at the deadline will put them right over the top.

In closing, how bad does Jim Balsillie feel right now? He seems to have the golden touch for making bad teams good again by attempting to purchase them. He tried to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins, failed, and they went on to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals winning one of them. Then he tried to purchase the Nashville Predators, failed, and they haven’t missed the play-offs since. Now he has attempted to buy the Coyotes, failed, and they’ve made their first play-off appearance as a franchise and look destined to be a regular fixture there in the years to come. Maybe going into bankruptcy isn’t all that bad for teams…just give Mr. BBM a call.

The Eternal Struggle of Major League Soccer

North America is known for having the largest collection of professional sports leagues in the world. Within this sea of big fish you are bound to find some minnows struggling to compete for space; Major League Soccer (MLS) is one of these minnows.  Although this is a unique league in North America it continues to struggle for exposure not only amongst the other leagues in the continent but those all over the world. Even with constant improvements in varying areas MLS will continue to struggle and will ultimately be doomed as an afterthought to the powerhouse leagues in Europe that dominate the sport.

Major League Soccer has existed in some form since December, 1993. Although there have been a lot of changes throughout the last 15 years of play, both in teams, rules, and format; the league has persisted on with an increasing fan base. In truth MLS has never been stronger and this is largely due to the massive exposure and viewership of the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups. All of these tournaments have something in common: the United States National Team. There has been a distinct correlation between the success of the national team and the success of MLS. As one improves so does the other. Franchises continue to be added, more marquis players are joining teams, the talent pool has increased and improved, and it has successfully expanded into Canada. It would almost seem prophetic to say that the sky is the limit for Don Garber (Commissioner of MLS) and his growth plan for the league. Despite MLS’ rising star there are still a number of concerns and factors that come into play ensuring that they will never rise to the level that many executives, owners, and fans in the league would like to see.

One of the major impediments to MLS is their salary cap system. It is difficult for the league to compete for talent when there are limits to spending. Clubs in other leagues (most notably in Europe) can spend amounts on single players that MLS clubs are expected to spend on their entire roster. MLS has attempted to respond to this by creating the Designated Player system. Teams in MLS are allowed to designate three players on their roster to whom the salary cap does not apply and thereby can be paid any amount of money. This is the reason the Los Angeles Galaxy and New York Red Bulls were able to attract the likes of David Beckham and Thierry Henry respectively. Unfortunately these are players who are past their footballing prime and are not viable to build a team around for the long term. Failing to attract young international players through this system has ultimately led to the talent pool of MLS being greatly diluted by those players whom are stuck under the blanket of the cap. Some teams have been able to be very successful even with these restrictions but if you pit the recent MLS champion Colorado Rapids against a third or fourth tier English league team…I’d be tempted to place my bets on the English team.

Continuing on the theme of soccer talent, another detriment to MLS is their lack of an established academy system. Academies are the factories that larger teams in the world use to train and crank out talent from within. Manchester United and Arsenal of the English Premier League are among the most famous clubs for spotting talent in players as young as 10 or 11 years old and bringing them into their clubs to train. Although it is only a small amount of players who will make it to the big stage with these teams, the fact that the clubs spot them out and take them in at such an early age shows a certain amount of dedication to success. MLS is stuck in a traditional North American approach to player development. Much like its counterparts, Major League Soccer drafts its players with the majority of them coming out of the NCAA system. These players have learned their trade while attending college and then become professional players afterwards. It is very near impossible to compare the training systems of any school in the NCAA to the major European football clubs. Although many of these players do develop very well and go on to have successful careers in MLS, much of that is owed to natural talent as it does to development. Ultimately this leads to a significantly lower quality of players that are entering the league. Some teams, most notably Toronto FC, have begun to establish and focus on player academies, however; until this becomes a priority for all franchises supported by the league itself it can never gain the stature of the football factories in Europe.

