I think the existence of Donald Sterling makes the case that the European football club system of league construction (the freewheeling, free-enterprising “to play in the top leagues you have to make an effort”) is superior on multiple points of argument to the American system of league construction (tightly controlled and defined membership).
Sterling’s profit model – which essentially consists of doing the bare minimum necessary to compete in the league – simply wouldn’t fly in European leagues because the Clippers, in a Euro-style system, would eventually sink to whatever second tier existed, at which point the Sterling model fails because the expense of running a team as large as the Clippers wouldn’t be satisfied by the revenues generated by a second-tier team. Admittedly, Sterling could then rejigger his system to do even less and allow the Clippers to do the bare minimum to compete at second-tier – but then they’d eventually slip to third-tier, and at that point your worth-hundreds-of-millions-team is not actually worth hundreds of millions any more, and you’ve run a profitable enterprise into the ground.
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:blinks:
um…
SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!
I’m having trouble making up this trifecta of bad owners…
I have Don Sterling for basketball, and Al Davis for football. Anyone have a hockey owner even close to the level of assyface these two emit?
Just the thought that people over there can own sports teams is rather scary to me
The real virtue of the tiered leagues system is that a team like Wimbledon can go, over the course off a single player’s career, from playing amateur football to playing in the top-flight of English Football.
There’s a few unfortuante details, like the fact that they played ugly, percentage football, weren’t afraid to give teams a good kicking (or a swift crunch of the ‘nads) and the club was destroyed by dodgy money-men trying to exploit the club, but AFC Wimbledon (the club founded by the fans when the *spit* franchise moved to Milton Keynes) is close to getting promoted back to the fourth tier of the League.
Something like that just wouldn’t be possible in the American system.
For the NHL I submit the owner of either the Islanders, Canadiens (mediocre for a loooong time), Blackhawks, or the Maple Leafs (a joke for a inexcusably long time).
MLB’s Jeff Loria denuded both the Expos (RIP) and the Marlins.
I just wish I didn’t have to pay so much for professional sports that I don’t enjoy. I mean, museums and the like are one thing, but professional sports teams make mad profits for their owners.
Living in Seattle is kind of entertaining, since our NBA team just got stolen from us. The soccer team (Sounders) is now doing crazily good business. But our local governments were willing to pay them hundreds of millions to stay. *shrug*
Dunno–I come at this from American football, where you can’t actually do the minimum necessary–you have a certain amount of money allocated for payroll every year, and you have to spend it. Any bad football teams in America are like that due to genuine incompetence, not the fake stuff. 🙂
Downside to the European style of football competition? Possible riots. Turns out that when people get really invested in their team winning, they get kind of passionate about the team losing!
So, great prestige if they win….thousands of people looking for blood in your streets if they lose. It’s like living in Philadelphia.
If I may I would like to change my previous thought. For the NHL, I cannot in good faith choose any owners. Instaed, I nominate ALL the players who went on strike over a possible salary cap, and then played in European leagues for maybe 20,000 dollars after complaining about I NEED to make tens of millions per year for it to be a fair salary. From the bottom of my heart, thanks jackasses.
I don’t know how the European system works, or the American system, either. And I have no idea who Sterling is.
I’ve never been able to figure out why anyone cares about any sporting event he’s not personal competing in.
And I could never figure out why anyone would want to read about a story that never actually happened. -_-
Effort should always be premiered – no matter if we’re talking sports, school, work, whatever. So, yeah, I agree.
John seavey- so you’re saying you don’t care whether your team wins or not because the worst thing that can happen is your team finishes bottom then starts again? Sounds like a really really dull way to watch sports…
Tales to enrage – football hooliganism was more a product of mass unemployment in the 80’s-early 90’s. In times like that, when millions of young men who want to be active can’t, violence will inevitably follow as they find things other than work to be passionate about and get overinvolved. Nowadays in the uk, only proper psychos fight over football, and they have to organise it on Internet message boards to be in areas miles away from the match, and usually not on match days. Hooliganism is dead, but there’s always nutters that don’t really need a reason, just an excuse. Saying it’s not possible to be that invested in your team without being a hooligan indicates you either don’t care about sports or are a terrible fan who daren’t let himself in for the full emotional experience for nebulous non-reasons.
