Just to remind you: "I actually somewhat agree with you here on the fact that professional sports are mainly profit driven." I feel like this very clearly invalidates everything you have just said.

Sure, professional sports are profit driven, as I understand the English language (clearly unlike you), but it's not necessarily a good thing that the most popular form of sports entertainment is a good thing. Let me explain to you in simple words that you might be able to understand: Sports are fun. People like to watch sports. Sports teams are owned by rich people. Those rich people don't care about winning. They just want to become richer. Sports are less fun when your favorite teams don't play well. That means that sports are less fun when the rich men care more about money than winning. If sports weren't all about money, maybe they would be more fun to watch. Make sense?

As for your impoliteness, I realized long ago that you weren't here to be polite. I merely pointed out that people might be more agreeable and more civil if you were nicer. You responded by claiming you weren't an asshole, and then when shown proof, you immediately switched to a different argument. This shows a lack of integrity and an ability to defend your points. The fact that you can't even defend an argument when someone bothers to disagree with you (it sounds easy, but actually reading your crap all the way through is rather painful) is pretty pathetic, and that combined with your inability to be civilized makes you the single worst human being on this site.

As I have now called you out for your petty argumentative tactics and lack of substantive arguments, you will do one of the three things that you always do. You will either spew a string of insults at me, misconstrue my argument completely (I honestly don't know if this is an intentional diversion tactic or merely your limited mental capacity) and start arguing something else, or run away. I am personally hoping for the latter, but I also wouldn't mind a good manning up. The forum has been waiting over a month for that now.

Good day!

@ghug - But generally speaking this rich folks come in two forms: those with the foresite to see that a winning team is a better long term investment and those who are in it to expand their fortunes and will sell off the team once they have squeezed every drop of cash they could otu of it. Kind of like business builders/ventrue capitalists versus Mitt Romney's Bain Capital. So profit motive hasn't necessarily been a good or a bad in toto. Specific insyances have huret the sports (like Mike Brown and the Bungles - if he would just spend a little cash and hire a fucking GM) where as others realize that a winning team pays off year after year after year with loyal fans. The real problem is the NFL profit sharing amongst all the teams versus the way MLB does it. It's all in how the league is organized that determines just how damaging or actually positive the greed motive can be to the fans enjoyment.

@Draug, that's the thing though. If you have a couple of teams operating with the wrong motives, even if most of them are doing things right, it significantly decreases the quality of play and lowers entertainment value. Wouldn't it be better (keeping in mind that this is all hypothetical. I don't actually have a concrete plan for any of this and am just highlighting an issue that I see) to eliminate those ulterior motives altogether?

But eliminating the profit motive altogether means no investors in the teams. Professional sports, as krellin rightfully pointed out, are part of a capitalist society. Sure, amateur sports are all over the socialist and communist nations, but how many of those nations have quality professional teams? And how many of the capitalist nations do?

So they key is not to eliminate the profit motive altogether but to alter it so that a winning team is a better long term (as it is) *and* short term investment by capping profits and penalizing any team that makes too much profit like the feds used to do (maybe should still do) to banks. Also, letting that cap, as a percentage, ne higher to the teams ranked highest in the league, so the owners have a motive to build a winnign team. A little regulation goes a long way in capitalism, but the NFL in particular has no regulation that reigns in gross greed.

@Draugnar

Oh, we're going to play the thesauraus game?

OK.

Synonyms for "professional": able, ace, acknowledged, adept, competent, crackerjack, efficient, experienced, expert, finished, knowing one's stuff, known, learned, licensed, on the ball, polished, practiced, proficient, qualified, sharp, skillful, slick, there, up to speed, well-qualified

Again, I'm not saying that Krellin's explanation of the role of money in professional sports is entirely wrong. It's just incomplete. It doesn't tell the whole story. One can be a professional athlete and not be motivated purely (or even majorly) by profit. One can own a professional sports team and not be motivated purely (or even majorly) by profit.

Correct me, Draug, if you're reading it differently, but Krellin is promoting the idea that professional athletes and professional sports cannot exist outside the medium of capitalism - a notion that seems to me to be wrong at face value.

Am I missing something? Do you agree with this claim of his, then?

BTW Krellin if you read the above message to Draugnar you'll see an example of how people would respond to you more reasonably if you weren't a total lunatic.

Despite the uncharacteristically discourteous tone in his last post, we actually respect each other, so rather than just insulting his intelligence and dismissing him as a fool (a la you), I refine my point, and ask if he has a different take on the matter now.

Don't you ever wish you could have a conversation like that? A conversation that embraces the possibility of growing as a person? I mean, I know it's a cliche, but you can't learn anything if you already know everything.

Holy fuck, YJ, that was hours ago. And I only posted the definition because the post immediately prior was a definition of professional where ever definition either mentioned profit or had the word profession in it.

And the fact is, I provided definitions that happened to have synonyms in from my copy/paste. But synonyms aren't exact matches. Profession has two core definitions. That which is done to earn a living and to profess one's beliefs.

