Money can't buy ... wait, yes it can

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© St. Petersburg Times
published April 23, 2002

By and large, we disagree about a great many things. Politics. Sports. Entertainment.

We agree, however, about money.

We would like to make more of it. We would like for merchants to charge less of it. We would like our ones to turn into fives and our fives into twenties and our twenties into something larger. Do they still make hundreds?

Oh, and there is this.

When we watch a sporting event, we would like to forget about money, thank you very much.

If you are looking for a reason why the Bucs still are the top dog in this town, this is as good a place to start as any. They can afford to be.

The Bucs control money; the Rays and the Lightning are controlled by it. The Bucs manage money; the Rays and the Lightning try to manage without it. When it comes to cash, there is only one team in the area that registers.

This time of year reminds you of that. The Bucs move money from one player's hip to another, sliding their chips around the table, and they seem to become more interesting every day. No free agent seems unaffordable. No investment seems too grand.

They operate at the top levels of the salary cap and, because of it, they have achieved the ultimate credibility: If they lose, it won't be because of money. What a wonderful thing that is for a team to say.

On the other hand, the saddest thing you can say about the poor, poor Rays and the poor, poor Lightning is that they cannot escape their image as children of a lesser denomination.

They are franchises held hostage by finances. They clip coupons and wait for blue-light specials, and they ask their accountants to squeeze gold from gravel.

Ask yourself: When is the last time you watched a game, any game, by either the Rays or the Lightning and didn't think about money? It's impossible when the most important statistic of a player on either team is his salary.

These teams don't have payrolls. They have allowances. The Rays might as well change their emblem to a dollar sign. The Lightning can use a cents sign. (Although, to be fair, with the Lightning, it isn't just about not spending the dollars. It's also about not spending the rubles or the krona or the koruna. If it had British players, it also would not spend the pounds. It is very current about holding onto currency.)

Go to a Rays game, for instance, and you might get a nice little feel from all the kids in the lineup. Then you'll remember they're there because the grand experiment of spending $20-million for bad players didn't fill the stands. (We still don't know how spending $20-million for good players might have been received).

Then you'll wonder, what happens when they aren't kids anymore? Will they, in essence, be called up by a richer team and replaced by new kids? Are the Rays doomed to compete against teams that outspend them by $100-million?

Go to a Lightning game and you'll be able to think for a moment about the team's nice little step this season. Then you'll remember how often this yearning little franchise turns its lonely eyes toward Detroit to plead for every extra nickel. It's like watching Oliver Twist on ice. You wonder when this ownership will distinguish itself from past Lightning ownerships.

The point is, when players make as much as they do, the last thing you want to think about when you go to a game is money problems. If teams cannot afford to win, then fans cannot afford to hope. When you can't pay the price to compete, you pay it in credibility.

To be fair, this isn't just a problem for the Rays and the Lightning. It's a problem for most teams in most markets. Baseball, and to a lesser extent hockey, are ruled by teams in big markets with big money. Money doesn't guarantee winning, but it's like playing the lottery. The more you spend, the better your chances.

That's why talk about contraction or relocation misses the point. Sports cannot succeed without revenue sharing. Until baseball and hockey figure that out, everything else is just footnotes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Given how much more money is involved, that's going to be hard for Bud Selig and Gary Bettman to pull off. But here's what I want to know: What in the heck were Ford Frick and Clarence Campbell thinking?

Sometimes, you don't have to come up with an idea. You just have to follow along. Frick and Campbell were commissioners of baseball and hockey in the early '60s, when Pete Rozelle convinced the NFL owners to share revenues. If they had simply thought, "What a good idea, let's do it, too," then we wouldn't be in this mess.

How cool would it be to go to a Rays game and not worry about finances? To believe this team's salary would grow up at the same rate as its players? To believe decisions were based on ability, not profitability? How great would it be to go to a Lightning game and the owners were as committed as the fans?

Instead, we watch the Rays, and we yearn for more bang for our bucks. We watch the Lightning, and we want to buy into its future.

And then reality hits you right in the wallet.

Big changes can't happen until a team no longer operates on small change.

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