Does this man look that bright to you? I know that this is a bad picture of him but I believe it says a lot. If you are unfamiliar with who he is, this is Gary Bettman - commish of the (soon-to-be-defunct) NHL. I blame him directly (for correct or incorrect reasons) for the loss of this NHL season.
Gary came up through the ranks of the NBA and he tried to apply those same tactics to the NHL. Two work stoppages in 10 years - that's not so good. Gary has done a lot of damage to the league during his tenure, today being the worst. Today marks the first time that a major professional sport season has been canceled in North America and it comes from his office. This will be the first time since 1919 that the Stanley Cup will not be awarded; then the reason was due to a massive influenza epidemic that disabled both teams. He tried to homogenize a sport that was unique and he has managed to kill it.
Flat out - the death of the NHL could be closer than we think.
Bettman took away all that was unique about the sport and tried to make it the NBA on ice. No wonder it (the league and the sport) are failing. I hate professional basketball - it is the epicenter of where N. American sports should never have gone. Players are more concerned with themselves and their appearance than the team. They are indignant with how they treat the media, ignorant in their speech, and abusive towards those who pay their checks - the fans. In my opinion, the NBA is the bane of professional sports (followed closely by the NFL).
Hockey's divisions used to be named for the founders of the game. Patrick, Smythe, Norris, and Adams. Conference names like the "Prince of Wales" and "Campbell" rang out from the other sports leagues. Now the NHL has been put into the blender and made to look just like everything else. Southeast Division, Eastern Conference. BORING!!! (Like the neutral zone trap)
So Gary Bettman canceled the season today and drove the first nail into the coffin of the NHL. While the sport may hang around for a while, it will never be the same to Americans (it will always be the game for the Canadians). To the owners of NHL teams, I will not feel bad for you and your loss of revenues. You put Gary into his leadership position and now your boy has gone off and done away with ALL of your revenues for an entire season. So eat it.
Dan Wetzel from Yahoo Sports has a similar view as I, read his opinion by clicking on 'gary bettman sucks' above.
3 comments:
I'll be totally honest; American Football is one of those sports I never fully understood the rules to. Same with cricket, really. Maybe they are culturally bound?
I know the dutch have this amsterdam admirals team but it always felt like a token effort by the dutch for the americans. 'hey look we do football too'. yay.
Soccer is different; I fully understand the rules but I don't get the point, at least of the pro version of the game. Why the hell are people willing to pay millions to a couple of guys kicking a ball around? And even then most of the 'fans' these days seem more interested in getting wasted and then start picking fights.
on reading that back it sounds like I totally veered off on a tangent but I got to thinking about all the sports abbreviations like NBA, NHL, NFL and god knows what else en then sports in general, so yeah, I totally veered off on that tangent I was talking about ;)
Its okay to go off on a tangent, I do it all the time. Hence the reason for my blog to begin with! :-)
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