Why Sports Unions Succeed when others Fail I

The Paradox of Modern Sports Union Success

Unions are dying in the United States. Less than 8 percent of the private sector work force is unionized. So why do unions flourish so successfully in professional sports?

Well it is not because the owners like them. Both professional football and basketball owners are trying to destroy their unions with lockouts. Both will fail, and the owners know it even as the football lockout enters its fourth month and will be resolved soon.

The owners hate the unions; I mean they hate the unions. Many of the owners are self-made wealthy using the teams as forms of ego gratification or extensions of their own Ayn Rand self images as self-made individualists. They will do anything and have tried everything including collusion to destroy the unions, but they fail. Why?

I think the reasons sports unions succeed derive from the very unique shape of the labor market that makes it relatively immune to the global forces that undermine unions all over the world.

The global market enables employers to shift jobs to lower wage countries. Borders mean little, and even technical jobs can be outsources at will an connected via the internet. If owners don’t shift jobs abroad, they can always shift to the south or southwest where government war on unions will ensure lower wages, benefits and working conditions. The shape of the labor market in sports limits these options for owners.

Traditional unions depend upon their ability to organize workers and get workers to perceive that a common good can be achieved by negotiating wages and working conditions together. A common good gets disturbed across all union members. The gain is greater for all workers over the long run than if workers negotiated individually for their contracts. This is the key; if the union stays together, the long term benefits are huge, but if they fall apart, then the benefits fail them.

The benefits of a union revolve around guaranteed wages for work. But the combined power also generates benefits and work rules around safety, none of which individuals on their own could gain. Left on their own,  individual workers would end up with lower benefits, lower wages or job security and less safety over the life of the contract—this is exactly what has happened in the modern American private sector.

So why do sports unions work?

The first and more ironic point is that the owners actually gain an immense legal advantage from having unions to negotiate. This enables owners to get things like salary caps, entry salaries but above all transferrable contracts that can be traded within the league or cartel. The negotiated contract protects the owners and their cartel from potential anti-trust and restraint of trade challenges. The contract protects certain aspects of the game that permit some level playing field and the patterns of player investment and trades that the teams depend upon.

The professional unions move to decertify themselves removed this cover for the superstructure of the sports and their profitability. This enabled the union members to launch a series of law suites that would destroy the profit structure as well as the competitive balance of the leagues upon which the profitability depends. This is doubly important for basketball and football because both depend upon salary caps which could not be sustained without a strong union agreement.

So against their better judgment, the owners need and accept but hate the unions.

Part II will examine the exceptional form that unionization takes in professional sport to adapt principles of unions with the need for compensation for superstarts.

The World Cup Demonstrates the Importance of Referees

As I watched the women’s soccer world cup final unfold, I noticed that I had not noticed the refereeing for the game. The sheer pacing and beauty and power of the game unfolded with remarkable fluidity. No major mistakes, no second-guessing, a fair number of no calls on both sides and a remarkably degree of sportsmanship from both teams.

Both teams smiled and laughed with the referee Bibiana Steinhaus, a professional referee and police officer from Saxony.  She ran a taut game with constant reminders, clear looks and clear hand signals, but within that game she kept it loose and flowing. This game was not dominated by the referee nor determined by the ref, nor marred by the referee.

She made two calls, one yellow and a red,on an obvious denial of shot at the very end. But what struck me the most was how vital and central a good referee is to the skill, beauty and fairness of athletic competition.

Ms Steinhaus earned the players respect, and her demeanor and calls discouraged Brazil-like faking and play-acting. The game proceeded with very little wasted time or effort. The play unfolded clean, hard and precise, much like the tone of the referee. The game was decided by players, their mistakes and successes, not the referee.

I have pointed out how fundamental rules and good referees are to the “game” of sports. If the referees are bad or corrupted, the entire moral and athletic purpose of the game gets subverted. European soccer, like American basketball, has had its recent experience of dishonest referees destroying the integrity of the game.

Athletic competition depends upon rules to define its excellence and to create the predictable domain of action. That predictability permits individuals to practice and perfect their skills and play, not focus upon cheating and faking. Good referees legitimize the outcome and a commitment to high quality play; they make sports real with unpredictable, not ordained outcomes.

The attitude and commitment of the players takes their cues from good referees who provide consistent and transparent calls as well as hold the emotional tone and respect of the game in hand. This helps athletes stay focused upon the game and devote their energy to the game and play.

