WHEN'S A DIVORCE A GOOD THING?!

Bud Selig and the MLB have to be smiling from ear to ear right now with the auctioning of the Los Angeles Dodgers.  As you are reading this, you probably already know that Magic Johnson, Steve Kasken, Peter Guber and the Guggenheim Partners purchased the team, stadium and surrounding land for over 2 Billion dollars from now former owner Frank McCourt (Have to say that McCourt did pretty well having only bought the team back in 2004 for 430 million dollars and the team being valued by Forbes in 2010 at 727 million dollars).  As everyone may be aware that Frank McCourt was dearly holding on to the Dodgers by any means necessary.  He did so when he was forced to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the IRS, talks that he may have to give up the team to the MLB even though he had a deal in place with FOX the exclusive broadcasting rights for 20 years for a reported 2.5-3 billion dollars.

Bud Selig shot that deal down in an attempt to keep McCourt to keep running the day-to-day operations of the team.  Remember when McCourt couldn’t write checks to players for their salaries, even for players that weren’t even on the roster, like Manny Ramirez who was due money and wasn’t even on the roster.  As of June 2011, players such as Juan Pierre were owed over 3 million dollars and he was traded by the team to the White Sox in 2009.  It was suspected that Frank McCourt had been scalping the team and taking money from the team to put into his own pocket.  As I mentioned everyone is probably aware of all the actions that took place this past season with McCourt taking this bankruptcy to the court and trying to save the team, dealing with Selig and the proposed TV deal.  But how did we get here in the first place, a dreaded divorce!

Both Frank, and his wife Jamie, bought the team back in 2004 from FOX and they both had control over the team.  But once the two decided to get divorced in 2009 and go their separate ways.  The two used THEIR money to buy the team, so when the two decided to get divorced, who had control over the team?  This is where things took a turn for the worse for the club.  Jamie was fired from her position as CEO of the Dodgers following that season and that opened the floodgates.  With little details following what had happened with what took place inside the courtrooms, I believe that this is what lead to the downward spiral for Frank.  When it was argued who got control over the team, I believe that lawyers wanted to open up the books to see the financial stability of the team because then the decision on whether to incorporate the team into the settlement or not.  Having said that, the Los Angeles Times had reported that Jamie and Frank had settled with Jamie receiving $100 million, the couple's seven luxury homes and indemnity from any tax liability. Frank would NOT be willing to give the team up.  With the speculation that Frank may have been taking money from the team and not being able to pay salary for some players, a red flag arose.  And let’s be serious, the deal with FOX was only not only going to pay for the team, but how can you not believe that the money he would be getting would be going back into the team?  The deal in my opinion was meant to help pay back money he probably owed outside of baseball.

I had heard some people argue that Selig blocking the FOX deal was a shrewd move on his part and that McCourt put the team up for sale by auction.  Many people had speculated that this would be an attempt to get someone Selig wanted to run the team.  Selig already had a bad perception among fans, but let’s compare this situation to another…the Texas Rangers. 

MLB had control over that team for some time until a buyer came along to take control following the auction of the team.  For them, there was only two serious buyers in the end, one group led by Nolan Ryan and another by Mark Cuban (who failed to buy the Cubs, and as we know now, the Rangers and the Dodgers).  The team was awarded to Ryan and his group.  Look at the team now, for the longest time, it was a ball club that hadn’t done much.  Since 1972 up to the time Ryan got the team, there was a 4 year stretch where the club went to the playoffs.  But in terms of accomplishment, the club has done more to establish their identity among MLB in the last two years under Ryan than any other time of the Franchise’s history.  This was a good move by Selig to “force” the sale and oversee the action of the sale of the Dodgers to a new owner.  The history going forward, at the very moment is very bright.  Had Selig not stepped in, who knows, McCourt could have lowball the sale of the team to a “friend” and may have found some way to still be involved with the team.  Seldom did we see McCourt do much to make the Dodgers a viable contender through free agency over the few years to make this team an attractive place.  But with the leadership with Magic at the top (although the minority owner, of the members involved in the purchase of the team, I expect Magic the one to have the most influence on day-to-day operations).  McCourt sells the team for 2 Billion (much more than what the team and surrounding land is worth) and The Dodgers got someone in who cares and the team has a bright future to be a force and attractive name again in baseball.  Like other sports, the Dodgers being relevant is important to baseball just as the Raiders to the NFL and clubs like the Rangers and Canadian teams in hockey.  We wouldn’t be here had Frank and Jamie decided to get divorced.  Is this a instance where we can all be happy to see a family split….YES!

Tebowmania lives on...possibly in N.Y....looking back on T-Mania.

