The Players are NOT the product

["Jim Meninno" <jim_meninno@hotmail.com>]

>Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 09:57:24 -0900
>To: celtics@igtc.com
>Subject: Re: Prediction and url

>>The players have none of the risk, but
>>get 52% of the revenues.  Pretty damn good deal.  Think GM will 
>>agree to a contract like that?
>
>I don't know....but if GM had just spent the past decade marketing >the 
guy at the spot welder and he was the product instead of cars I 
>think we'd have a better analogy.

Here's a cliche that is often used to justify player's enormous 
salaries, that doesn't hold water with me.  The argument generally goes 
that sports labor negotiations are entirely different from other 
business' because the players ARE the product.  The person making this 
point usually smiles smugly as if he has just uttered some undeniable 
truth.  Often I can actually hear them smiling smugly, even though I am 
only listening to them on sports radio.

In fact, the NBA, like all professional sports, is simply a service 
industry.  You don't go down to the Fleet Center and buy Antoine Walker.  
You don't even rent him for a couple of hours.  You go and pay a company 
for whom he is employed to perform a service (ie. play basketball 
competitively), the same as paying a guy to clean your pool, or change 
your oil.  You expect this company to do two things.  To entertain you 
and to represent your city in a competition against the evil and 
loathsome parts of the country (such as Los Angeles).  If the company 
stops performing the service well, you will stop using them (ie. being 
their fan).

The only reasons that athletes are worth more than pool guys, is that 
many fewer of them can service many more customers.  There aren't that 
many people around who can play basketball at the level of the NBA.  
And, a lot of people care more about whether Boston beats LA than 
whether their pool sparkles or their pistons are suffering undue wear 
and tear.  

Those are all perfectly valid reasons why players should, and do, make a 
lot of money.  It does NOT mean that they are the product.  It does NOT 
mean that they are divinely entitled to 60% of basketball revenues, as 
well as travelling expenses.  There are an extremely limited number of 
players who can truly be said to have marketed the league.  I'm thinking 
of the Jordans, Birds and Magics of the league.  These people perform a 
duel role by assuming PR responsibilities and have a right to ask to be 
compensated accordingly.  But that still does not make them the product 
and it has no bearing on what the vast majority of anonymous, 
interchangeable players deserve to earn.

Jim

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com