I agree on revenue sharing, not on a cap (unless its soft). I hate the NFL system and am afraid another sport will be screwed up by it.Minniman wrote: While I believe the situation stinks, I am placing blame on the system which is unfair and not good for any team sport. You consistantly refuse to do so, which is your prerogative, but I disagree with your conclusion.
Pohlad has often allowed his team salaries to go over the team revenue available, but you are blaming Pohlad for not spending his own money on players that have inflated salaries from overspending large market teams. You state that Pohlad would not spend even if he had the money from revenue sharing, which you cannot prove in any way because it is an theoretical abstraction.
There should be revenue sharing; there should be a cap, and the players association would require a salary floor in exchange for that. It would be the best for the game and the best for the Twins.
I come down hard on the popular belief that baseball is totally unfair because it is just wrong. There is a problem, I'll repeat that because it never gets thru- THERE IS A PROBLEM. But its not that big, payroll doesn't lead to winning. It can, but it doesn't necessarily. For the Yankees and Red Sox there's the Dodgers, Cubs, Mets, Phillies that have just as much success (if not less) than Oakland and Minnesota. There's inequality in the system, but the results aren't affected too badly. Not like the media likes to complain about. I've read many, many books about baseball economics and most conclude that the league is basically fair in its outcomes. The teams don't start out fair, but the results come close to completely fair.
I've always believed Pohlad doesn't make as much money as he could. If he'd put money into the team, fans would come to the park in higher numbers. For example, Ted Turner would lose money for years with the Braves but eventually they started winning, a lot. And he made his money back. Pohlad only thinks year to year, and not in the long term it seems. The Braves used to struggle to get 3000 into the stadium, for the longest time they sell out the vast majority of games. Thats changed with Turner selling to a corporation who is cutting payroll and is losing more.
Yeah, I'm just speculating Pohlad wouldn't spend the money given by revenue sharing. Much of that goes back to the 1990's when he made it very well known he wanted to dump as much salary as possible and get below 10m payroll (which would be equivelant to probably 25 today.) He also was begging to be contracted. I'm not being absolutely fair to the man, but I'm not totally out of line. IMO.
What I think they need to do: teams keep half of all revenue, the other half is put in a pool and redistributed evenly amongst teams. A luxury tax would stay intact (and probably be a smaller number than now), but I'd also add a tax to underspending. All revenue from sharing would have to go toward payroll or you give the difference to the pool, maybe even make the floor a little more than the amount received in rev. sharing.