Now I do agree that many pro athletes aren't purely motivated by greed any more than any other professional field. I'm a professional (software developer and application architect) but, wile I do it for a living, I happen to thoroughly enjoy what I do. If I didn't, I would probably look for another career. So yes, ball players do have other motivations, but if you take away paying them, they will have to go find another way to make a living and won't be risking their health every day (football and hockey in particular) for our enjoyment. So profit still is a moptivation above a certain level and it must be for the athletes. Their careers are short enough as it is.

OK Draug, fair enough with the dictionary. I would assert to you though, that the concept of a profession, i.e. "working for money" is not completely enveloped by capitalism. That being said, I guess from your other post you do agree with him that pro sports can't exist outside of capitalism.



I really don't know what to say to that. What makes sports so particular, that a person who is qualified to do them well requires capitalism to succeed?

Can the worlds most talented artist thrive outside of capitalism? Can the world's most talented janitor? Could a dog show? Is your argument simply that NO profession whatsoever can thrive outside of capitalism, and sports just happen to be the permutation of this that we are currently discussing?

If not, then what makes pro sports special?

I will attempt to clarify my stance. There is a difference between existing and thriving. Pro sprts could technically exist outside capitalism, but there are no good examples of it doing so. And capitalism is what provides disposable income that people are willing to spend on pro sporting events.

Re" your other analogies, most are necessary positions so therefore would and must exist even in non-capitalist societies. Artists being the one you mentioned that isn't necessary is also one *not* generally driven by a profit motive. Much of rock music may be driven by it. Movies and TV as well. But painters and sculptures and many independent/folk/"international music"/classical.etc. musicians do their art for art's sake. They share a lot in common with the semi-rpofessional and high end amateur athletes in that love of the game drives them and they just eek out a living from their art if they are lucky.

The key to professions (and we really need to be taslking about the top level of the sports professionals because minor league players are still professionals, but many of them make less than your upper middle income business professional) is those professionals whose incomes depend on disposable income amongst the populace (i.e. fans) would not make the big money in an environment where "from each according to their ability and to each according to their need" was put in practice. Why is this? Because, at this point in time, people are generally driven by material desires and not by the purer desire to simply be the best they can be.

@Yellowjacket.

Bullshit. I, too am part owner of the Packers. I bought my certificate back in 1997 for USD 215. So your claims to exclusivity are incorrect. Suck it.

Also, go Pack go! (And please, come back soon, Clay Matthews; I'd like the Pack to have a pass rush one of these games.)

Also @Yellowjacket

See NFL Bylaws, Art. III, rule 3.3.(A)(2) which includes a requirement that all individuals (in this case, potential stockholders) would have to be individually approved by a three quarter majority of members of the league. Or, see the holding in Sullivan v.NFL, 34 F.3 1091,1095 (1st Cir. 1994), wherein league representatives admit that there's no fucking way they're ever going to approve an ownership scheme like Green Bay's again.

"But generally speaking this rich folks come in two forms: those with the foresite to see that a winning team is a better long term investment and those who are in it to expand their fortunes and will sell off the team once they have squeezed every drop of cash they could otu of it."

No, the rich folks come in three flavours - the two you mentioned that are in for the money and then those that are not. Be it conspicuous consumption, being more popular in general population, patriotism, or love of the sport in general, these people have no problem accepting that they will lose money in order to win. If you asked Sheikh Mansour whether he would rather balance the budget of Man City or win Champions League, he would choose the second with zero hesitation. He will never be able to break even on his football venture, his "investment" goes mainly into acquisition of star players and star player contracts are terribad assets in the long run. Even if Man City became the most successful team, it wouldn't be able to pay for itself. And yet he doesn't care because he's maximizing his utility function, not profit. Money is only a concern because of his budget constraints - and since you surely solved plenty of optimization problems in your career, you know their solutions are meaningful only if the problem entails some constraints. If Mansour faced a problem of winning as much as possible with unlimited funding at his disposal, he would simply spend unlimited amount of money. Since he operates under a budgetary constraint, he has to win as much as possible while obeying the resource limitations. So the fact he wants the costs of running the club as low as possible while keeping revenues as high as possible doesn't mean he wants to earn as much as possible, he just wants to achieve his goal of winning with maximum efficiency. Winning the Champions League with 100 million profit is surely better than winning Champions League with 100 million loss. But being second in the Champions League with 100 million profit is a losing proposition for Mansour if the alternative is winning the Champions League with 100 million loss.

True, I left out the third form because they don't account for a significant number of owners in prop sports. They are a clear and away minority.

Abramovich owns Chelsea, Mansour owns Man City, Al-Fayed owns Fulham, Mittal and Fernandes own QPR and Usmanov has a significant share in Arsenal. That's 25% of the 2nd biggest pro league in the world heavily influenced by type 3. Combined with the fact that 20% of Premier League teams are controlled by corporations and not individuals, that's pretty much parity with the other 2 types of rich team owners. Some leagues have the share lower - like all the American ones - some have it higher - like some Russian ones.