Vancouver Courier
for May 3, 1998

Sport is sport and politics politics. Right?

Not if you're the owner of a National Hockey League franchise located in Canada. Then, if you so mismanage your affairs that you have trouble surviving, why it's off to Ottawa to get some tax dollars to tide you over until the next time you need money. Which will be soon.

My initial reaction to the story that Canadian teams were in deep trouble was horror. Why, we can't afford to lose our teams - it would be a national catastrophe. I'm a sports fan from way back - when other kids were cheering for the Maple Leafs, I despised them and worshipped Les Canadiens. Some pals were Giants fans, others loved the Yankees while I lived and died with the Dodgers. I roared when the Lions didn't.

But I'm also a taxpayer and have three questions - why should we taxpayers bail the owners out, what benefits do we get if we do, and, once in, will we ever be able to get out?

The owners got themselves into this mess. To start with, they so victimized the players that they were bound to rise, form a strong union, and take strike action not only for more pay but against the bondage which held them to a team. Just for good measure, they stole, big time, from the players' pension plan. Then they saw a way to make some pretty hefty capital gains by selling new franchises. And the small market teams couldn't keep up.

Expansion had to come and initially the greed for a capital gain brought a better cash flow. Then avarice went utterly beyond all bounds of decency as owners peddled franchises unconcerned about the consequences.

As TV coverage expanded, large corporations bought franchises not necessarily to make money on the team but to advertise their wares. After emancipation, players began to demand and get unheard of sums and, with their almost unlimited ability to change teams, they began to opt for American teams who not only offered more money but a better tax regime. Soon, like a long comet, the NHL began sailing aimlessly on, picking up bits at the front end while losing bits of its tail - including Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa - and perhaps Vancouver. And the taxpayer is expected to pay.

Assuming that we decide to overlook history, what rationale is there to justify a taxpayer bailout? What's in it for us?

We'll save jobs. No doubt about it. But why subsidize hockey jobs not those in all other businesses? What makes workers in hockey different from those in, say, the forest industry?

The owners tell us about the spin offs from their business. Yes, we'll lose some economic activity - not what the owners claim - but some. But cities survive the loss of sports franchises.

But there's an over riding issue, I think. If the government forgoes taxes (which the owners are relentlessly lobbying them to do) that means that it must raise taxes elsewhere, cut back services, or both. What are we as decent citizens then going to say to the person waiting for an MRI scan for suspected cancer, or to the mother who can't feed her child, or to the infirm who can't get by - "sorry, nothing for you for we must help pay Pavel Bure's salary now and we're doing by giving tax breaks to owners of NHL franchises?" Is that what our sense of public duty has come to?

Finally, once started, how do we stop?

We don't. In for a penny, in for a pound. Like Bre'er Rabbit, we'll get stucker and stucker to that tar baby. We all know what governments are like - once they start subsidizing they never stop. They can't because as things get worse, the politics of the situation demand that more be poured in.

Of course there's an answer. The owners can develop a truly fair equalization of revenues scheme where everyone gets a decent share. After all, it's a shared enterprise. Nobody makes any money if no one gets to play.

There are other things. Like real salary caps where owners who cheat with personal services contracts and under the table payments get seriously penalized such as by losing the player involved.

Of course it's rotten that we've reached this point. And it'll be a damned shame if Canadian teams die - or more likely just wither on the vine until the fans tire of lousy hockey games and outrageous prices and stay home. The question is not how sad it is but what we do about it.

Sports fans, brace yourselves. There'll be no bailouts for a very simple reason which has nothing to do with anything I've said. For can you imagine Ottawa politicians bailing out the Oilers or the Flames when they refused to save the Quebec Nordique?

The owners in trouble should start looking not at the taxpayer, but at their colleagues in "fat city."