eerie is right. I had no idea this NBA story was about to break until BigEast referenced it in the first comment. Hell I was all worried the my entry would have no basketball tie-in. Weird.

The Refs, however, as we’ve seen by the mass audit/prosecution (or whatever it was that got them all in trouble several years back) of their petty first class airline deductions, are clearly not solved by the same solution. The NBA simply needs to pay their refs at the same scale the owners pay their players. (At $17 million a year, Joey Crawford will ease off on Timmy Duncan too…)

that was the theory.

you know in general I completely agree. The proper assumption about anything in sports media is that it’s all part of the product. As the late Ralph Wiley used to say, the paper comes out everyday. Don’t even get me started on steroids. I keep waiting for someone to show me that steroids have a greater impact on the act of hitting a baseball than Lasix eye surgery; or explain why steroids should offer more benefit to a batter than a pitcher. Much of the moralizing hyperbole you hear from sportswriters and TV talking heads is just part of the extended marketing of the product, designed to get you to consume more of it–even if it is in disgust, like the people who buy a ticket just to boo Barry Bonds (and then watch for their witty little sign on SportsCenter).

BUT…

the one time my ears perk up is when gambling is involved. As I note, the gambling angle to this point has not been hyped at all. Media loves to hype things that glorify or vilify athletes. Sports is after all nothing but theater.

But gambling threatens the enterprise in a way that violence and drug use do not. The big three has always treated gambling differently, striving to keep organized crime away. Their history has been to be ruthless in the face of mob influence over players/coaches/officials, and not without cause. Mobsters, who have been part of boxing since the turn of the 20th century, have pretty much raped it and left it on life support.

I do have a comment though. I truly believe that all of these sports stories concerning steroids or off the field issues (whether gambling or criminal activity) are VERY overblown. While the average fan loudly protests the degeneration of the modern day athelete whether for character issues, for greed, for steroids, for gambling, for criminal activity, or for whatever the character failing is of any particular athelete; the griping strikes me at particularly vacuous.

Rob Neyer on ESPN really covered this well in connection with the alleged fan outrage after baseball’s labor disputes. Conventional Wisdom had it that baseball was in danger and that baseball’s ownership and its players had alienated a substantial portion of its fanbase and that baseball might never recover. The facts, however, totally demolished conventional wisdom. Attendence at baseball games reached record levels shortly after the labor dispute and revenues for merchandising similarly reached records heights.

Similarly, conventional wisdom has it that steroids and performance enhancing drugs is a threat to the integrity of all major sports and that the major sports leagues may not recover from the fan backlash. Once again, I think this is overblown despite the round the clock media covergae and purported fan outrage. How else would Barry Bonds be voted to start the all star game, or Shawne Merriman be voted to the Pro-Bowl. Even with gambling, look at the support Pete Rose garners and the support Shoeless Joe Jackson has to get into the Hall of Fame.