Yankees Do What Yankees Do

Enough already.

After the Yankees swooped in and signed Mark Teixeira for eight years and $180 million, most of the civilized and nearly bankrupt world predicted an end to the baseball firmament as we know it. Spare me.

What did their critics expect them to do? These are the Yankees. They were only doing what they normally do, what only they can do, and what we all should have expected them to do after missing the playoffs last year for the first time in 14 seasons.

After their latest indulgence, the Yankees now feature a lineup with the four highest paid players in MLB, not to mention the highest paid players in all of baseball at six different positions. They’ve spent $423 million on free agents this off season and they’re not done yet. Add that to the more than $400 million they spent on their own free agents last year and you can be excused for thinking Wall Street and the auto industry should have hit up the Steinbrenner family for a bailout instead of the U.S. taxpayer.

But the vitriol aimed at the Bronx Bombers is misplaced. If you’re looking for a scapegoat, blame the system. The Yankees play in the biggest and best market, are moving into a new stadium that will generate obscene amounts of money, and own a one-third interest in the YES Network. In short, they’re the sports equivalent of Fort Knox.

Even with revenue sharing, to which the Yankees will contribute in excess of $80 million this year on top of a luxury tax bill of $27 million, the imbalance in the ability to generate revenue among MLB clubs continues to grow. As pointed out in an earlier column, the 300 seats that go for $2,500 per game in the new Yankee Stadium will yield more in ticket revenue than the amount that at least half of MLB clubs generated last year from their entire ballpark.

And lest we forget, MLB doesn’t have a salary cap and no amount of wishful thinking will result in one. The union will never agree to a salary cap and MLB isn’t in a position to pull an NHL and close up shop for an entire year in an effort to implement one.

If you want to criticize the Yankees, there are ample grounds on which to do so. They bullied and intimidated the City of New York for $940 million in tax exempt bonds to subsidize their new ballpark. Not satisfied with that handout, they have the chutzpah to request an additional $259 million of tax exempt bonds while lavishing exorbitant contracts on free agent players.

Acres of parkland in the Bronx that were appropriated to build the new ballpark will likely never be replaced, in spite of a commitment by the team to do so. That’s unconscionable, and yet the Yankees can get away with flaunting the agreement because…well, because they’re the Yankees, which means they operate with an arrogance that is unrivaled in professional sports.

Yankee haters, of which there are legions, should take solace in the fact the team has spent almost $2 billion in salaries, revenue sharing, and luxury taxes since their last World Series title. And this year’s shopping binge won’t guarantee a playoff berth in 2009, let alone the team’s 27^th title. The Yankees’ annual payroll has exceeded the second highest total in the game by approximately 50% for the past several years, and they haven’t won the World Series since 2000 or a playoff series since 2004.

Last year at this time, the experts were predicting a World Series title for the Detroit Tigers after they acquired Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis in a trade with the Florida Marlins. But a check of the final standings for the 2008 season shows the Tigers looking up at every other team in the AL Central Division.

After gorging themselves in the free agent market, the Yankees will certainly enter the 2009 season as one of the favorites to win it all, and on paper, they should be. But games – and pennants – are won on the field, not with a checkbook.

Criticize the Yankees if you will. But remember, they’re only operating within the system.

Jordan Kobritz is a former attorney, CPA, and Minor League Baseball team owner. He is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Eastern New Mexico University, teaches the Business of Sports at the University of Wyoming, and is a contributing author to the Business of Sports Network. Jordan can be reached at jkobritz@mindspring.com.

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Athlete Clustering at NCAA Institutions

If you think student-athletes are more the former and less the latter, you also believe the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) crowns a true football champion. A recent USA Today report suggests that NCAA schools are more concerned with eligibility than education.

The paper compiled data on juniors and seniors in five sports – football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball – at 142 colleges across the country and found that athletes “cluster” in certain majors at many of those institutions. Which begs the question: Are athletes encouraged to enroll in easy majors and easy courses in order to maintain eligibility?

Coaches and administrators who defend the practice of clustering say no, and suggest that athletes are merely enrolling in popular majors. That position would be more defensible if the percentage of athletes mirrored the percentage of the student population enrolled in such majors. But that isn’t the case at most institutions.

Critics suggest that clustering is one method of complying with the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate (APR) system. The APR, instituted in 2003, was designed to encourage higher graduation rates for athletes by imposing penalties such as forfeiture of TV revenue, exclusion from bowl and tournament appearances, and loss of scholarships for universities that did not meet the NCAA’s retention and eligibility guidelines.

When the NCAA instituted the APR, it also adopted more stringent rules regarding the progress athletes make towards their degree. But the governing body simultaneously lowered admission standards, allowing schools to accept less academically qualified students.

Talk about your perfect storm. Universities across the land were faced with pushing “academically challenged” students through school more quickly. All while making sure said athlete fulfilled the primary purpose for which he/she was enrolled: To bring glory to State U. on game day. And the latter activity was always more important than the former, at least in the eyes of coaches and many members of the administration.

The existence of athlete clustering is undeniable. At the University of Michigan, for example, 31 of 41 junior and senior football players majored in “general studies” in 2007. General studies, referred to as “university studies” at schools such as the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and the University of New Mexico, is best described as a major that really isn’t a major.

At many institutions, students enrolled in general studies are allowed to cherry pick the easiest courses from all the majors offered on campus. The result might be a degree plan that includes, say, an activities class such as basketball or golf from Health and Physical Education, basket weaving from Early American Studies, and sports public speaking from Communications.