The women’s soccer world cup demonstrated many fine aspects, one of them was the moral centrality of good referees.

Mariners Midseason

Well the Mariners have now scored 2 runs in 43 innings. They are eleven games out of first and 9 games and counting under five hundred. The pitching still rocks and the hitting has transcended suckiness into depths that I cannot speak of. Now have a chance to win a game the pitchers have to give up less than 1.9 runs per game and even then they lose over fifty percent of the time.

The only upside is that the pundits no longer scream about trading everyone or Bedard to get the "big bat" that would make us contenders. Bedard took himself out of trade talk when the latest zombie attack sidelined him. We could trade our wonderful closer; I mean he hardly gets to close a game with a team that has  lost nine in a row and has a 80 percent chance of losing if the other team scores 3 runs or more. But nothing really makes sense right now except to play on.

No real trades make sense since the Mariners have nothing to give that teams would give real prospects for, so let me reiterate despite the shrill cries to now "unload" for prospects. I mean, guys, we have nothing to unload. So let's enjoy the pitching and watch the prospects carefully, although it is hard to watch Mike Carp, the world's hottest hitting Triple A player.

I am not worried about next year. It takes too much away from watching the moment. The blog sphere can plan two years in advance, but who predicted the Pirates. Let's just take this one game and one prospect at a time.

Mariners Midseason: Baseball is not Football

Baseball is not football.

Baseball is not football.

I keep reminding myself this. 160 games, not 16 games. Swings and rhythms and sine curves, not black swans every other week. Each game is not the end of the world.

More importantly baseball involves investing and developing players, none of whom come ready to play into the major leagues even after four years of college or five years in the minors. Unless you buy teams by plucking the best from the rest like the Yankees, baseball involves patience; football does not.

So I look at my Mariners on the tipping point of free fall into another miserable season and am amazed at the clamor and hue and cry from the blog sphere and fans and reporters for the team to “save” the lost season by making a trade for a hitter or two or three; heck we would settle from someone who can hit over 250 at this point.

The paradox lies with the Mariners. Up to this point, they revealed remarkable pitching, the second or third best in the majors depending upon your indicators. Five very good starters including rookie Michael Pineda and resurrected zombie Eric Bedard plus a stunning bullpen made up of guys from no where having superb years and Brandon League finally figuring out how to match his speed with his sinker skills to become an all star closer. By sheer talent and skill, they have kept the Mariners in game after game and up to ten days ago above five hundred.

This is a team everyone predicted, correctly it looks like, would only win 72 games. It possesses the worst, I mean utter miserable atrocious puking bad offense in the entire universe, let alone the major leagues. A starter knows if he gives up 3.4 runs, the game is lost. That is hard on starters and just as hard on fans.

The team had become interesting and enjoyable to watch as pitchers unfolded their contrasting styles and reeled off wonderful pitching masterery from Jason Vargas pinpoint control to Pineda’s power on power to Eric Bedard’s beautiful control, wonderful curve and increasing fast ball. Now and then the offense actually got a hit despite Ichiro having the worst career of his life and worries over his own tipping point at the age of 37.

This surprising start coupled with a horrible division kept the Mariners in a “race,” at least understood loosely for six weeks. This resulted in the pundits (everyone who disagrees with me) clamoring for the team to trade Bedard or trade anyone, actually, to get a hitter to be competitive.

The point of the game is that this is not and will not be a competitive team. But it is a fun and interesting team that is giving regular playing time to six first and second year players. The team is learning if their own system players can grow into major leaguers. The team must learn if Justin Smoak can develop consistency or Carlos Peguero can hit anything beyond mean foul balls. I could go on, but this team is playing out its destiny, which is two years away at least.

Not football. We cannot become a winning team in one free agent year and one trade will not make us a competitor. Relax, enjoy what they are giving us and evaluate closely.

I think we need to enjoy the weirdness. The free fall may come; but the players are growing and stumbling, and the team is learning whether the system has produced major league capable talent. If not, then it is time to trade, not now. Right now let me watch Bedard; he’s not Lee, but he is a joy to watch, a pitcher's pitcher and let’s give up the illusion of competing and settle for the reality of interesting play; hard earned victories and seeing if we have a future.

