Thanksgivings from the Yard

Thanksgiving weekend always brings family, friends, football and food together with random precision. Some years that weekend also hosts the USC-UCLA rivalry game. It used to be every Thanksgiving when the Yard was but a mere sports sapling. It was a treacherous weekend in those days. USC was winning national championships and UCLA was earning their gutty little moniker with an occasional upset of their cross town rivals. Yard allegiance to the Blue and Gold was embedded by mom. She attended UCLA for a year or so before dad promised her the world if she dropped out of school while he cleaned things up in Korea working for the US Army. We have to always respect that decision so UCLA came with the deal.

As the Yard evolved, it became apparent that mom had few allies in this UCLA loyalty even within the family. Apparently, granddad attended USC School of Pharmacy and with the right mix of a USC pounding of UCLA and Tennessee sour mash he could be one mean SOB. Mom had his sister and her husband as UCLA defendants. They were teetotalers with too much southern genteel for school yard taunts. Grandpa usually had the better fuel on the field and in his tank. Cousin Mike was the most vocal Trojan booster and the king of vodka inspired vitriol. It was unclear if he ever attended the two night classes at USC that he claimed. This fact never mitigated his passion for the Cardinal and gold. In any event, there was a lot to be thankful for but UCLA never brought much to the dinner in those days. In the years since, we never looked back on the original commitment with mom but damn it is never easy.

The NBA is moving rapidly into the abyss of irrelevance on the sports landscape. We sort of understand that the NBA player feels that they are the show that people pay to see play. That same show goes on every day on the play grounds of Los Angeles and New York in front of less fortunate and the only money changing hands are side bets. Without a stadium, parking, television rights, merchandising there is no revenue to share. The NBA under David Stern built those revenue streams and underwrote all of the associated risk. The NBA players are taking the stance that the business built by ownership with ownership money is 57% theirs.
Foolishly management had given them 57% of their business in the last labor negotiation.

Understandably, the players wanted to maintain that inequity. The players failed to consider a few things in this disastrous work stoppage. It is lost on them that the economy has been a bit sketchy of late. A whole bunch of people are not working at all. Those that are working are figuring out what to spend their discretionary income on and the NBA is moving off most household wish lists. No one is asking their ownership for a 50/50 split or they are striking! The NBA has a flash of relevance on Christmas Day when the Lakers play someone who has won a recent NBA title or have a grudge with Kobe. Then it disappears to TBS until after the NFL and March Madness ends. If the Christmas games get scrubbed, that will be the unofficial end of this NBA season. 70% of the American public already reported to USA Today that they do not care if the NBA cancels this season. Tick, tock…

Revenue sharing has been an issue in professional sports for the past decade. It is not just the revenue between the players and ownership but small market teams and large market teams. The Lakers spend more money on players than the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks. The Yankees spend more than three teams in their division...COMBINED! It is a more complex issue than this Blog is chartered to debate.

Forget about these over entitled professional athletes and owners, what about the inequities in college athletics? The SEC will probably win the BCS title this year again. It will make it six in a row for one conference of sixteen teams. It is not one dominant team. Four different SEC teams have won national championships since 2006, Florida, LSU, Alabama and Auburn. At this moment, the top three teams in the BCS standings are from the SEC. We are quite certain that the math and chemistry departments at these fine institutions have not seen a whole lot of this BCS largess. Donors are quite clear to these schools that the money needs to go to the football program.

Other schools have taken notice. Oregon’s emergence is financially inspired by Nike founder Phil Knight. Oklahoma State is in the mix in no small part to the $200 million T. Boone Pickens gave the school with explicit instructions that the money was not to be frittered away on academics. Pickens wanted every penny spent on improving the football and basketball teams. UCLA Alum and super-agent Michael Ovitz spearheaded a campaign to raise $200 million for UCLA. Would the money upgrade the moribund athletic facilities? Would there be an on-campus football stadium? No, UCLA built this Ronald Regan Medical Center. It is supposedly world class and people are getting cured and stuff but man…priorities!

This is a good place to end this diatribe to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving from the Yard!

"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land." Jon Stewart