None of those courses in and of themselves are irrelevant. But cobbled together in a degree plan, they prepare a graduate for exactly what kind of career? But I digress. A scholarship athlete’s career goal at many institutions is to remain eligible. Which, given the time commitments required of athletes at Division 1 institutions, is difficult to do by taking chemistry, engineering and physics.

Athletes face enormous pressure - from coaches, administrators, parents, peers - to maintain eligibility. An additional source of pressure exists in the form of academic advisors who are employed and paid by the institution. C. Keith Harrison, an associate professor at the University of Central Florida, told USA Today academic advisors help student-athletes “major in eligibility with a minor in beating the system.”

There are athletes who compete at the highest level and still obtain a quality education. One example is Florida State safety Myron Rolle, who missed part of the November 22 game against Maryland while interviewing, successfully, for one of the 32 Rhodes Scholarships awarded annually. But he’s the exception, not the rule. And even Rolle experienced pressure from a coach, Seminoles’ defensive coordinator, Mickey Andrews, who publicly criticized him for studying too much last year, saying it affected Rolle’s preparation to play football.

The NCAA’s position is that if clustering exists, it’s a problem individual institutions should address, since curriculum and course quality issues aren’t the concern of the national governing body. But if the NCAA created the problem initially - which can’t be definitively determined without further research – shouldn’t they be the ones to initiate changes to benefit student-athletes?

Jordan Kobritz is a former attorney, CPA, and Minor League Baseball team owner. He is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Eastern New Mexico University, teaches the Business of Sports at the University of Wyoming, and is a contributing author to the Business of Sports Network. Jordan can be reached at jkobritz@mindspring.com.

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The Economy Hits NASCAR Hard

How quickly the mighty have fallen. After a meteoric rise over the past 10-15 years, NASCAR was on the verge of challenging the NFL, America’s number one sport, for the top spot in television ratings. No more. NASCAR has taken a hit. Make that multiple hits.

Where to begin? Hopefully, it can’t be as bad as the recent headline in The Boston Herald which screamed, “Will NASCAR Survive?” But the reality is many of the teams that form the backbone of the sport are hurting. And the worst is apparently yet to come.

Attendance at Sprint Cup races around the country took a nosedive this year. The drop in attendance was evident prior to the meltdown in the economy, but coincided with the run-up in the price of a barrel of oil and a gallon of gas. Fans, apparently concerned with paying their mortgages and fearful of the floundering stock market, were staying close to home.

Merger talks aimed at strengthening teams struggling for sponsorship dominated the garage throughout the season. Some of those talks have been successful, including the recent announcement that Dale Earnhardt, Inc. and Ganassi Racing will merge, with the latter assuming control. In effect, DEI ceases to exist, barely one year after CEO Theresa Earnhardt rejected a bid from Dale Earnhardt, Jr. to purchase controlling interest in the company founded by his father. Theresa’s stubbornness personifies the old adage that a smaller percentage of something is better than 100% of nothing.

With the Cup season ending last Sunday, expect a blizzard of pink slips in the garage, reflecting a number of teams’ uncertain future in an unstable economy. Some teams are fortunate to have long-term sponsorship agreements with stable companies. But teams with expiring sponsorship deals are justifiably concerned about qualifying a car in next year’s Daytona 500.

The Big Three American automakers, bleeding cash and lobbying Congress for a bailout, are reassessing all marketing expenses and sponsorship relationships. It’s hard to imagine what NASCAR would look like without direct subsidies from Detroit. But for now, none of the three auto manufacturers, Ford, Chevy or Chrysler (Dodge), have announced plans to pull out of NASCAR entirely. Their position acknowledges the obvious: They need to move inventory, and one of the best ways to draw buyers into the showroom on Monday is to have a presence at the track on Sunday.

In an effort to reduce team costs, NASCAR last week announced a ban on all testing at tracks that host NASCAR events. The move was controversial, with some arguing it will give multi-car teams who share information an advantage over smaller, less successful teams. Although NASCAR admitted it didn’t know how much the move would save teams, some estimates put the cost of testing at $100,000 per day, meaning industry-wide savings could total as much as $30 million per year.

The falling popularity of NASCAR was made painfully obvious during the penultimate Sprint Cup event of the season, the November 9 race at Phoenix International Raceway. With 34 laps remaining, and Jimmie Johnson, who was leading the race, on the verge of becoming only the second driver in NASCAR history to win three Championships in a row, ABC switched the telecast to another Disney network, ESPN2, in the Eastern and Central time zones. Seems ABC was committed to showing America’s Funniest Home Videos in its entirety.

The move was reminiscent of the infamous “Heidi Game” of 40 years ago. With the New York Jets leading the Oakland Raiders 32-29 and 1:05 left in an American Football League game, NBC elected to begin showing the movie “Heidi.” The Raiders proceeded to score two touchdowns in those final 65 seconds and won the game, 43-32, creating a firestorm of complaints from viewers and provoking criticism from the media. ABC was spared similar scorn, as Johnson won the race and increased his points lead over runner-up Carl Edwards.

But the message to NASCAR was clear: You aren’t relevant, at least, not as relevant as America’s Funniest Home Videos. Who would have thunk it just two short years ago?

The economic times are tough for many Americans, and destined to get tougher. And the sports world won’t be spared. NASCAR is just the first of the big-five sports to feel the pinch.

Jordan Kobritz is a former attorney, CPA, and Minor League Baseball team owner. He is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Eastern New Mexico University, teaches the Business of Sports at the University of Wyoming, and is a contributing author to the Business of Sports Network. Jordan can be reached at jkobritz@mindspring.com.

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