Baseball Should Have a Salary Cap Period!

I used to be one of the biggest baseball fans around when I was little and even all the way up to my senior year of high school. My ultimate goal while growing up was to be a professional baseball player and to be apart of the MLB. Now my opinion has dramatically changed because of what baseball has become. Right now i could probably tell you who is going to be in the playoffs next year and which teams will win the respective wild card for each league. Teams like Boston, New York, and the Dodgers who have ridiculous salaries just make me sick. Last year the 3 top free agents signed with the New York Yankees and as a result they won the World Series. In any other sport i.e. Basketball, thats like saying Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, and Kobe Bryant will all sign with the Lakers next year. Wow what a team that would be, but because of a salary cap that will not happen unless the player would willing to take a pay cut or the owner would want to pay a huge luxury tax. So when the Yankees did win the World Series this year, was anyone really surprised? I know I wasn't. What has baseball done to even out the playing field for the low market teams? Well they make the high market teams pay a tax of some kind to the lower market teams to help them out. Most of the money goes to paying for other expenses and not for new free agents. The Yankees are exempt from this tax because they built their new stadium and they have a deal with the MLB. It makes me sick when teams like the Cleveland Indians have to trade their Cy young winner back to back years because they cannot afford to pay them the huge contract dollars they want. Plus they have to do by the all star break which means half of the season is still left and they are getting rid of all their good veteran talent. Then the Indians go and trade a player like Victor Martinez who loved playing in Cleveland because they were trying to shed salary. I am just fed up with baseball and will probably not pay much attention to it anymore until they figure out how to even the playing field.

College Football Playoff

I know this is a huge topic of debate between any college football fan. Whether or not College football should incorporate a playoff system to determine the National Championship. I for one am in favor of this movement towards a playoff system. Over the last 5 years the debate has become an even more heated and teams from smaller conferences are getting better. You look at the top ten teams this year as of right now they go as follow:
1.Florida 6.Boise State
2.Alabama 7.Georgia Tech
3.Texas 8.LSU
4.TCU 9.Pittsburgh
5.Cincinnati 10.Ohio State

I agree with these ranking for the most part but what is not shown is their records. The top 6 have records of 10-0 and if they win their remaining games they will stay the same, that is with the exception of the SEC championship game which will make either Alabama or Florida with a loss assuming they take care of business on Saturday.Then we have 5 teams who will remain undefeated, and only two will have a shot at the title. Now the unwritten rule seems to be if you go undefeated in the regular season, you go to the title game. This will not be the case if it happens this year with those 5 respected teams.
I look at the past few National title games especially the ones in which the Buckeyes were in. They had no business being in the title game when they played LSU. This is coming from a die hard Buckeye fan too. The only reason we were in that game is because we won our last few games and some of the more deserving teams had a slip up at the end of the season. All the coaches seem to preach finishing the end of the season on a high note because if you lose early, you can always make your way back up to the top. Then when Oklahoma got beat by Boise State in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl who maybe should have deserved a shot at the National title game. The problem is there is too much money invested in the BCS Bowl games and when schools are receiving in excess of 8 million dollars for making it to the big game, I can see why they are content on the system.
Here is my idea of a playoff system. Take the top 8 teams in the BCS and set them up in a bracket playing on a neutral field and play out the bracket till you get to the big game. There will be a week between each game just like the regular season to give teams time to prepare. That will eliminate the 4-5 week period before the big game to watch more football. The teams will remain fresh and in shape instead of looking rusty when starting the game.

Players lives being intruded by the media

Nick and Shaun had their ethical issues presentation the other day asking the question of whether or not the media should be allowed to intrude the personal lives of athletes. I think the media should be restricted to as how far they can go when trying to get a story or take the next big time picture of a celebrity doing something wrong. It gets to the point where an athlete can’t even sit down in a restaurant and enjoy time with their families because once they walk in or out pictures are being taken. The problem is the average Joe wants to see celebrities or athletes fall from the ranks of high society because we paint this picture of them as being a role model and when they do not live up to it society loves coming down on them. We need to realize that even though they are athletes and people do look up to them, they are people as well and people make mistakes. I have made plenty of mistakes in my life that I have learned from but the only people who know about it are the ones around me. For an athlete, if they make a mistake the whole country knows about it. Sometimes I think it gets to the point where some athletes are not themselves because their PR representative or organization does not want them getting into to trouble or saying the wrong thing. Money is usually lost in some way when something comes up with an athlete.

Then you have things happening like athletes houses getting broken into because the media does some story about how big their house is and what is in it. Incidents like Sean Taylor getting killed while getting robbed might not have happened. The problem is I do not think this problem with the media intruding lives of athletes can be stopped. The reason being is with everyone having a cell phone with a camera on it everyone becomes part of the media. You look at Matt Leinhart’s pictures with the beer bong and Michael Phelps smoking bong, those pictures were taken by people like you and me who probably got a nice sum of money from the media so they could publish the story. If anything athletes will have to be even more cautious of their actions outside of their home because you never know who might be out there trying to ruin the athletes life by taking a picture of something an average person may have done but because they are athletes it is worth money and money always talks.

