Who knew that Matt Stone and Trey Parker would be the prophets of the 21st century sports industry? Although they are most famous for their legendary cartoon series, "South Park," their best comedic talents were used in the little-known and quickly forgotten comedy "BASEketball."
The movie is funny and silly in a sort of frat-boy, college humor kind of way and is best watched after midnight on a boring weekend. The most amazing thing about it was how Stone and Parker were able to so accurately predict the future of sports: franchises and athletes switching cities in chase of money, corporations owning stadiums, money deciding the end of the college football season, and just the loss of excitement that has happened to the sports industry.
The first problem is the big companies that attach themselves like leeches to any athlete who can sell their product with a big smile on their face. It doesn't take long for a large corporation like Nike or McDonald's to grab a star player. Often it happens before the kids actually sign with their teams, like Sebastian Telfair, a star high school basketball player out of Brooklyn who was already working out a deal with adidas before the Portland Trailblazers drafted him in 2004.
Company sponsorships also factor very heavily in where free agent athletes (especially those in the NFL, NBA and MLB) will decide to go once their contracts run out with their current teams. Smart athletes (as well as smart agents) will decide their next destination not only on how much money the new contract will be worth or how big the chance of winning will be, but also on how much sponsorship money they can reel in.
Which player is going to get the larger Nike contract: the face of the New York Yankees, or the face of the Milwaukee Brewers? Even if Milwaukee wins more games than New York this season, more money will go to C.C. Sabbathia and Alex Rodriguez, than Prince Fielder and whoever else the Brewers throw out on the field.
When LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade and about ten other top players in the NBA become free agents in 2010, there is going to be a lot of switching teams. The franchises that are going to benefit are going to be the big market teams.
Take the case of LeBron. Right now, he's one of the top two or three payers in the NBA, depending on who you ask, and he's going to have chance to basically pick which team he wants to play for. He could stay in Cleveland if he wants to be considered the "NBA's good guy," he could go to Portland or Oklahoma City (two small markets) if he only cared about winning titles, or he could go to New York and make more money then anybody could ever dream of.
Today, it's money that controls when a game will be played and where. It's the reason why the Super Bowl is now an American event on the level of Thanksgiving - meaning family and friends gathering on a random day every year to eat and drink together, and few care or realize what the reason is. Or why there still isn't a playoff to decide the end of the college football season. Or why the Colts moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis, the Supersonics moved from Seattle to Oklahoma City, and the Hornets moved from Charlotte to New Orleans to Oklahoma City and then back to New Orleans.
I'm all for athletes trying to make as much profit off their skill as they can. However, it's when the athletes starting thinking about money over their team is when things start going downhill.
I would rather see an athlete crying with joy because he has just won a championship, rather then crying with joy because he just got a contract that's big enough to feed ten or fifteen families for a year.
Hunter Prichard writes about sports so he can pick up girls. He once met Nate Robinson in a bathroom.
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