With the least amount of offense to MLS and its players as possible it doesn’t take a genius to know that the overall level of talent is just not comparable to major international leagues. So, to avoid beating a dead horse let’s move on to a different area of concern: league structure. One of the largest differences between MLS and other soccer leagues is in scheduling. The MLS season runs from March until October ever year with the play-offs occurring into November. This is almost the exact opposite of most other leagues in the world that run from August to May and take a break in the summer. Understandably this difference has a lot to do with weather. With areas in the U.S. and Canada receiving much larger amounts of snow in the winter months compared to European leagues it becomes impossible to play during this time. This has actually played an advantage for MLS. Since most other domestic sports leagues in North America are finished their seasons in the summer, MLS has much more exposure and the ability to grow a fan base from people needing a sports fix. This has allowed MLS to grow in a lot of cities where you might not think soccer would pick up. Unfortunately, the summer is also the time of the year in which international friendlies and high profile tournaments occur. When the most talented players in MLS (mainly members of the U.S. National Team) are called upon to represent their countries, the franchises they play for end up losing their services for at least one or two games. This is a crucial time in the MLS season and the fact that teams will lose their best players when trying to make a push for a play-off position is almost comical. Even more ironic, the major international tournament for CONCACAF (the governing body of soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean) is held in the summer which directly conflicts with all of the league seasons in its fold. For national team players it just makes more sense to play in a league that does not conflict with these crucial tournaments.

The existence of a promotion and relegation system within most soccer leagues ensures that every team will always have something to fight for throughout the course of a season. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, most countries have multiple levels of leagues in which the top teams at the end of the season will be promoted to the next best league and the worst teams will be relegated to the next worst one. The creates a Cinderella system in which the smallest team in a country has the potential to work its way up to the top flight of the sport. North America does not have this system. MLS exists as an all encompassing league in which the teams are consistent on an annual basis. There are leagues that are considered lower in the “pyramid” of quality but no teams at the bottom of the table will leave the top flight at the end of a season. In fact, they are actually rewarded for playing very poorly all year by acquiring the top talent in the subsequent draft. This is vastly different from the punishment of relegation that teams receive at the hands of leagues in other countries. Soccer currently cannot compete at a grassroots level in order to bring the game to a wider audience in North America. It’s easy for a country like England to have multiple levels of the game because there are a plethora of players available with different talent levels the country over. Until people take up the sport on this side of the pond more readily the viability of having even three or four lower leagues in order for a promotion system to exist is slim. This results in teams resigning at some point in the season to not making the play-offs and can play out the rest of the season knowing there’s always next year. Even worse, if they’re at the bottom of the table teams might even be inclined to play poorly down the stretch to ensure they receive a top pick in the draft. In other leagues, even if you are out of any cup competitions and are sitting in the middle of the table you need to continue playing your absolute best to ensure that you don’t slip into the relegation zone. It’s constant motivation to play top quality soccer and makes games between any club enjoyable and not just those between the best. The lack of this system in MLS makes for boring matches down the stretch and ultimately a loss in appeal from fans of those poorer teams.

I don’t want this article to seem like MLS cannot go anywhere from here. It is quite admirable to compare the league’s humble roots with its current position in the continent. The sport has never been more popular in North America and the league is actually quite entertaining (just ask the crazed fans in most cities and they’ll tell you how intense games can get.) As the campaign for youth to play the game grows: the talent pool will improve, the quality of the league will improve, the competitiveness of the national teams will improve and it will be able to compete for attention in an area dominated by big industry sports. It is however futile for MLS to attempt to compare or compete with the top international clubs. The sport has been ingrained in these areas for so long and when you compare the history, level of competition, and amounts of money available it makes sense for any player wanted by these clubs to go. There are many factors hampering MLS’ ability to compete at these levels but I would resign myself to the fact that they are always going to play second fiddle. With continued expansion into Canada and around the United States I am very excited to see where this league is going to go and what continued structure improvements Don Garber will make to fine tune it. There might come a day when MLS will be able to compete on an international scale, until then let’s just enjoy the increasing popularity of the beautiful game.

Money in Sports: Have we gone too far?

Sports are a business…plain and simple. Whether you chose to believe it or not, our beloved past times are ruled by television contracts, sponsorships, naming rights, and billionaires. It’s hard to say whether the rampant spending that has plagued the world of sports contributes to the futility of many teams attempting to “break the curse” and win that long eluded championship in x number of years. One thing is for sure, if the amount of money changing hands in sports for talent and venues continues on the path it is currently travelling we risk seeing this entire system collapse and the method of escapism for so many people in this world destroyed.

This topic has recently sprung to my mind because of the recent drama in the closing of the European football transfer window this past January. For those of you who do not follow sport on the other side of the Atlantic, January is a month in which teams are allowed to move players for sums of money to be paid out by receiving teams. It is generally a dull month in which mainly negotiations take place except on the final day of the window which acts as a Euro-style Trade Deadline. Teams that need to make that push to gain or dump talent do so in this last opportunity of the season. This past January transfer window saw the largest amount of money change hands between English football teams than at any other point in history. Two players: Andy Carroll and Fernando Torres, each broke the British transfer record in successive moves valued at £35 million and £50 million respectively. They also automatically entered the top ten list of the highest paid football players in the world. Not too shabby for a Spaniard having the worst season of his career and an Englishman who has only played half a season of top flight football. Whether these players deserved to be valued at and paid the amounts they did is irrelevant. What is important is noting just how willing their new clubs were to shell out tens of millions of pounds in order to acquire their services for the next few years. This is the problem we face.