Brett Favre's return to Lambeu Field

This weekend in sports was a big one especially in both college and NFL football. We saw USC get handled against Oregon who shook up the BSC standings even more. Iowa remains undefeated after scoring 28 points in the fourth quarter to beat Indiana and keep their title hopes alive. We saw Chris Johnson and Maurice Jones Drew combine for 4 TD's and all 4 were 50 plus yards in the NFL. Ted Ginn Jr. returned two kickoffs for touchdowns as well, but the the most anticipated game had to be Brett Favre's return to Green Bay. This game was emotional for both sides because it is a huge rivalry in their division and after 16 years in Green Bay, Favre was returning as the enemy. Lets just say he was not welcomed with open arms when he came out onto the field. He was booed for the whole opening drive of the Vikings. Although the fans did boo him I could not help but notice number 4 Packer jerseys still in the crowd showing support for their former quarterback. I understand they need to boo the opposition, but at some times it seemed like those 16 years Favre was there meant nothing to the fans. He won them a Super Bowl there and never missed a game while he was a Packer. The fans need to realize that the NFL is a business as well as a sport and sometimes businesses have to make a decision for the future and they went with Rodgers. Favre was not ready to call it quits and from the looks of it he still has another Super Bowl run left in him with the team he has now. As the game clocked struck zero Favre had finished the game with 4 TD's and no interceptions in a another win against his former team. To add a little historical value to this post, Favre is the only player to play in all 32 NFL stadiums over his career.

Indian Logos and Team Name

Today I would like to discuss a controversial topic that has been put on the back burner lately in society and that is sports teams that use Indian tribes and symbols as their logo or team name. We discussed this last week in class and it brought up quite a few arguments for and against. Now I'm not here to say whether I am for or against it, but I do see both sides. If anything I am undecided on the matter. First to have a team name such as the Washington Redskins can be offensive, especially to the Native American population. Some Indians refer to the term redskin as the equivalent to using the "N" word. Personally i believe if that is the case, I think something should be done about the team name. I know the common argument is that the team does not want to lose money over it, but there were plenty of colleges team such Miami, OH who changed their names to the Redhawks and they did not see a decrease in revenue. Last week on Around the Horn Bill Palaschke won face time and during it he spoke of a hearing coming up against the Redskins. There was a group fighting for them to change their names. I thought it was kinda cool because we had just talked about the subject in class and here it was in the news the next day.

There are other teams out there like the Cleveland Indians who are under fire to change their name as well. I don't see what is so offensive in using the work Indian in a sports name. I do not think it is derogatory in anyway. The only thing that looks bad is the chief wahoo pictured on most of their merchandise. All these teams are under scrutiny to change their team names when that has created a lot of tradition and history in the ball club and its fans. If the Cleveland Indians were to change their name, Does that mean all the history before they changed their name is gone? or is converted into the new name? I think a good example is the Indians recently changed their stadium name from Jacobs field to Progressive field. In my mind, since i grew up watching the Indians in the 90's, it will forever be the Jake to me and other Tribe fans i have talked to. It almost feels like your taking a part of the history away. It would have been different, had they built a new stadium and named it Progressive field.

To conclude, I don't really see a clear cut solution anytime soon. Both sides have great arguments of why they do or do not think the team should change their name. It will eventually come down to the legal process and the leagues themselves to take action. Until that happens it is going to be a debate.

Introduction

Hey everyone! My name is Marcus Hoke and I am a Sport Marketing student here at Bowling Green State University. I am currently a senior/junior because I switched majors before my sophomore year from business to sport management. I chose to go the sports management route because I enjoy watching and being apart of sports. So far this has been an exciting major and I am ready to find more opportunities to get experience in my specified field.

I would say football and basketball are my favorite sports to watch. It is hard to pinpoint exactly why they are my two favorite sports to watch. I would say its because I played both in high school, but my school didn't have football so I really dont know what its like to play football unless you count playing out the yard with some friends lol. Football is just football, its hard hitting and constant action that gets a persons adrenaline going. I love the atmosphere the fans bring into the stadium with their tradition and pride. Basketball is my favorite sport to play, but I also love watching it as well. I would have to say the whole team concept of the sport draws me into it. There are so many elements that come into play with basketball and alot of them require you to trust your teammates.

As far as what specific moment in sports history that I would like to have seen. I would have to When da Bears won the Super Bowl, ha ha Saturday Night Live moment. Anyway back to the real question, it would have to when the Dream Team was assembled and they won the gold medal. The combination of all the greatest NBA players at the time period playing together for one cause is amazing. Jordan, Magic, Shaq, Robinson, and that is only a few of the great players on that team. It takes a lot to find the right combo of star players to play together, I mean look at the past olympic teams after the dream teams. Sure they had some great players, but some players were unable to accept the fact they were playing for something bigger than themselves and as a result lost. It was not until the Re-Deam Team as the captains Lebron, Kobe, Wade, and Melo put it, to win another gold medal because they all came together for one goal.

I look forward to being in this class and have already enjoyed discussions with everyone in and out of class. I plan on learning more as a continue to get used to the whole blogging thing.

Until next time as they say in BG Roll Along!