It appears that the Phoenix Coyotes aren’t the only NHL franchise in financial turmoil. As discussed for months in hockey circles, Columbus may have trouble holding on to the Blue Jackets because the club has been losing $12 million a year, according to a report released by the Columbus Chamber.
The Chamber’s report offers a variety of options for strengthening the hockey team’s financial position, such as new taxes or fees to support it (which will be a very hard sell in these hard economic times), or by allowing the team to renegotiate its lease for Nationwide Arena or trying to attract a second major tenant, such as a basketball team.
One of the major problems has been that Nationwide is one of the few NHL facilities in the country that is privately owned; because county voters wanted it that way. They have rejected arena tax issues three times between 1986 and 1997. The team’s owners unsuccessfully asked that the current state budget include a tax increase on beer, wine, liquor and cigarettes in Franklin County to raise $65 million to underwrite a county takeover of the arena, but voters rejected the tax along with opposition from the beer and wine industry, including brewing giant Anheuser-Busch, which operates one of its 12 U.S. breweries in the city.
It is interesting that it is the Columbus Chamber that is making this push for the team. According to what I’ve read in the Hockey News for months, while individual attendance has been solid, support from the business community has been sorely lacking, and in such a small market, this is crucial to the team’s survival.
Or, finally, the cold, hard truth is reaching the league – Columbus is too small to support hockey on a consistent basis, and Arizona is too warm and its residents too unfamiliar with the game to be viable locations. Fortunately, the global economic recession seems to have avoided Canada, and with exchange rates less onerous to Canadians, this may be the best time in several decades to relocate 1 or 2 teams back to Canada.
As always, I feel for the hard working, paying fans who are caught in the middle, but with schools cutting extracurricular activities like sports and band (I saw a story on this on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumble), it would be hard for citizens to support a tax subsidy for a sports franchise whose business model was doomed before it ever took the ice.

It makes me sad when I see students at my alma mater, Northwestern University, do something so stupid it bring unwanted attention to the school. Pictures of 2 white students wearing blackface for Halloween surfaced this week on Facebook and sparked campus-wide outrage. One of the students covered himself in blackface and wore a T-shirt with the word “Jamaica” on it. The other dressed as a female tennis player in blackface, a stuffed bra and toting a tennis racket.
Both students are reportedly varsity athletes, according to the “Daily Northwestern.” Reportedly, the photos were first spotted on Facebook Sunday morning, but have since been removed.
This is unfortunately, not the first time NU students caused controversy in blackface makeup; two years ago 2 PhD students were involved in a similar incident. The usual responses are being brought into play: a campus forum on race is being held to discuss racism.
To his credit, the new President of the University issued a campus-wide e-mail. “While I fully support the principles of free expression, at the same time I am deeply disappointed to see any example of insensitivity that demeans a segment of our community,” President Morton O. Schapiro wrote. “It is my hope that we can use this incident as a catalyst to reflect upon the values of inclusiveness and respect for others that are central to Northwestern’s mission.”
NU has been and remains overwhelmingly white; for a long time, blacks represented 8-10% of the student body, which created difficult situations for the university. During my years there, black athletes protested then-football head coach Rick Venturi for insensitive comments and actions. There were 2 separate but equal worlds at NU, and only a few like myself really transcended both worlds/cultures. But even I met with the University Provost when members of one dorm’s government threatened to call campus security on black students milling about after an after hours party. All were students; there was no loud noise, no threat of violence, but this young woman was threatened and was going to call police. Of course, nothing would have happened if I hadn’t written a letter published in the very same “Daily Northwesterm.”
Obviously, times haven’t changed as much as we think. When I was at NU, the African-American students were much more urban and with less money than the kids attending there now; but many of the white kids come from more affluent communities that probably still aren’t as ethnically homogeneous as one would think, hope or even expect.
Still, if these were athletes, one would think that they would have more contact with black kids and would understand the insensitivity of blackface. One would think that, since NU doesn’t have any places to hide dumb athletes, they would all be smarter. But I guess not.

At the same time that I am shamed and appalled at the acts of a couple of lunkhead NU students, I can’t be prouder of one of our alums. Despite my distaste for all things involving the New York Yankees (discussed below), I was happy for manager Joe Girardi, an NU alum like myself. But he seems to be a great person too.
Girardi, after having won the World Series Wednesday evening, pulled over to help after a woman lost control of her car on a parkway and crashed the car into a wall around 2:30 a.m. Thursday.
Girardi told WFAN-AM that he had his wife call 911 and went over to the car because he was “really concerned” because of the amount of damage. As it turned out, the woman had only cuts, and the police arrived minutes later.
By all accounts, throughout his playing career and as a manager, Joe Girardi got the reputation of being “a class act.” Thursday morning, he proved it.