The NCAA's All but Death Penalty

“I am become death, the destroyer of programs,” the NCAA has unleashed its own variant of Shiva’s famous line in Verse 32:11 in the Bhgavad Gita. The fearsome NCAA “death penalty” that SMU made famous has terrified and paralyzed the NCAA for decades. Using it resembled the nuclear option and the NCAA shied away from it and everyone knew it. Now the NCAA has figured out the way to destroy programs without resorting to the death penalty. Developing and deploying the NCAA Shiva option is critical if the NCAA has any chance of gaining control of the football and basketball corruption.

The NCAA Shiva option must be present, real and feared by major programs. Only this real present danger will elicit the  vigilance and focus from college Presidents, athletic directors and high profile coaches. Right now thanks to the cult of the head coach, all are usually immune to the consequences of their wrong doing. 

The power of this approach depends upon existing and being used, unlike the death penalty.  Here the NCAA has an institutional design problem. The President, Mark Emmert, would apply the option quickly and widely, but the NCAA President does not have much power beyond the bully pulpit. The real power lies in the enforcement wing of the NCAA that must identify and investigate. Above all else the power resides with the Committee on Infractions which holds the hearings and hands down the judgements. The President has some control over the enforcement staffing and budget and energy of the but none over the obstreperously independent Committee on Infractions.

The final denouement of the USC case establishes the unassailable option for the NCAA. USC’s appeal was turned down. Now the BCS (acting remarkably like a higher order NCAA) stripped USC’s national championship. This adds to the Heisman stripping of the Reggie Bush’s award. The ancillary groups that depend upon NCAA for visibility and legitimacy will follow their lead.

The Shiva option levels an array of sanctions that will cripple a high profile program for up to five years. It begins by levellingl a program with major scholarship loss; not a piddly couple scholarships like APR penalties, but real impacts over time. The sanctions should target 10-20% of scholarships over a two to three year period. This undermines the talent pipeline and gives others a chance to swarm in and counter recruit against the program.  Finally it vacates the games and championships where players or coaches played illegally.

The Shiva option relies upon humiliating and dragging out the process to impact the immune Presidents and to get the message to recruits  that the program will be deeply wounded. The drawn out process reminds all the other cheating and tempted to cheat coaches and athletic directors about the media water boarding that will accompany the process. The public process also draws out the costs and pain to the Presidents who willfully ignore or abet, sometimes both, the autonomy and cultures of athletic programs. Finally, the option should force the removal of the coaches involved and tag sanctions to the coach that will impact whomever hires him or her the next time.

The formal sanctions and process then produce a set of side effects that can be just as important. Institutions facing their own lies and cheating will throw overboard coaches and athletic directors to demonstrate their belated commitment to integrity. One by one a university will toss people overboard to curry favor with the Committee on Infractions. USC provides a typical example—first the basketball coach; then football coaches as needed, but Pete Carroll had already skipped town; then the AD.  Rutgers followed the same path—football coach then athletic director. This week Tennessee belatedly manifest the same pattern—assistant basketball coaches, then basketball coach and now the athletic director Mike Hamilton  (Hamilton reveals a great flaw in modern athletic reasoning where the AD is hired to raise money and build facilities when in fact his or her most important job is hiring good coaches. Hamilton revealed he was a lousy judge of character in hiring both Bruce Pearl and Lane Kiffin.)

So the Shiva option’s existence leads to serious punishment and job loss to coaches and athletic directors before the NCAA Enforcement Board even meets to judge them.  So far Boards of Regents have let the Chancellors and Presidents who hired the athletic directors and  often help hire the big money coaches off the hook.

The Shiva option has two strong attractions. First, it scares institutions into abandoning and punishing the coaches and senior administrators. Second, the structure of penalties can be designed to hurt programs for 5 year time periods where the blood in the water aspect of bleeding programs who cannot offer players national championships and media exposure, can be out-recruited. This compounds the initial penalties.  

Emmert has pledged to beef up and infuse aggressive energy into enforcement staff. Now the Committee on Infractions controls they demonstrated remarkable courage and power with USC; they missed the boat with letting Michigan off with a handslap, but the next several months will tell us in the new Shiva approach will continue. If it continues, it has a real chance of actually catching the attention of coaches and athletic directors.

Now the precedents are set, the options in place. Tennessee and North Carolina are in line. Auburn and Connecticut are waiting in the wings. The next true test of the Shiva option—Ohio State. As Gordon Gee and Gene Smith play Polonius and Hamlet, the destroyer of programs is waiting for them.

