1) Pardon to Yakov Smirnoff's famous line, but we couldn't help but think of that when reading a piece on the Sports Business Journal about how our favourite commish, Gary Bettman was rewarded for getting the salary cap. Apparently the owners were so grateful for getting the elusive cap and vanquishing union head honcho Bob Goodenow, that they gave both Bettman and his chief lieutenant Bill Daly 2 million dollar raises!
2) Gary Bettman makes a whopping 5.8 million/year in salary/bonuses. Of course this still pales what Selig/Stern and the new NFL commish make, but its still an astounding sum considering what his 'leadership' has brought to the game. At least the other commissioners can point to significant improvements during their reigns. (Lets not start with how we feel about Selig!) However, like them or not, the policies instituted by Stern, Selig and Tagliabu can not be diminished nor comparable to what Bettman has done to the NHL.
3) We will repeatedly state that when he took control of the league in 1991 his stated goal was to make the NHL from a largely regional sport with sparse but strong fan bases in US locales into a national sport like the NBA/MLB/NFL had done in the 70's and 80's. Well, its 16 years later and what does Gary have to show for himself? It can be argued that the NHL is no longer a regional sport, but now an ignored sport. Sure there are more teams, but TV ratings despite all these new teams(who are by and large successful ON the ice) are as low as EVER!
4) Some argue that its the owners who deserve blame. Sorry we can't buy that argument in total. Sure hey hired Bettman(largely due to his NBA affiliation) and pay his salary, but over the past 16 years you have not been a leader. You have been a bystander. You must have been working on something all of this time while your league continued to drown in the American sports abyss. What could you have possibly been doing? Oh yes, you were working on new uniforms with Reebok. Nice legacy Mr. Bettman. And by the way, here's a 2 million dollar bonus for your incompetence. What a country, indeed!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
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2 comments:
Faux I'm disapointed...
Don't you see the wisdom in Bettmans 20-year plan. This is all going exactly as he envisioned it when he took the league over 15 years ago.
(As in he's still commisioner and he's making a lot of money)
1) You must be right Jibblescribbits there is NO way incompetence of this magnitude could have been achieved passively!
It took hard work and dedication!
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