As we were watching Colin Cowherd's radio show on ESPNU at work this afternoon (I still don't get the radio shows on TV thing, but whatever!), some guy called in and asked if Aaron Rodgers was selected to the Pro Bowl. Colin correctly pointed out that only Packers fans care about whether or not their quarterback is selected to the Pro Bowl. I then pointed out that whether or not he's on the NFC Pro Bowl roster (for the record, he's not; the three NFC quarterbacks are Michael Vick, Matt Ryan and Drew Brees), it doesn't matter, since Mr. Brilliant Commissioner made the decision to hold the Pro Bowl before the Super Bowl and replace any players from the two conference champions on Pro Bowl rosters. That then led to a discussion where I declared that Roger Baddell (notice what I've done with his name) is the worst of the for major league commissioners.
I'll finish my point about the Pro Bowl before moving on as to why Baddell sucks so badly at his job. Last year, in his infinite wisdom, he decided that the Super Bowl should be the NFL's climactic game, so he moved the Pro Bowl from the week after the Super Bowl to the week before it. With that change, he also made it so that any Pro Bowlers from the two remaining teams would be replaced on the roster, but they would still have to show up at the game in order to get their appearance bonuses. He also moved it from Hawaii to Miami (last year's Super Bowl site), but that wrong decision has since been rectified and the game is back where it belongs. The whole concept behind the date change is flawed. Why have an all-star game if you're not going to have any players from the two best teams? Likewise, if these guys aren't required to play, why are they still required to show up? You let guys out of the Pro Bowl for stupider reasons than being in the Super Bowl! I understand that people aren't going to care about the Pro Bowl no matter what the date is, but the only way for it to be a true all-star game is to move the date back to what it used to be and actually include the guys who make it from the two best teams in football.
Anyway, that's just one of the many bad decisions Baddell has made since taking over as NFL commissioner. The personal conduct policy is a decent idea, but the enforcement of it is incredibly arbitrary and he's the sole decision-maker on that front. Likewise, the crackdown on player safety is a step in the right direction, but some players are being repeatedly fined for perfectly legal hits, while others get nothing for blantat cheap shots. Sometimes helmet-to-helmet hits are unaviodale, and that needs to be considered. If a defender goes into the air to make a tackle, then the receiver ducks his head after the fact, how is it the defender's fault that the legal tackle he was about to make is now helmet-to-helmet because the receiver ducked his head and there wasn't anything he could do about it?
But the inevitable lockout is what really pushed me over the top in my conclusion that Mr. Brilliant Commissioner is the worst of the four. He and his owner cronies are 100 percent responsible for the lockout, and it will be their fault that it's going to drag on much longer than it needs to. On the surface, both sides look willing to come to a fairly reasonable compromise on most of the major issues. But there's one sticking point that's going to make this thing drag on: the schedule. Baddell and the owners claim to be all about player safety, but they want to add two unnecessary regular season games to the schedule. The players vehemently don't want two extra games. The owners don't seem to be willing to budge on this point. Because Baddell wants the 18-game schedule. How many work stoppages were there in the NFL during Paul Tagliabue's entire commissionership? That's right, a whopping zero. The NFL's last work stoppage was a player strike in 1987. Each of the other three leagues has had one since then. But 24 years of labor peace in the NFL will come to an end in March, mainly because of the commissioner.
So which of the other three is the best, you ask? I'm going with Bud Selig. He's no genius by any means. And he's made plenty of stupid decisions. But he's also made some great ones and, more importantly, presided over the most prosperous era in the game's history without even the threat of a work stoppage. Meanwhile, the NHL lost an entire season to a lockout. The NBA lost half of a season to one and is about to have another. And we know the mess that Baddell has made out of the NFL. But Major League Baseball has thrived since Selig took over as commissioner. Yes there was the Steroid Era, the All-Star Game tie, changing the playoff schedule for no reason and, when realizing that was a mistake, instead of fixing it, making another one and deciding to start the 2011 season go Thursday-Wednesday instead of Monday-Sunday like it should be. (And the potentially stupid and unnecessary decision he's about to make if they do add a second wild card team in each league.) But Bud Selig is also the guy who brought us the wild card (and, by extension, the Divison Series) and interleague play, as well as labor peace and an era where, whether or not you want to believe it, more teams are competitive than ever. (Facts to back me up: 14 different teams reached the World Series between 2001-10, and there were nine different champions in those 10 years.)
The fact that baseball's my favorite sport might play into my decision a little bit, but I think the fact that there hasn't been a work stoppage carries a lot of weight. Granted, Major League Baseball will probaly never have a strike/lockout again after 1994, but Selig still deserves some credit for all the good he's done for the game. I think Gary Bettman is doing a tremendous job in the NHL, as well (as evidence by regular season shooutouts and the Winter Classic). And fans are starting to come back to hockey after the lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season. But Baddell is content to mess with a good thing. Roger, as the old saying goes: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." That's especially true here. Since all he's doing is breaking something that isn't broken.
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