Like a puppy, it’s always fun to chase a circus wagon, just in case something pops out.
This week, all sorts of things have been popping out…
1) Check out http://tgcts.blogspot.com/
Great post, but in many ways, it’s sad but true.
2) The folks I know who attended Sunday night’s final of the Memorial Cup hockey tournament tell me it was one of the great experiences of their lives.
Terrific, now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the ugly truth. Any tournament, in any sport, that sets up so a championship game can finish with a lopsided 9-1 score is a bad tournament.
The Canadian Major Junior Hockey League needs to quit being so greedy and play a true national final. Just like the Stanley Cup, find two good teams in the East and two good teams in the West (or four and four) and play best-of-seven series to determine a winner.
A four-team tournament in which one finalist can play on Tuesday and not play again until Sunday is stoo-pid.
3) So LeBron James quits and head coach Mike Brown gets fired. No wonder the Cleveland Cavaliers will NEVER win an NBA championship.
4) There was a time when I thought Texas Rangers/Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks was an over-leveraged fraud. He had a pile of money on paper, but not enough of the real stuff and he was running around signing hockey players like Mike Modano and Brett Hull to ridiculous contracts. Meanwhile, he was signing baseball players to contracts that made absolutely no sense. Unless, of course, you were the player in question.
Not surprisingly, Hicks had a real supporter in a former Winnipegger who moved to Dallas and used to write me the nastiest e-mails defending Hicks as a wonderful owner who knew how to treat players and fans. My e-mail pen-pal didn’t think idiot owners were pricing pro sports out of the realm of the average fan. He thought owners had every right to overpay players and then overcharge the fans. And so what if ridiculously high contracts meant that small-market teams in places like Winnipeg and Quebec City would have to re-locate? Just the cost of doing business.
Well, the recession came and, of course, a paper tiger like Hicks went broke. As many fans know, Hicks has been trying to sell the Rangers to a group headed by Nolan Ryan, but the sale has stalled and yesterday, Hicks had to put the Rangers into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
In a 21-page filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Fort Worth yesterday, the top 30 unsecured creditors were listed. Included on the list were a number of Rangers players who were all paid w-a-a-a-y too much. According to the list, Alex Rodriguez is still owed $24.9 million in deferred compensation, six years after he was traded to the Yankees. The next five people on the unsecured creditors list are also current or former players: Kevin Millwood ($12.9 million), Michael Young ($3.9 million), Vicente Padilla ($1.7 million), Mickey Tettleton ($1.4 million) and Mark McLemore ($970,000).
Wonder if the Stars will be next? Bet Gary Bettman, who just finished with the bankruptcy of the Phoenix Coyotes, is looking forward to that prospect.
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