Will lawyers destroy pro sports?

I'm pondering this question while watching the Rangers-Caps game seven. They're gonna take us into overtime, and I hate that. As an old guy, I like my regular bed-time. This OT shit can mess up my body clock for weeks.

Anyway, it's occurred to me that pro sports as we know them may not be around in a few years. Why?

Lawyers.

Yup. If you like watching the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat on your TV, you'll soon be able to thank lawyers for making it go away. The NFL just signed off on a billion dollar settlement in hopes it will make a class-action concussion lawsuit go away, which it won't because lawyers are already appealing the settlement!

Oddly enough, the NFL is the only one of the big four pro leagues NOT run by a lawyer. Bettman, Silver, and Manfred all supervise their fiefdoms with the benefit of law degrees in their back pockets. Silver and Manfred might not have too much to worry about in the near future, but the NHL is living on borrowed time.

If the NFL succumbed to a concussion class-action to the tune of a billion dollars, what do you think will happen to the NHL? They move twice as fast as NFL guys and their helmets aren't half as sturdy, and you have twenty years of Don Cherry's Rock 'em Sock 'em videos archived for evidence!

Already you've got this class action.

That class action.

And now Steve Montador's folks are wanting in on the action.

Seems to me when a couple of 200+ pounders run into each other at 30mph, somebody's gonna get hurt. That's a no-brainer. It should have been a no-brainer to those hockey parents who were making all those sacrifices to help their kids make the bigs...

Here's a prediction; in ten years pro football will mean flag football, and pro hockey will be no-contact.

Thank the lawyers.

Why incompetent front office "pukes" like Brian Burke will always have jobs in pro sports

The illustrious Brian Burke waxed wise on the state of media relations in the NHL the other day. Apparently it shouldn't be part of Phil Kessel's job to talk to media pukes on a regular basis.

If you recall, the Kessel trade was one of Burke's key moves when he was "rebuilding" the Leafs. Burkie seems to think that just because Kessel has been the top scorer on a Leafs team that's missed the playoffs for 8 out of the last 9 years,  his "team-building" skills have been exonerated!

Not so fast, Burkie!

Most of your critics who think they could do a better GM job than you do are probably right. Keeping a mediocre team mediocre isn't really a mark of management genius, is it?

Hell, I could do that!

And everybody knows that Burke's one and only Stanley ring had next to nothing to do with Burke.

But here's why Burke will not only survive, but thrive in the front office; certainly not with one particular team, but in general.

First of all, those years as Bettman's bumboy back in the '90's cemented his cred as an old boy insider.

Secondly, but just as important, the NHL is an entertainment franchise, and entertainment franchises need villains!

As any grade 9 drama teacher can tell you, there's no drama without villains, and the NHL needs its share of villains, on the ice, behind the bench, and in the front office.

So, inept as he may be as a GM, Burkie is doing a good job in his villain role. That's why I'm writing about him, and that's why you're reading about him.

Keep up the good work, ya old puke!

NHL takes flyer on banana peel; black calls kettle pot

Google "Simmonds banana incident" and you get nearly two million responses. That's less than a week after the incident. It's the banana that rocked the sporting world.

In case you missed it, there was a NHL exhibition game in London last week, and during the shoot-out somebody threw a banana peel on the ice. Massive indignation ensued. The banana caper has been the absolute high-light of an otherwise banal NHL pre-season. In the whitest sport this side of NASCAR, even a hint of racism works wonders to attract attention to the NHL's otherwise lame product, and any attention is better than no attention, so the powers that be have been working overtime to milk this little windfall for all it's worth.

NHL commish Gary Bettman wasted no time labelling the banana pitcher as "ignorant and stupid." Well, the stupid part is a no-brainer. Anyone who pays a hundred bucks to see the NHL's pre-season product is obviously stupid. But ignorant? If the banana-toss was indeed an intentionally racist gesture, the perpetrator must have at least a passing familiarity with European football, where certain home crowds have used the banana as a symbol of... well, I'm not sure of what. I think the train of logic goes like this: I throw a banana in the direction of a black player, everybody knows that apes eat bananas, therefore I am making a statement that black players are ape-like. Hmmmm..... a bit tenuous perhaps, but good enough to get the sports media, and especially the Canadian sports media, into a proper tizzy.

"Scandalous incident"

"Canada's shame"

"Game marred"

"Ugly incident."  And so on and on. The mayor of London issued an official apology. Talk shows around the country stirred the pot as best they could.

Then, not even a week later, the victim becomes the bully. Wayne Simmonds is at this moment drowning under a tidal wave of indignation. Why? He called poor little Sean Avery of the New York Rangers a "fag."
Unbelievable, no? The NHL is obviously a seething cesspool of racism and homophobia.

Sean Avery is of course one of the most foul-mouthed agitators in the entire league. He is an absolute master of trash talk and has been famous for it throughout his career. Then this black guy calls him a fag and poor little Sean is sobbing into the Kleenexes in Bettman's office. The poor dear.

Hope they've got the helmet cams wired for sound the next time the Rangers meet the Flyers. Avery and Simmonds set up across from each other for the face-off.

"Nigger"

"Faggot"

"Wanna go?"

 It'll be a good fight. The NHL is counting on it.