This morning a former IFL coach that i respect and admire had some public comments about the continued allegations of rampant league wide payroll violations. I felt compelled to issue this as a response.
I'm game for a good rant this morning. Swallowed too much ool water... (Notice no p, keep it that way, k?)
The Storm are not alone... The only ones that suffer in the entire debacle are the fans. You won't raise the player’s pay scale but yet you continue to force teams to travel to Kennewick, WA for 7 games a year. You also force fans that choose to travel to road games to drive right past venues for teams that you used to play but have chosen to look after their bottom line and disassociate themselves with teams that are doing what Coach just talked about. You can spin the PR any way you want, tell us they couldn't compete on the field so they took their ball and went home or, perhaps they got tired of ever escalating travel costs. Mr. Scott and Mr. Hartman didn’t make their collective fortunes needlessly spending money in their businesses.
If the money from just one trip out to Tri-Cities, WA were split amongst the players…I’m sure they would appreciate it.
Another way the IFL as a league has failed the fans is with transparency. Prior to last year I had NO idea that a third party letting a player use a car was against league rules. Was I unwittingly violating league policy by letting an unnamed player use my car to run to the grocery store in my car? Was giving him a ride home from the bar considered “additional compensation?” I also know the Sioux Falls is not the only place where things like that go on.
I understand the desire to keep your operations manual close to the vest, but there are a lot of things that are best opened up for public consumption, you know like playoff tiebreaker rules being published in the BEGINNING of the season.
Some teams have needlessly spent untold thousands of dollars in the sake of being competitive. Sure, everyone loves a winner, but if you can’t make it with your core group of fans and sponsors, minor league sports is the wrong line of work for you.
OK, so there’s that rant.. now allow me to spend a small amount of time playing devil’s advocate from a historical perspective.
NONE of the 4 major American professional sports leagues were built up on the idea of a level playing field from a salary standpoint. Hell the Packers had to issue stock in the team, making them the first and to date only publically owned major professional sports franchise simply to stay solvent in the 1920’s, and then again in the 1950’s. This notion of fairness and a level payroll playing field is really in its infancy in the history of American professional sports. Team come and they go until you find area’s where the niche sport catches on. The NFL was like this in the 1920’s. There are close to 50 now defunct NFL teams from that era.
If we are to accurately compare the birth and expansion of a sport one must look WAY further back into history. For baseball we’re talking the late 1800’s. Let us also not forget that American Football was also very much a niche sport, bordering on minor league until the mid 1950’s, some 3 decades after it began to be played professionally.
The AFL (the outdoor league in the 60’s), and the USFL became popular and drive the NFL to up its game why? Money. They, if even for a brief time out spent the NFL teams who were purposely keeping salaries down, to open up their pocketbooks. Even in modern collective bargaining the leagues teams have refused to let the players see the books. To get a really good look at how badly they’re getting jobbed.