In the 1960’s this sort of money changing hands for footballing talent would have been unthinkable. Forget attempting to adjust inflation to equate the amount of money spent in today’s dollars with their values in that period of time. The fact is football players once had a cap in England of £20 a week and no more. In today’s world we would think of having the unrestricted ability to cap a player’s payments to be a joke. Back in the day however football was seen as a past time and not as a cash grabbing scheme. Some would argue that it is still futile to believe you can make money off of owning a football team but let’s not get into that debate. When Fulham FC broke the mold and decided to pay their best player, Johnny Haynes, £100 a week there was uproar. Were athletes worth that much money for simply playing a sport? Was it justified that men toiled in the coal mines, railroads, and factories throughout industrial England for tiny sums in comparison to men who were charged with kicking a ball? In the end the answer became clear, if you wanted to attract and keep the best talent in the country you needed to be prepared to pay more than the other teams and to do it. This new found freedom for teams started a trend that continued to grow for years. Every time a player reached the next plateau of weekly payments there were questions in the press as to whether these amounts could be justified. Culminating in the contracts of Carlos Tevez for Manchester City and Cristiano Ronaldo for Real Madrid who are paid over £200 000 per week. Not matter how many stories ran in the press, the arguments and the counter-arguments; nothing could be done to stop the spending.

For those teams that have been lucky enough to draw the attention of international billionaires willing to finance their ambitions, the rewards have been sweet and continuous. For those who have not, obscurity in the middle of the table or lower leagues lie in store with only a glimmer of hope for a cup victory sustaining their weekly play. The governing board of football in Europe, UEFA, has recently brought into effect a range of regulations that teams will have to abide by before the 2013/14 season. Known as the “Financial Fair Play” rules, they force teams to not spend more than their yearly income and are supposed to emphasize long term youth development over a short term quick fix contract. Given that Chelsea recently posted on their website that they were in the red for the first time since billionaire Roman Abramovich took over and later that day spent £75 million on two contracts it is difficult to see whether clubs will take these new regulations seriously. Luckily UEFA is willing to withhold participation in the Champions League (the premier club competition in Europe) as punishment for not abiding by them.

 Pundits of this system have argued in the past that leagues in North America have taken measures to prevent the type of over-spending that has been entrenched in the English national game and they should look to adopt these themselves. Are these systems really working to squash the same problems across the pond?

North America holds the largest sports leagues in the world. It houses the largest collection of stadiums, the biggest fan bases for franchises, and the highest volume of rewards for the successful teams. North America is also the epitome of where big business has been married with sports so successfully that divorce is not conceivable.  This is the land of television contracts, as much a source of funds as the billionaire owners whose money drives the teams. This is the land of sponsorships where players and teams will sell ads and space wherever possible to make that extra buck and everything involved in the game is “Brought to you by”. Corporate America is evident everywhere and it has affected the amounts of money available to franchises to spend on their players. No league in this part of the world is guiltier of obscene amounts of spending on playing talent than Major League Baseball.

When one thinks of high spending in North American sports thoughts will inevitably turn towards Major League Baseball and without a doubt to the New York Yankees. This is a team that has time and again outdone itself in setting the highest standard for a player’s yearly salaries. As any fan of the game will tell you this franchise has one of, if not the most, storied history of any team in any sport in the world. Players want to play for the Yankees, sometimes even before they ever become pro, and with that draw combined with the amounts of money available to them it is no wonder the Yankees have won the championship 27 times. We’re talking about a team who, after missing the playoffs for the first time in 15 years, spent half a billion dollars to acquire the skills of 3 players in the subsequent off season and then went on to win the World Series the next year. Money well spent you would think, but is that what has to be done in order to win? You look at teams such as the Boston Red Sox and their signings of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford as well as the Philadelphia Phillies’ signing of Cliff Lee in this past offseason and it’s no wonder the biggest teams spending the most money are the ones who are the most successful. They are simply able to put the best players in the game into their uniforms.