So, the 2009 baseball season is over and for the first time in 9 seasons, the dreaded hated New York Yankees are World Champions.
There are reasons to be happy about this – Northwestern alum Joe Girardi is the manager, which is a nice thing and from what I hear, he is a very nice guy. It’s hard to find fault with Derek Jeter – a throwback type of player who plays the game the way it’s supposed to be played. The American League once again regains its prominence.
There are some reasons to not feel so good: the Phillies are a good team who didn’t necessarily deserve to lose, but they did. I’m not sure how to feel about Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player in professional sports history; he started the year injured and having been outed as a cheater who used performance enhancing drugs. He was reported as sleeping with everything that moved while his teammates played spring training and the early part of the season. But he has found some redemption having hit well during the World Series driving in key runs to turn the tables on the defending champions from Philadelphia. He is reportedly finding solace in the arms of actress Kate Hudson, and now on the field with a title.
But I can’t be happy about the Yankees winning their 20th title. First, New Yorkers are already the most obnoxious, people on the planet with the most place-centric sense already – they don’t need another title to make themselves feel special. Second, it validates the George Steinbrenner belief that you can buy a championship. The Yankees regularly have the biggest payroll in the sport, which makes a mockery of other teams who don’t have the same financial wherewithal.
Finally, unless you live in New York or grew up there, rooting for the Yankees is just wrong. It’s like rooting for the bully against the regular guy; like rooting for Godzilla against the Japanese Army. It’s like rooting for the airplanes against King Kong; cheering on the lions against the Christians; rooting for Freddy Krueger, or Michael Myers, or Darth Vader.

In many cases, eventually, the truth comes out. For many years, 2 friends and I (Tony Swanagan and Levi Moore, Jr.) issued our own award for the NBA – the M.L. Carr Award for the most hated player in the NBA, or simply the MHP. We gave this award, which, if it existed as an actual trophy, it would be a silver hand with the middle finger raised, to the player who we thought was the most reprehensible on or off the court. I stopped when I got bored with basketball, but for the over 20 years we gave out the award, Isiah Thomas received the award the most times – more than Bill Laimbeer; more than Danny Ainge; more than Rick Mahorn; more than anybody basically because Thomas was a little punk.
When I was an Andy Frain usher, I had the great honor of knowing Isiah’s Mom, who protected her baby boy with all the tools at her disposal. She was a sweet woman who knew me by name and always asked how I and my family were doing. Her protaction was necessary because I also had the “opportunity” to meet some of Isiah’s older brothers. Let me tell you that the word “thug” and “low life” fit them.
Anyway, Thomas was one of the dirtiest players on the court, but would run behind Laimbeer or Mahorn if anyone took offense. He tried to snub Michael Jordan at Jordan’s first NBA All-Star Game because he was jealous of Jordan’s Nike deal. Add to that his purchase and destruction of the CBA, the way in which he destroyed the Knicks as an executive, and the allegations of sexual harassment (made by a woman who I met while we were both attending Northwestern), and Thomas has more than proved my admittedly distanced impressions.
But Magic Johnson gave the ultimate confirmation in his new book written with Larry Bird and Jackie MacMullen “When the Game Was Ours.” Johnson disclosed that he helped blackball Thomas from the 1992 Olympic Dream Team and that he believed Thomas was responsible for spreading rumors about his sexuality after Magic tested positive for HIV in 1991.
Last week, SI.com reported Thomas’ response to the book. Isiah said that he was caught off guard by Johnson’s criticisms. “I’m really hurt, and I really feel taken advantage of for all these years,” Thomas told SI.com. “I’m totally blindsided by this. Every time that I’ve seen Magic, he has been friendly with me. … I didn’t know he felt this way.”
Your honor, the prosecution rests.

Relatively uncommented on in the local media, the purchase of the Chicago Cubs by the Ricketts family is historic in yet another way. The Cubs are now the first team in Major League Baseball to have an openly gay owner.
One of the family, sister Laura Ricketts, is an out of the closet lesbian who is also on the board of the gay rights organization Lambda Legal. Ms. Ricketts will be a member of the Cubs Board of Directors and reportedly came out to her family in her 30s.
Good for her; good for baseball; good for her family who she says was and is very supportive of her; and good for all of us who support equal rights. I just have to wonder if the league owners knew this when they unanimously approved the Cubs sale to the Ricketts family? Somehow, I think not.

Finally, this weekend has arrived for the Packer faithful – “traitor” Brett Favre brings his Minnesota Vikings into hallowed Lambeau Field to play the Packers, the team Favre left two seasons ago. Someone I knew from college is bringing her son into Wisconsin just to be there to boo Favre.
It would have been a big game regardless – the 6-1 Vikings and the 4-2 Packers are fighting it out in the NFC North Division and, in my opinion, Packer fans hated the Vikings more than they do the Bears even before their future Hall of Fame QB found his way to the Metrodome. I think that the Packer/Bear rivalry is fierce, but more like a memory of our fathers and grandfathers and continued because that’s the only way I know. Packer and Viking fans truly hate each other; with a vehemence that compares only to the Yankees and Red Sox.
But now, with Favre playing on the other side, playing very well, and his replacement, Aaron Rodgers, also playing at a high level, it will be the supporting cast that will make the difference, and if Green Bay’s offensive line plays like it has been, it might be a really long day for the home team. But it will be fun to watch, especially indoors.