It is not at all unusual for a company to turn public, or raise capital by selling additional shares. Sometimes, it is for full ownership and voting rights, sometimes, it is just for a silent partner. It is not even strange for a team to be publicly held – the Green Bay Packers are owned by individuals who receive no rights or power over the team, and don’t even get dividends.
But it is unusual to see a professional sports team look to sell a minority share 4 years after buying the team in the first place, but that is what the Ricketts family is considering doing with the Cubs.
Under a huge debt burden that has caused the big market franchise to spend like a small market one and venerable Wrigley Field needing approximately $300 million in renovations, the Ricketts seem to be living the sports equivalent of the old movie “The Money Pit.”
The team announced that it is pursuing many different ideas for raining the revenue to fix the 100-year-old ballpark, and one of them is issuing shares in the team. The reports are that the team is looking at a few high net worth individuals to buy the shares that would have ownership interest but come with no voting authority – the Ricketts would remain in charge without comment from the shareholders.
The Ricketts appear that they didn’t do a good job in understanding the financial ramifications of their purchase. Even though the family are billionaires, it appears that they overspent, over leveraged the team, even though this month’s Forbes magazine lists the team’s value at $1.2 million, a 40% increase from when the family bought the team.
Continuing problems with the rooftop bars and the local alderman, and a city with financial problems so severe that the Cubs can’t look to the city or state for money,. Leaves the Ricketts holding the bag. I will say one thing, they have learned a lesson from another sports capital fund raising. There was a team (I don’t remember which one) issued shares, and the shares were affordable to the average Joe. Lots of people bought one or two shares then had them framed for their walls. The problem is, when a company issues shares, they have to give the shareholders written documentation of performance like annual reports and SEC filings. The cost of printing the reports was more than the team gained in capital.
The bigger question, besides who wants to be part of a losing team, is why take such a financial risk and have no say in the outcome? Already Sam Zell and his Tribune Company couldn’t make the Cubs work or win; the Ricketts (Ameritrade) can’t seem to do it either. What smart businessman wants all of the risk of ownership with little of the perks, like fame, being interviewed?

Ordinarily, an athlete taking time off to be with his expectant wife would be an item for the back of the sports page, unless it was your home team’s media; then it would be in the paper, but no one would make much of it.
That is the case unless, of course, the city is New York. New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy is missing the first three games of the season because his wife is having a child. This is the paternity leave allowed under Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement. Because this is New York however, former quarterback star and now CBS NFL analyst and radio host Norman “Boomer” Esiason gave his opinion. Esiason and one other New York sports radio talking head said that Murphy should not have left the team, but Norman took it one level too far. Esiason said that Murphy should have encouraged his wife to have a C-section before the season started so that he wouldn’t miss any time.
Esiason apologized, but what a tool! First, as stated above, Murphy is allowed the leave. As a father of two, I liked having the first week off to help out with the new baby and give the wife a break. Second, the baseball season is 182 games long. Three games at the start of the season is not crucial in the total scheme of things. Third and most important, what right does a husband have over his wife’s body? No matter what, it is HER decision whether to have what is after all MAJOR surgery.
New Yorkers have a reputation for being @$$holes; it’s good to see that hasn’t changed.

I have been taking the commuter train to work a few days this week, and I noticed some advertising all over Ogilvie Transportation Center. The Ad says “Still Illinoyed?” Indiana, the State that Works!” Of course, this is aimed at the higher costs and pension difficulties of Illinois and trying to get companies to move to Indiana.
As someone who lives and works in Illinois, I got pissed off. Yes, Illinois is more expensive, and we do have problems, but move to Indiana? Northwest Indiana where the air smells of petroleum, crime is rampant, and the only culture in the place are the casinos.
This is not to mention the Tea Party advocates that represent the state, Honestly, even with a lower tax burden, I only spend time in Indiana on my way to someplace else.
I think that Illinois should advertise in Indianpolis: “Tired of being in a crappy state? Move to Illinois – our taxes are higher, but you get more for the money.”

I know that fighting in hockey is supposed to be on the way out, an archaic part of an earlier day. But, as the players would tell you, there’s a place for fighting in the sport. A player takes a run at one of your players, especially one of your stars, and your tough guy should be looking to send a message that this type of behavior will not be tolerated. Especially when a penalty if not called, that is the way the game is “policed.”
These facts make this week a problematic one for my beloved Chicago Blackhawks. A few days ago against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Brooks Orpik laid a big hit on the team captain Jonathan Toews. The talented center left the game with an “upper body injury.” At first, the injury was listed as “day-to-day” but the team announced yesterday that Toews will join the Hawks other superstar, Patrick Kane on the shelf for the rest of the regular season, to be ready for the playoffs. To my mind, someone should have stood up for their captain by fighting Orpik. According to the Sun-Times, forward Brandon Bollig wanted to fight Orpik, but Bollig says that in a 2-1 game that the Pens were leading and a game in which the Hawks needed the two points for a win, he did not want to tale a bad 5 minute fighting penalty, so he did not go after Orpik.
I understand and even agree with his reasoning except for one thing. The Penguins’ superstar Sidney Crosby scored two late goals to seal the victory 4-1. Late in that game, with the game all but decided, Coach Joel Quennville should have let Bollig go and let him beat the hell out of that goon. It sends the same message. It didn’t happen, and now, there is probably an impression among opposing teams that they can just unleash on the Hawks; there will be no retaliation.
In this, I am probably old school, but Bollig should have pounded that bastard as a warning to the rest of the league. Tonight, the Blackhawks play the Minnesota Wild. It will be interesting if the Wild try to “goon it up” against the Hawks. It will be more interesting to see what the team’s reaction to this will be.

