betED.com - The View from the Couch - by Gavin McDougald!
August 29th, 2007 - A Cuban Refugee
One of the great forward thinkers in sports today is Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban.
Perhaps most famous for his constant questioning of authority, his dustups with NBA commissioner David Stern are both loud and frequent. The most heavily fined member of the NBA fraternity in its history, he has not been afraid to shoot his mouth off by whatever irks him, which is usually officials calling his games.
He?s questioned NBA refs? ethics for years and this summer, it turns out in Texas parlance that he wasn?t all hat, no cattle.
Here?s a humble little internet billionaire who knows how to cater to this generation of players and keep them happy by setting up each of their cubicles in the Mavs locker room with HDTV?s and PS3?s. For the fans, each seat in his American Airlines Center is wired with high speed internet access and the entire place is wi-fi-ed. That?s so he can get in touch with each and every one of them. How many owners do you know who openly publish their personal e-mail addresses? He?s been blogging since before it was known as blogging ? where he regularly reveals to the public stuff we never usually hear about. Like how he agonized over letting Steve Nash get away because he was unsure about offering a contract to a point guard with a bad back ? and also how thrilled he was to be proven wrong by the two-time NBA MVP.
He?s always thinking outside the box - so over this summer it has been fascinating to hear that he is very interested in buying one of the most vaunted franchises in all of baseball, the Chicago Cubs. What would a progressive guy like that do to baseball, perhaps the stodgiest of all sports? The MLB old-boys club, headed up by Bud Selig, has never seen the likes of this guy.
Would he revolutionize the grand old game? Would he bring the boys of summer kicking and screaming into the 21st century?
It turns out, not so much.
When Portfolio magazine asked him this week about if the shadow of steroids has cast a pal over baseball, the maverick owner wondered what the big deal was:
?I?m saying that the media tries to make a big issue out of things most fans couldn?t care less about,? he said.
?Back when Babe Ruth set the mark, there were allegations of every sort to explain why he was able to do things no other player was. When my kids or grandkids look back on Barry Bonds, they will know him as the home run champ. They won?t invest the energy to try to find out what the context of the record was any more than any of us explore the context of when Ruth broke the record.?
?In reference to exploiting any means possible, that is an individual?s choice. Each person lives with the decisions they make. The only certainty is that no one really cares about how and why others, whether it?s Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, or you name it, make the decisions they make, because they are nothing more or less than entertainers to us.?
Now, if this was just some guy spouting off about fans willingly being blinkered about drug cheats in sports that would be one thing.
But this is a current major league sport franchise owner ? and one who is looking to branch out into a sport that is struggling through a very public and very nasty drug scandal.
And this is Mark Cuban ? the guy who became a millionaire while he was going to college and a billionaire before he was 30. He has proven time and time again that he has amazing foresight, and is clearly one of the smartest guys anywhere.
So um, considering that, what if he?s?. well?. right?
If so, all those columns you?ve read, and all the forests that have been felled covering various and sundry drug scandals on an almost continuous basis for the past 30 or so years?.
Never mind.
And as for the future of sports, Mark Cuban will represent the new type of owner. Ownership that is reality based. What the fans want the fans get. He?ll be new old-school. Drugs in sports? So what? Let?s get Sammy Sosa pumping up again and back in the Windy City swinging for the fences in front of his beloved drug-indifferent fans so he can out Barry Barry!
And maybe, just maybe, with an owner like that, the Chicago Cubs could actually win a World Series.
Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch
Wager on the the MLB Baseball here!
August 29th, 2007 - A Cuban Refugee
One of the great forward thinkers in sports today is Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban.
Perhaps most famous for his constant questioning of authority, his dustups with NBA commissioner David Stern are both loud and frequent. The most heavily fined member of the NBA fraternity in its history, he has not been afraid to shoot his mouth off by whatever irks him, which is usually officials calling his games.
He?s questioned NBA refs? ethics for years and this summer, it turns out in Texas parlance that he wasn?t all hat, no cattle.
Here?s a humble little internet billionaire who knows how to cater to this generation of players and keep them happy by setting up each of their cubicles in the Mavs locker room with HDTV?s and PS3?s. For the fans, each seat in his American Airlines Center is wired with high speed internet access and the entire place is wi-fi-ed. That?s so he can get in touch with each and every one of them. How many owners do you know who openly publish their personal e-mail addresses? He?s been blogging since before it was known as blogging ? where he regularly reveals to the public stuff we never usually hear about. Like how he agonized over letting Steve Nash get away because he was unsure about offering a contract to a point guard with a bad back ? and also how thrilled he was to be proven wrong by the two-time NBA MVP.
He?s always thinking outside the box - so over this summer it has been fascinating to hear that he is very interested in buying one of the most vaunted franchises in all of baseball, the Chicago Cubs. What would a progressive guy like that do to baseball, perhaps the stodgiest of all sports? The MLB old-boys club, headed up by Bud Selig, has never seen the likes of this guy.
Would he revolutionize the grand old game? Would he bring the boys of summer kicking and screaming into the 21st century?
It turns out, not so much.
When Portfolio magazine asked him this week about if the shadow of steroids has cast a pal over baseball, the maverick owner wondered what the big deal was:
?I?m saying that the media tries to make a big issue out of things most fans couldn?t care less about,? he said.
?Back when Babe Ruth set the mark, there were allegations of every sort to explain why he was able to do things no other player was. When my kids or grandkids look back on Barry Bonds, they will know him as the home run champ. They won?t invest the energy to try to find out what the context of the record was any more than any of us explore the context of when Ruth broke the record.?
?In reference to exploiting any means possible, that is an individual?s choice. Each person lives with the decisions they make. The only certainty is that no one really cares about how and why others, whether it?s Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, or you name it, make the decisions they make, because they are nothing more or less than entertainers to us.?
Now, if this was just some guy spouting off about fans willingly being blinkered about drug cheats in sports that would be one thing.
But this is a current major league sport franchise owner ? and one who is looking to branch out into a sport that is struggling through a very public and very nasty drug scandal.
And this is Mark Cuban ? the guy who became a millionaire while he was going to college and a billionaire before he was 30. He has proven time and time again that he has amazing foresight, and is clearly one of the smartest guys anywhere.
So um, considering that, what if he?s?. well?. right?
If so, all those columns you?ve read, and all the forests that have been felled covering various and sundry drug scandals on an almost continuous basis for the past 30 or so years?.
Never mind.
And as for the future of sports, Mark Cuban will represent the new type of owner. Ownership that is reality based. What the fans want the fans get. He?ll be new old-school. Drugs in sports? So what? Let?s get Sammy Sosa pumping up again and back in the Windy City swinging for the fences in front of his beloved drug-indifferent fans so he can out Barry Barry!
And maybe, just maybe, with an owner like that, the Chicago Cubs could actually win a World Series.
Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch
Wager on the the MLB Baseball here!
