I fell asleep the other night depressed about the plight of the newspaper industry. The New York Times is trimming salaries, the Chicago Sun-Times owner joins Tribune Co. in bankruptcy court, most newspapers are cutting jobs, the Washington Post is offering buyouts. It's sad.
I must have also thought about the economic woes facing the sports world, because as my eyelids grew heavy, I slumbered my way through an alternate reality that makes Oz feel mundane.
In a Technicolor haze, I flipped on SportsCenter and it took me a few minutes to understand what had happened. But the headlines began to run together and soon it was clear: newspaper executives were running sports.
In Oakland, Al Davis announced that he'd placed his defensive ends on furlough for Week 7. He received special exemption from the NFL to field just 10 starters on defense, and in a bizarre pregame speech, he challenged his team to "do more with less." Bill Bidwill cut his team's health insurance benefits and Dan Snyder charged his players to park at the practice facility.
It was even worse elsewhere...
The New York Knicks laid off all employees taller than 6-foot-6, saying they needed to cut down on overhead. Rather than fill these positions from the outside, the Knicks froze the jobs and replaced them internally, transferring a trio of accountants, two cafeteria workers and a janitor nicknamed "Short Stack" to the active roster.
No sport was immune. In Baltimore, the local baseball team was buoyed by a favorable television contract but still needed to cut costs. They took the field for the 2009 season with no batting helmets, which saved the team nearly $6,000. Unfortunately, by season's end, it had cost them two men off the active roster. It seemed everyone around the league was trying to save money. The National League started using Greyhound to get to games, and most American League teams were relying on Amtrak.
One of the saddest things was the plight of race car drivers. Even with every inch of their cars covered, they were still forced to go out and acquire new sponsorships, offering their own skin for logo placements. Jimmie Johnson was covered from head-to-toe with tattoos of corporate logos. The one for Flomax just below his navel looked especially painful. At least the NBA players didn't have to suffer such pain. But they did have to go find companies whose logos matched their existing ink. There's only so many churches and barbed-wire companies out there with the kind of dough to sponsor a basketball player's biceps.
In the NHL, players were mostly spared, but many office workers were handed pink slips. That meant that players were asked to wear multiple hats. They sold tickets, peddled advertising and even had to dress as mascots during intermissions. At least the NHL was quick to realize it couldn't keep asking the Euro-born players to drive the Zambonis. They kept driving on the wrong side of the ice, which resulted in near-tragedy when a youth league team of 6- and 7-year olds was playing an exhibition game during one intermission in Toronto.
At least hockey survived. R.I.P. WNBA. Newspaper execs, still giddy over their online success in journalism, decided to give away their product for free at basketball games. They no longer had to employ ticket-takers, but they also weren't making any money. It was a sad yet entirely predictable passing.
I awoke in a sweat, truly scared about these trying times. I needed better dreams. After a glass of water, I again lay my head down, determined to think positive thoughts. Hey, I got one. What if sports executives ran newspapers? A multi-million dollar contract and seasonal work? That'd definitely help me sleep better at night.