I was really just setting up for the Philadelphia part.
sorry, Tales to Enrage – we football fans tend to get a bit touchy about that subject, as those of us who care about the sport have campaigned and fought hard to stop people that ruin its reputation being allowed to get anywhere close to matches these days. I humbly beg forgiveness!
I think the tiered system is fantastic. When I was living in Chicago around the turn of the century, my mates and I used to go see the minor league Chicago Wolves play ice hockey. They were really good, winning a number of league championships when I was there, and it was always a good night out. Somewhat frustrating, was the knowledge that “our” team could probably beat the NHL Chicago Blackhawks on most nights. As a fan it was frustrating knowing that the team was never, ever going to rise to the level of the Hawks, regardless of how bad the Hawks were and how good the Wolves were.
Of course, in a tiered system, had the Wolves risen, I soon wouldn’t have been able to afford to see them on a regular basis, and when I did see them, I wouldn’t be five rows up on the blue line.
Another good point of the tiered system is that it is less likely that an area would lose its team, and all the things that that loss does to a community. Having a mid-table second tier team is far superior to none at all – something else I went through when living in Winnipeg when we lost the Jets. And no matter how good the Moose get, they will never be the Jets.
And on a sort of related note, I live in the UK now, but was in Canada during the summer when the West Ham / Millwall riot happened. What was particularly interesting was how it was reported on in Canada. There was lots of coverage, but it was all about it being a soccer riot, not about why it happened. Most of the TV coverage didn’t even report the names of the teams or why it occurred, and even the press failed to point out how it was an extreme aberration.
@Mary Warner: So what was the point of commenting?
I cant understand the American system, without promotion/relegation, where is the drama of watching?
I mean, maybe im a bit biased as I dont enjoy many sports beyond football, I find the fluid constant excitement somewhat lacking in North American sports.
But the beauty of following the league isnt just “who will win” but if your team will survive, or go back up to the top. Its a constant struggle, thats the fun. I think thats the main reason you guys should consider a switch, not just the “adding a freemarket to avoid bare minimum quality” aspect.
Also i’m not sure rioting was due to enjoying the team too much. I think you may have misunderstood a link there.
Though i’m a middlesbrough supporter, a town a little rough around the edges and still pretty solidly working class rooted, so you do tend to hear a bit of strong language.
“I cant understand the American system, without promotion/relegation, where is the drama of watching?”
That would be the question of whether your team wins or not.
I commented bacause I was bored.
I submit my hometown Pittsburgh Pirates as an MLB team that’s absolute crap. A veritable farm team that doesn’t want to succeed.
Although better known as a football color commentary man, Myron Cope (RIP) wrote an article on it a few years ago
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A37157
@solid snake
I’ve watched an Islanders game or two in my time. Please, for the love of whatever deity receives your devotion, do not confuse whatever the hell it is that the Islanders do on the ice for hockey.
“I cant understand the American system, without promotion/relegation, where is the drama of watching?”
What SC said, and also, there is drama in whether or not you make the playoffs, that is something that all the major American team sports feature. That does have the unfortunate effect of making the regular season seem less important, but it ensures exciting finishes every year. No Barcelonas clinching the title in with six or seven then-meaningless games left to play (or however many, I made up the number.)
Isn’t (or more practically, wasn’t) the problem with a tiered system in America that America is a much larger country with a lot more expanses of nothing compared to Europe? So it makes sense to play the people within a day’s drive or whatever it is instead of potentially all over the country?
I know nothing of sports, but how does the saying go? “In America, 100 years is a long time. In England, 100 miles is a long distance.”
Sarah,
I know next to nothing on American Geography, but Brazil is also a very big country, and we work with a systema that resembles the European one (althouugh we don’t have a 5th tier league… Actuallym this was the first year we had a 4th tier league). It’s not impossible to use this model in th US. I think it’s more of a cultural thing than anything else.