What's Ruining Sports?

In light of the recent scandal on the US PGA Tour regarding appearance fees, it's become increasingly clear what is ruining sports. No, it isn't money...that's an easy out. What's really ruining sports are the agents and their incredibly ridiculous policies of charging as much as possible for everything possible. Agents, frankly, are like used-car salesman, only they're selling athletes.

In the PGA Tour example, the Tour foolishly allowed an appearance fee given to a few top players at the Ford Championship at Doral a few weeks back. The appearance fee was not given explicitly for the tournament, but rather for the pro-am event right before the tournament. The four players who received these fees then stayed on the rest of the week and played in the big tournament. This is obviously a shot in the arm for the tournament itself; you're much more likely to tune in to a tournament to watch Ernie Els, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Vijay Singh (i.e., the top four players in the world) play golf than you are to tune in to watch Joe Ogilvie, Pat Perez, Brian Bateman, and Brett Wetterich battle it out on Sunday. Granted, all of these guys are some of the best golfers in the world; they're ON TOUR, for heaven's sake. But the first group of names is much bigger, much more well-known to those who follow golf at all. Tournaments like being able to give appearance fees, because it increases the chances of having the big names in the tournament (which thus improves the prestige of the tournament as well as TV ratings, and thus total revenue). The Ford Championship folks found a way to provide that money to those players so that they'd play. The PGA Tour, after examining this situation, OK'd what the Ford Championship did.

Now, this is where the agents step in. International Management Group (IMG), the world's largest and arguably most powerful sports management agency, issued a letter to the directors of ALL PGA Tournaments last week that essentially provided a fixed set of prices for two tiers of top players. The per-player fees listed were ostensibly for the players to play in the pro-am event early in the week, not in the main event later in the week. But the letter also basically said that this fee would increase the chances of those players sticking around to play in the main event. So essentially, if you pay this fee, they'll play in your tournament; hence, it's an appearance fee, even through the loophole so kindly provided by the Tour. IMG, never one to pass up an opportunity to squeeze a little more money out of those in charge of any sport they're involved in, has found yet another way to ruin something.

I'll grant that it must be pretty cool to get $200,000 just for showing up to "work"...perhaps I'll start working to build that into my future compensation plans. "OK, I'll work four days for you this one week, and just for coming into the office, you'll pay me, oh...say, $200 grand. Sounds fair to me." But at the same time, it's just another example of millionaires making more millions for doing nothing. The guys listed on the letter are indeed all top players. But at the same time, because they're all top players, they're already making a big chunk of change as it is. By winning one tournament, those guys will make more in 4 days than I will make in seven or eight years combined. Even making the cut guarantees them some cash that is roughly equal, even to the last-place guy, of at least half my annual salary. To them, that extra $200K appearance fee is walking-around money.

I don't argue that it's the players' fault. The European Tour still permits appearance fees, yet there's been no mass exodus by the top players to go play in Europe all the time. Europe's tour is essentially second-rate, as evidenced by the fact that they NEED to pay appearance fees to entice the top players to go play over there at all. The problem here lies with the agents, who believe that any chance to get as much as possible is good. I don't think this would bother me so much if they just came out and admitted that they're crooked as Joe Theismann's broken leg, but they have the audacity to come out and claim that it's actually "for the players." In that way, I'd have to say that sports agents rank right up there with personal-injury attorneys. Unethical, immoral, and willing to do anything they need to do to grab an extra buck. Just look at movies like "Jerry Maguire"...Jerry's actions as an agent, both before and immediately after his spectacular collapse that leads to his firing, are textbook sports-agent stuff. There may be some ethical agents out there, but we certainly never hear about them.

Most problems in sports can be traced to agents, frankly. This year's cancelled NHL season, meaning no Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 1919? A direct result of agents demanding outrageous salaries for players in a highly-financially-challenged sport. Baseball's current continuing scandals concerning steroid use? The direct result of athletes under continuous pressure to perform well in the face of their own exorbitant (and rising) salaries, again, demanded by their cut-throat agents. Today's revelation that most of the teams in the NCAA basketball tourney this year can't even graduate 50% of their players? College sophomores, freshman, and even graduating high-school seniors wanting to go immediately to the big leagues? Chalk these up to the greed of agents who lead high-school and even junior-high kids down the primrose path of endless riches through ridiculous salary demands, fully knowing that most of those kids don't have what it takes to succeed there and to stay successful.

Again, I don't blame the players. Even through the hockey lockout, there's been a great deal of talk about how the players just want to play. This is easily evidenced by the many players coming out with their dissatisfaction with the process and even with their own representatives, as well as the many players who are playing (or trying to find spots) in the US minor leagues and in Europe. I suspect that PGA Tour pros would be completely content with playing for half the money they're currently making. It would weed out some of the weak sisters, shrink the tour a bit, but that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. The players who are getting the benefit of these appearance fees would already be making top money, anyway. I certainly don't argue against slightly higher salaries for athletes; in some sports, the average career length is much shorter than the career length of your average long-term information security professional or any other white-collar worker, say on the order of two or three times shorter. So for an athlete to make a comparable amount of money to what I would make in my career in his or her own shortened career suits me fine. Maybe even, given the money at stake, a little more than that. But in most cases, the amounts demanded are simply unconscionable, except to sports agents. Appearance fees are really unnecessary, just like everything else concocted by sports agents. Unfortunately, until the PGA Tour just says that no appearance fees of any kind are permissible, this kind of foolishness will continue. It's time for the Tour, and indeed, all sports, to just put their foot down and nip this nonsense in the bud.

Thanks for reading along.