Tebowmania took the NFL by storm, so much so that it was powerful enough to force management of a football team to yank their starting quarterback and put Tebow in.  Yet we we’re talking about quarterback roulette with him for a good portion of the season and possibly even into the playoffs.  Tebow has recently been moved from Denver to N.Y. to back up Mark Sanchez.  It was amazing to see the outcry following the Peyton Manning signing.  Once Tebow came to Denver, we started to see separation between fans of the team and fans of the player.  No one player is bigger than the organization.  Funny thing!  Go ask Peyton about this!  He could tell you how it works.  Yes, Tebow did great things in Denver.  But let’s get it straight, he’s a great football player, but not a quarterback.  He failed to pick-out defenses that were playing single coverage and stack the box against him and he couldn’t make them pay for it.  Look at the Chiefs game, sure he had a touchdown pass in that game, but to go 2-of-8 in passing is not quarterback numbers.  Don’t blame the lockout for his problems with his fundamentals, we saw him go out and look for ways to improve his skills, and they marginally did.  Yes, the lockout did stunt his grown in the classroom in breaking down film and seeing defenses, but he had two years to do so.  Elway didn’t draft him; he didn’t have to keep him.  Had Josh Mc-D still been here, Tebow may have been the starter from day 1 in 2011 and could still be here.

I partially blame the media for this, but the fans got caught up in this and helped balloon Tebowmania to unmanageable levels.  News outlets covering Tebow when he was at Florida became crazy, and it carried into the NFL draft.  Had Tebow been taken on the second or third day, it probably wouldn’t have been a big deal.  But when he’s taken in the first round with a fourth round grade by experts, people were looking at what he did at Florida and would have said “he just wins”.  He won with a gimmick college style offense that didn’t translate to the pros and won with amazing talent around him. Here’s a list of players that he had a chance to play with and let me know which one of these guys you don’t want on your offense.

-Percy Harvin

-Riley Cooper

-Louis Murphy

-Aaron Hernandez

-David Nelson

-Maurkice Pouncey

-Michael Pouncey

-Jeff Demps

-Chris Rainey

All these with the exception of the latter two are either becoming significant players or already are significant players for their respective NFL teams.  Tebow had some great talent to work with on his way to a National Championship.  Having the run he had, being a first round pick, going to an organization that had just fired Shanahan, traded their “savior” quarterback and arguably one of the best on field talents at wide receiver, attention was on the Broncos and Tebow also had attention based on his college work.  It was like the two were too big for each other.

Another thing that didn’t work in Tebows favor is his work off the field and character off the field.  But that’s not his fault by any means.  He is what the NFL needs; we do hear a lot of the bad decisions and actions that take place with players off the field.  The work Tebow does off the field is great, we don’t hear enough about it. Everyone wants to talk about how it’s not fair the way the Broncos treated such a nice guy.  Listen, there are plenty of guys in the NFL that do great things off the field, but it goes unnoticed.  For Tebow, it’s magnified do to what he also stands for, his religious beliefs.  We have had this in the past with players such as Reggie White, but it was never the same magnitude as Tebow.  The NFL didn’t know how to handle a player with the stature as Tebow; he tapped into new audiences and brought about some new faces to the game.  He stood more for what he did off the field than he did on the field.  I am not by any means negatively breaking down Tebow, but its fact of the matter.  He was just more polarizing for his work and his religious beliefs because like I mentioned, the NFL hasn’t seen anything like this at its level. 

Any team wouldn’t argue for one second about the work he does off the field with the community and his work ethic when it comes to football, but you have got to put things aside and realize that this was a business decision.  It’s amazing to see people just trash a team because they don’t like the move they made in trying to upgrade the team.  People wanted to talk intangibles that the kid has.  NO ARGUMENT THERE!  He has “it” in terms of things that just can’t be calculated by stop watches or video, etc.  But let’s also see it this as well.  How many times did Tebow catch “lightning in a bottle”?  How often can you count on Tebow to go point for point when you got Percy Harvin acting like a one man wrecking crew?  How about Marion Barber going out of bounds to give the Broncos one more shot to go into OT?  Or fumbling the ball to give the Broncos the win?  What about the defense doing their part to always keep the game low scoring because Tebow and the offense time and time again had “3 and out” drives.  

This was purely a business move.  When you have a business, you’re always faced with making tough decisions.  The decisions may not be a popular choice.  Tebow was a business model that they felt “was only going to take them so far”.  The Broncos felt as though the business model with Tebow was a good short term solution, but they were looking long term, something that will set them up beyond the next 5 years.  If the end result with the business model for the Broncos turns into a Super Bowl, who would argue that the decision wasn’t a right decision.