Time to Bury the "Coach in Waiting"

Succession planning poses one of the greatest challenges to leadership in any organization. Most organizations fail woefully, others build leadership depth and generate pipelines of leaders for their own organization and others much like the Marines or Proctor and Gamble. A few appoint successors a couple years in advance to provide stability, reassure outside groups and let other leaders know and give them a chance to go elsewhere for their own shot. IBM and GE both take this approach.  The modern athletic variation is to appoint a "head coach in waiting."

This is an idea that deserves to die. Despite the best and sometimes malicious intentions, the whole approach is a lousy idea and has failed miserably at the intercollegiate level.  The latest debacle at University of West Virginia provides one more piece of evidence along with the messes at Maryland, Florida State, Texas etc. At West Virginia the athletic director annointed a rising coordinator Dana Holgorsen as the Head Coach in Waiting (HCIW) to be mentored for a year while Oliver Luck eased our actual Head Coach Bill Stewart who had served under Rich Rodriquez. It reesmbled a sort of choose your poison approach.

As any student of leadership could predict it all fell apart. First, often these appointments are foisted on the head coach by an athletic director. The head coach resents it and the team and recruits and boosters face divided loyalties and split chains of command. Worse it destroys coherence and morale among the rest of the coaching staff who are vying to satisfy two masters, one who is coaching the other who will determine their jobs next year.

At Florida State Bobby Bowden loudly refused to go and had to be pushed our wrecking the succession of Jimbo Fisher. At Maryland the whole mess blew up when the head coach refused to step down and had to be fired. I could go on, but the West Virginia raises all the stakes and reveals the blunt failure of the strategy.

The West Virginia fiasco ended with the athletic director under pressure from the President firing Stewart and replacing him with the HCIW. But only after weeks of nightmare press and chaos for students. I will leave aside the issue of the accuracy of the stories, but as gossip piled upon rumor piled upon calumny, it became clear how divided the team was and how deeply the Head Coach resented his displacement/ replacement despite the cordial smiles in the above picture. Suddenly innuendo about the HCIW's drinking habits and unpredictable behavior appeared in blogspheres and gossip columnists. Later it comes it that they stories might have been planted by a resentful Steward. The truth of the accusations do not matter, what matters is how profoundly mistaken the attempt to replace a coach in their prime who does not want to leave. No succession planning worth its salt puts a successor in place against the express wishes of the existing head and expects it to work.

Far better to fire the coach clean and pure.

Pay the buyout and then hire whom you want. I don't know what drives athletic directors to do this. It appears a good idea to ensure continuity, help recruiting and keep high powered coordinators from going elsewhere. The reality as I argued elsewhere and experience demonstrates is that it undermines command structure, divides loyalties, encourages unhealthy internal rivalry and jealousy and undermines the search for diversity,  "The Head Coach in Waiting concept is a bad idea that cannot work smoothly. The younger or more vibrant the Head Coach, the lousier the idea. Appointing a Head Coach in Waiting violates every good principle of leadership and a commitment to diversity and fairness in hiring. It is a bad idea"


Time to bury it.

The Brave New World of Coach Accountability

"I didn't know" has become the standard response high profile coaches to the range of off field violations that are killing programs and careers. The ignorance is willful and arises from many areas. Most coaches probably agree  with Ohio State alumnus Bobby Knight that the off campus selling rule is “idiotic,” and agents actually can help athletes get ready for the draft. Knight aside, the rules do make sense. Boosters and fans would rush into legal secondary markets and use these sales to funnel funds to elite athletes, history is a clear guide here. But coaches do not judge the quality of the rules, they promise to  respect, teach and enforce them. Ignorance is neither excuse nor justification.

Jim Tressel of Ohio State claims a sort of immaculate ignorance of what is going on; Butch Davis of North Caroline claimed a blind trust in his assitant coaches; Pete Carroll was just too busy being a star to monitor either coaches or players; Rich Rodriquez was too busy to read the rule book, listen to his compliance people or count the number of coaches on the field. The list goes on, but all these coaches would reject and excoriate any player of their who claimed a similar level of ignorance or lack of accountability about plays, practice or commitment. All of them support what Pat Forde calls the "cult of the head coach."

“I did not know” will no longer cut it. A number of coaches have opined that  it is unreasonable to expect them to know the off campus actions of 100 football players. Well let’s think about unreasonable for a moment. These coaches are usually the highest paid officials in their state making at a minimum a couple million. In football they have 10 assistants, 2 graduate assistants, 3-5 strength and conditioning coaches plus operations folks and class checkers, the ration is not 100-1 but about 6 to 1. In basketball four coaches plus operations folks oversee 13 players, a ratio of 3-1.

