Let them play. No more lockouts. No more strikes. No more petty arguments between the millionaires and the billionaires.
That holds true for Major League Baseball, the National Baseball Association, and the National Football League.
The NFL generates $9 billion a year. MLB takes in 7 billion a year. The NBA--which already has a
player salary cap--claims
it is losing money despite taking in $4.3 billion a year. Not content to finish in last-place among the big three billionaires of professional sports NBA owners are talking about enduring
season-long lockout. I have a better idea.
Yes, it's time to renegotiate collective bargaining agreements in these three industries, but we need to do so in such a way that enables players a fair compensation for the work they do and gets miserly owners to shut their respective yaps about how they're going to the poorhouse.
Let's take Major League Baseball. Although owners claim there is no cap on player salaries, there is a de facto salary cap. No player earns more money than Alex Rodriguez. In the 10 years since A-Rod became the highest-paid player in baseball, no one has surpassed him in salary.*
Rodriguez is able to command such money for two reasons. First of all, Major League Baseball makes enough money to pay him. Second of all, human beings of his athletic ability (enhanced or not) are remarkably hard to come by. It's supply and demand: the Yankees wanted a right-handed long-ball threat who can hit for average and play exceptional defense at third base while chasing Hank Aaron's home run record. The reality is, only Alex Rodriguez can do that at this point in time.
Albert Pujols can make a claim that he is better than Alex Rodriguez when he becomes a free agent at the end of this season. Like Rodriguez, Pujols puts up Hall of Fame numbers every year. Like Rodriguez, he has played on a World Championship team and multiple MVP awards. And like A-Rod, he is very competitive. When he hits the free agent market, it is fair to say he will be the best player on the market and therefore, worthy of a salary at least equal to A-Rod's.
Except that he will ask for more because Major League Baseball is a more profitable industry. MLB revenues
have more than doubled since A-Rod landed his blockbuster $250 million contract in 2000. Theoretically, Pujols could ask a $500 million contract!
Now you might say to me, Kevin, that's an absurd amount of money. You are right, my friend. It is absurd. You might also say to me that, if the company you worked for saw profits
double over the course of ten years, and you helped that happen, you would be right to ask for some portion of the profits.
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| Major League Baseball has seen its revenue more than triple over the last 15 years. |
Therein lies the dilemma. On the one hand, players want to get as much money as they feel they are owed, and owners will complain about player salaries whether financial problems are real or imagined. In 2002, Arthur Andersen, also an accountant for Enron (remember
them?)
declared that Major League Baseball was losing money. While that claim may have been fiction, today the Mets and Dodgers are losing money right now. These losses have less to do with player salaries and more to do with problems in our financial sector: The Mets "invested"
$500 million in Bernie Madoff, Frank McCourt
borrowed money that he didn't have to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Problem number two is that salaries lend themselves to escalation everytime a blockbuster player hits free agency. Every free agent signing is therefore impacted. If Johan Santana makes $20 million a year, C.C. Sabathia wants $20 million a year as well. If the Yankees were willing to offer more than that to Cliff Lee and Sabathia is at least as good a pitcher as Lee, Sabathia will likely ask the Yankees to pay him at least what they offered Lee last season. Few would disagree that these arguments about millions of dollars hurt the fan base.
First of all, we should deconstruct the pretense that these multi-billion dollar professional sports industries are losing money. If Frank McCourt or Fred Wilpon can't meet payroll, they've got to sell the team. Period.
Second, and more important, we must restructure the free agent process to more accurately reflect what players say they want: fair financial recognition of their value to the sport. Here is what I propose:
Instead of our constantly escalating system of free-agent mega-deals every time a Hall of Fame-caliber player hits the market, players would instead negotiate based a tiered system of pre-determined salaries. At the top of the tier would be the Hall-of Fame bound. Below that would be All-Star, followed by above average everyday players, average everyday players, and then bench reserve players. For the sake of argument, the pay scale might look something like this:
Certainly Hall-of Fame-bound: 20 million
Possibly Hall-of Fame bound: 15 million
All-Star: 5 million
Above Average: 2.5 million
Average Player: 1 million
Bench Players: 500,000
A player would also receive bonuses based on performance. MVP Awards, Batting Titles, and so forth would entitle a player to a bonus. So would selection to the All-Star team. These bonuses could be team-based as well: the infield that makes the fewest errors gets a bonus. The pitching roster with the lowest ERA gets a bonus. And obviously, the team that wins the World Series gets a bonus.
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| The best players want to earn the most money. That's fair. |
This would institute fairness and sanity the free agent market. If Matt Kemp were to be a free agent, he would bargain based on whether or not a team valued him as a potential Hall of Famer or an All-Star. He would negotiate based more on his value
as a player than whatever his agent would be able to squeeze out of ownership. The tier system would adjust its dollar amounts every ten years, after which it would be re-adjusted based on revenue.
Of course, that leaves a great deal of extra money as the revenue would surely increase over the course of the next ten years without any corresponding increase in player salaries. What to do with those extra millions, perhaps billions of dollars?
That money would go into a fund for after school inner-city youth sports programs. Basically, whatever extra revenue gained through the savings incurred through the tiered system of player salaries would go into a designated fund. Every city that has a professional sports team would benefit. The kids would have good-quality sports equipment and facilities, and would be supervised under professionals who would teach character building, teamwork and sports fundamentals. In that order.
Some might say that the owners and players of the NBA, NFL, MLB, etc might dismiss such an agreement, no matter how popular and morally decent such a program might be. If the owners and player's unions were unable to adopt such a program, the Federal government should respond by revoking the concept of
exclusive broadcasting rights to sporting events, as well as the
tax-exemption for game tickets.
I think both sides would be more receptive to the tiered system of payroll when given the choice. But what about you? If you think this idea is too good to float around the blogosphere, we should start a campaign to make this concept go viral. The urgency to enact such a program is vital, given that some NBA owners are talking about yet another
season-long lockout.
* Granted, Alex Rodriguez did negotiate a pay raise after the 2007 season, as his contracted enabled him to "opt-out" and negotiate for better terms. Under the tiered system, A-Rod would still have earned more money, but such compenstation would have been specific to his on-field accomplishments: Each MVP award and Home Run title he earned in that time period would have given him a bonus.