Where does that leave the rest of the league? Essentially playing the role of a punching bag to the juggernauts as they make their annual trip to baseball in October. This is not always the case however, and one need only look at the runs of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays and the successes of this past season for the Texas Rangers and the newly crowned World Series champion San Francisco Giants. These teams have proven that with the right combination of scouting and drafting expertise, proper player development programs, and key signings at the right time can lead to success at a reduced cost. Unfortunately you cannot equate one year of success with the decades of consistent winning baseball of other teams. Even more so, their continued presence in the post season causes an influx of annual cash that most teams must go without. Even more so, after these teams have their one off successful season their herein domestically developed players will become hot commodities on the open market for the predators and their franchises must make a choice to break the bank or allow their sought after talent to walk away and begin fresh with another run at the championship in perhaps another decade’s time.

Now don’t get me wrong, Major League Baseball has put into effect systems to try and put a stopper on this spending, known as the Luxury Tax. When a team opts to spend a certain amount of money on players that exceeds an amount set by the league they have to pay a percentage to the league that then gets distributed to the other teams. The amounts the teams receive are small and it does not level the playing field in any way. Even more so, teams are more inclined to just spend the exuberant amounts and concede with paying the tax as opposed to stopping their high spending. If a franchise is willing to dish out hundreds of millions of dollars, what’s an extra twenty or thirty going to hurt?

It seems that the NHL, NBA, and NFL have it right when it comes to salaries. They have all introduced caps that only allow teams to pay their entire squad a certain amount of money each year. If teams go over these numbers they are penalized with increasing severity as infractions mount. Although this has seemingly worked (the distribution of talent and success of teams in these leagues are balanced fairly well) there are still major complications. Organizations have crept towards newer contracts that are front loaded with heavy payouts during the first few years that slowly drop off as a player would be deemed to become less effective due to age or be retired. These contracts completely circumvent the idea of a salary cap and allow teams to take advantage of the situation the leagues have placed them in. This has become most rampant in the NHL with Ilya Kovalchuk’s contract with the New Jersey Devils being the most recent example. Ironically the leagues can actually do very little to avoid these types of contracts except to drag clubs to an arbitrator in order to decide whether the contract is legal under league rules or not. The Miami Heat of the NBA have proven that even with league measures in place, it cannot stop teams from spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a small amount of players, especially when it’s some of the best players in the league who are in question. Even North America’s answer to football powerhouse leagues in Europe, Major League Soccer, cannot escape the idea of a salary cap. Even  more ironic in this league is their understanding of how they need to compete with other international leagues and even though they have caps in place, each team is allowed a set number of “designated players” who are allowed to be paid whatever amount the club in question wishes. This is how MLS was able to attract the likes of David Beckham and Thierry Henry among others. MLS knows that putting caps on player’s salaries cannot fly in a sports world where money is everything and large amounts are needed to lure the best talent.

With all of this knowledge a question looms above our heads, has passion left the sports world for good? Some would argue (and myself included) that if you want to see true passion and pride you need not look any further than NCAA college sports. These sports, American football in particular, are still ready examples of what sports used to be like: athletes playing not for millions of dollars but for pride, passion, and a love of the game. They play to win in order to bring glory to their school and to become a part of history in areas that covet unsung heroes. I get goose bumps when I see stadiums festooned with the colours of an academic institution whose crowd consists of people who actually know the athletes on the playing surface, maybe have classes with them, or are even close friends. The separation of athlete and fan is very small and the absence of money has a lot to do with that. Money has created a sense of elitism in professional sports and athletes are more disconnected with their fan base now than ever before. I won’t say passion is completely lost; you still have your Crosbys, Lebrons, and Ovechkins. These are players who legitimately enjoy and have fun playing the game that they do. It’s just unfortunate that these are the players who demand those high salaries as a result of their talents.

So where does this leave us? I am personally afraid that it will lead us onto a path of self destruction. To a world where money becomes so ingrained in these games that the sport itself becomes a complete second thought to those players that we worship. I understand we can’t hearken back to a time when the star player of Manchester United lived a couple flats down from you in a working class neighbourhood but is it necessary to spend the amounts we do? Even when we see franchises move cities, go into administration, and sell off assets to new buyers; as long as someone is footing the bills we are willfully ignorant to the amount of influence money has on these games. Just ask those people who paid out $200 a ticket to sit OUTSIDE of Texas Stadium to watch the most recent Super Bowl on television screens. It is said that money is the root of all evil and as higher amounts continue to creep more heavily into sports this evil becomes more tangible and relevant. It’s time for sports and its athletes to take a page from the younger generation and return to their roots: pride, passion, and a genuine love for the game.