by Kent Sterling

If fans in California are worth scheduling around, why is this building empty on fall Sundays?

Before I get going, you should know that I don’t care about west coast sports fans being inconvenienced by early start times for major sporting events.  Tens of millions of people live in California, but the passion for sports in California is as shallow as Lindsay Lohan’s excuses for missing court-mandated alcohol ed. classes.  Los Angeles can’t support an NFL franchise, and Dodgers fans get to Chavez Ravine in the second inning and leave after the seventh.  Taking this group of self-immersed weasels into account when putting together the schedule for the World Series, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals, Super Bowl, and Final Four is a fool’s errand.

That is why it’s so baffling when an organization like the NCAA starts its signature event at 9:18 p.m. in a time zone where more Americans live.  The World Series did the same thing until a couple of years ago, and the NBA Finals broadcasts will start at 9:00 p.m. on ABC.  That will keep most kids under the age of 10 from watching a minute of the series.  Virtually all the kids in the east will miss the entire thing.

The Stanley Cups Finals games between the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyersstart at 8:00p.  Kids in Chicago get to see virtually the entire game, so they are running around the house with hockey sticks smacking tennis balls at each other.  A whole new generation is discovering hockey because of Gary Bettman being smarter than the average commissioner.

The NBA Finals on ABC will be a disaster for affiliates on the east coast.  The games will end at or just after Midnight, so the local news – a profit center for the affiliates will start then – and no one will watch.  The NBA continues to preen as though they are a mass consumption sport about which America deeply cares.  Attendance keeps dropping.  Ratings keeps dropping.  People have become jaded not by superstars making $20-million, but by mediocre players making $11-million.

To earn that kind of cake in the corporate world, a person needs to be incredibly adept at generating wealth for stockholders, and runs a company that creates a lot of jobs.  Mediocre basketball players do neither.  The Indiana Pacers, the NBA team with which I am most familiar has a tough time getting more than 10,000 people to headed downtown to watch a game.  They have asked the assume to assume the cost for operating the arena where the Pacers play because they are losing roughly that amount of money per year.

Because of a poor (for the owners, not the players) collective bargaining agreement, teams have no ability to trim payroll.  Contracts are guaranteed through the duration of the deal, so while the Pacers lose $15-million, they pay two players who don’t contribute to the overall health of the teams more than $20-million.  They have no way out of those deals except to trade those contracts (teams don’t trade players anymore, only contracts) to another franchise run by men stupid enough to accommodate such a deal.

The NHL did the right thing several years ago by rebooting the entire operation.  It took a lost season, but eventually a workable CBA was enacted through a year-long lockout, and now the NHL is generating some very positive momentum.  Coverage in HD really helps, but the genesis of the growth occurred because of the lockout.

The NFL did the same thing in 1987 when the owners broke the union, and a CBA was signed that give the owners the ability to effectively manage their payroll.  By the way, the NFL is easily the smartest of the leagues, starting the Super Bowl at 6:25 p.m. on a Sunday.  Why the NCAA doesn’t mimic the NFL is anyone’s guess, but to play the Final Four games on Friday night beginning at 6p, and the National Championship on Sunday at 6:30p makes too much sense for the NCAA to consider.

The NHL is getting smart while NBA Commissioner Daniel Stern runs nude through the streets of America believing that people like what they see.  The truth is that even fans of the NBA have seen Stern do this enough that they have lost all interest.

It’s hard for me to write something positive about one major league without juxtaposing it with the NBA.  It’s great that hockey is making positive strides.  There was genuine momentum generated by the level of hockey we saw in Vancouver during the Olympics, and the passion shown by the Hawks and Flyers during the first two games of the series has made for some electric action.

I can’t believe we will see the same level of effort and execution during an event featuring Rasheed Wallace.  NBA players had better be preparing a rainy day fund because when the current CBA expires, the NBA is damn likely to shut it down for a year and mimic much of what the NHL has done.  Without a product, NBA owners will lose far less money.

In the meantime, kids all over Chicago and Philadelphia will break vases by firing tennis ball slapshots all over the house as Chris Pronger and Dustin Byfuglien beat the hell out of each other in the Flyers crease.