When the Indignant Wife and I lived in downtown Chicago, I always got annoyed by the annual Chicago Marathon. The whole city was paralyzed by a bunch of people running. For us, we were virtually surrounded, meaning that any travel had to be coordinated, and would be slowed down immensely. It was a pain in the ass.
The Indignant Wife used to be a runner, who would get mad at me when I started my annual rant. One of my arguments is that marathon running wasn’t that healthy for people in my opinion. People who run marathons, at the end look like they are about to die, and in fact, people die almost every year after or during marathons. I said that it seemed to me that people who ran 10-15 miles at a time appeared healthier.
This week, a report was issued at the annual American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions in Washington that supports my theory. The report shows that runners who average more than 20 miles a week don’t live as long as those who run less than 20 miles a week. In fact, they live, on average, about as long as people who don’t run much at all. In other words, moderation in everything is the key.
Of course, now, with the Indignant Children, we live in the suburbs, far away from the marathon. For all intents and purposes, the race might as well be run on the moon in terms of the impact it has on my life. So, I really don’t care much anymore, and I don’t rant on this topic at all, which make the Wife happy.
But I was right!

Of course, this is Opening Week of the Major League Baseball season and as always, there is hope for every team, some justifiable, some not; a lot of pomp and ceremony, and in many cases, nostalgia. One of the rites of spring is fans’ reaction to their current and former heroes. In this young season, the fans are batting .500.
In Pittsburgh on Monday, former Pirate and all time home run hitter and drug cheat Barry Bonds was overwhelmingly booed by the fans at PNC Park. Of course, it should be noted that long time Pirates remember when Bonds played in Pittsburgh and left in free agency for the West Coast. So, while some of the boos were for being a notorious cheater, more than likely, the greater number were for leaving town.
I have to question the current Pirates management for asking Bonds to return on opening day. Bonds is one of the most controversial players in the sport’s history; what purpose does it serve to have him there? The same question can be asked on Bonds, who has been mostly invisible to baseball fans until recently. Yes, he appeared a few times in San Francisco, where the home fans continue to forget about Bonds’ doping, but this year, Bonds was a presence at Giants’ spring training as a “special hitting advisor” (the cynic in me asks whether he brought his chemistry set with him). But why would you return to the town/team that you left literally high and dry? The Bonds led Pirates were contenders and playoff participants; after Bonds left, the Bucs went nearly 20 years without a playoff appearance. Plus, the Giants won a World Series with their chemically pumped-up superstar. Al in all, Bonds deserves to be booed in every Major League Baseball park. Hell, he should be booed by people on the street.
Speaking of home fans believing that denial is only a river in Egypt, there are the Milwaukee Brewer fans. In his first appearance of the season after serving a 50 game suspension in 2013, Ryan Braun received a huge ovation from the home crowd. Never mind that this was technically, his second offense – an earlier 50-game suspension for use of performance enhancing substances was overturned by an arbitrator on a technicality. After that, Braun was all over the media saying that he was clean and that the test was flawed, and Wisconsin fans including Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers publicly backed him.
Then, the Biogenesis scandal was revealed and Braun accepted his punishment because Braun was implicated on the testimony of the head of Biogenesis, not on potentially mishandled evidence samples.
If I were a Brewer fan, I’d feel betrayed, lied to, and I’d never root for him ever again. Like a serial philanderer, his credibility is shot, and while I would probably be happy if his drove in a run, or hit a homer, or made a good play in the field, the stain would never go away. Would I boo him every at bat? Eventually, I’d tire of doing that, but I certainly would never applaud anything he does.

The Indignant Girls were on spring break last week, so I took some time off, but in my absence, a couple of items deserved comment. The first and most important was the ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that Northwestern football players were employees and have the right to form a union.
Personally, I was shocked that the NLRB ruled in favor of the athletes. I thought that they would maintain the status quo, then the lawsuits would begin. Instead, the lawsuits will still start flying, but it’s the university and the NCAA who are the plaintiffs.
One thing is even more certain about college athletics: the NCAA is dead. The organization is getting pressure on three sides: the Ed O’Bannon led class action suit that the NCAA profits off of players’ likenesses in video games and other media would have already been settled if it were just former players part of the class. But with current players also lining up and being granted membership in the class, the NCAA has continued to fight the good fight.
The second front is from the large schools, who rake in enough money to pay the players at least a stipend (there was an interview with Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban on SI.com where the most successful college coach stated that he “was always an advocate of athletes’ rights including perhaps, payments). But since the big schools in the major conferences are outnumbered by the small schools who don’t have the money that the big schools do, a motion never passes. It was just a few months ago that school presidents and athletic directors began discussing leaving the NCAA and forming its own organization. Now, the players could possibly unionize.
The two lawsuits separately could probably be weathered by the NCAA, but both together PLUS the exodus of the big schools will probably pull the NCAA apart. The bigger question is how will college athletics look in the future? Should there be a “minor league” or b-team for basketball and football, and who funds it? What about the other sports? Do their athletes get money even if they don’t generate revenue? If the big schools do leave the NCAA, what happens to the small schools who make money from playing (being slaughtered) the bigger schools? What happens to the NCAA Basketball Tournament? Do the big schools join the tournament somehow?
These are very big questions, and I admit that I don’t have the answers. I don’t know anyone who does know what the future holds for big time college athletics. One thing is clear: it is a brave new world, and it will be very interesting to see what happens.