More importantly such vigilance is not required for all the players. All programs know their wild cards and character impaired players. They also know their stars and future draft choices. Following up on them and their actions is not that onerous. In addition the coaches all know the parents and know the wild cards and difficult parents, so keeping tack involves sound judgment and focused attention, not the problem portayed by beleaugued millionaire coaches.

If we take the coaching ignorance excuses seriously for the last two years of violations, the self-defined lack of accountability as defended by coaches is staggering. It turns out coaches don’t have to know the rule book very well,  even after having to pass a test each year. Coaches don’t have to know that there are limits on the number of coaches they can have on the field. Coaches don’t have to know how many hours students athletes spend in work outs and conditioning. Coaches do not have to know that their assitant coaches are pushing athletes to work beyond the scale of required hours or introducing them to agents or facilitating go betweens. Coaches don’t know their athletes are driving cars they cannot afford or hanging out with boosters who specialize in secondary markets for their paraphernelia.

The off campus rules focuses on the issue not just of illegal benefits but to discourage boosters and hanger ons from laundering money to give to privileged players. I have no doubt the NCAA needs to go to cost of attendance as a norm and that many student athletes struggle on the margins to make ends meet, but the rules have strong reasons based upon past behavior of boosters.

Well here are the new rules of coaching accountability. Coaches really are responsible for learning and policing the amount of time athletes spend doing voluntary involuntaries. Coaches really are responsible for the actions and relations that their assistant coaches foster with intermediaries who help recruit but also now serve as the facilitators for the bridge to professional sports. Coaches really are responsible for understanding who is on the field coaching and how many coaches they permit to help them. To be honest, this is not hard.

Now things get a little more complicated. Coaches now must monitor very closely the outside activities of their student athletes. This includes, as it always has, summer jobs, booster facilitation of money, exorbitant purchases, now even tattoos. Coaches and their staffs now must monitor the illegal sales whether of shoes or championship rings. In addition, coaches intimately get to know families when recruiting student athletes and relations continue with parents as parents watch over playing time. They need to stay on top of relations with parents and rules.

Greg Byrne the highly respected athletic director at Arizona points to the culture of collective accountability that programs will now need. In a tweet to Arizona boosters, he urged them to read the sports Illustrated article on Ohio State and urged them all to watch and report any situations where they witness a student athlete getting an extra benefit. He correctly points out, “We are one bad decision by a coach, employee, student-athlete and/or community number/fan from facing significant challenges that can damage our university and our athletic program for years to come.” 

If boosters can do it, so can coaches. Too many top coaches practice denial even as they preach radical accountability to their players.

I have no sympathy for coaches making extremely high salaries who claim it is too hard to keep track of their student athletes.  First, the whole process begins much earlier. Coaches are responsible for whom they hire and how they socialize and reward assistant coaches and staff. Coaches create teams of assistant coaches and send very clear messages about what is valued. They must and do work to find a meeting of the minds here. Coaches are responsible and can expect to monitor their assistants behavior. 

Second, coaches create the culture of their team. The must speak and talk and walk the talk. They have to back up their values with their behavior both in their own lives but also in how they monitor and reward and punish their student athletes. Elite student athletes at the college level have experienced too much hypocrisy already from boosters and AAU coaches and shoe companies. The coach has the responsibility to teach and inculcate accountability and values to the team.

If the coach has done his or her job with the culture, then they naturally should be following it up. It is not as if coaches do not know what the problems are or who their stars and character challenged players are. It is not as if coaches do not know the parents they wooed as much as the players. But the point is that not all players need to be watched and not all families need to be monitored. Coaches know where and how to target scrutiny; it is their denial and invincible ignorance that gets in the way.

The hinge of the new world of accountability is be honest. All these coaches who preach accountability and honesty to their players should just act on it. The range of denial and lying from putative leaders points to a level of hubris that university presidents have abetted. Just actively admitting the problems, accepting responsiblity and doing it immediately would remove half the problems. As Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Tiger Wood learned, the coverups and lying kill you. We all make mistakes.

It may be unreasonable to expect this of them, but then it is unreasonable to pay a coach 2 million dollars a year plus endorsements and a special car and endless celebrity status. Unreasonable is not the problem; demanding accountability of yourself, your staff and your players is.