With today's news that David Stern will retire as NBA commissioner in 2014, ESPN.com conducted a SportsNation poll question asking which of the four current major league commissioners was teh best. Not surprisingly, Bud Selig was the winner. I'm not surprised because I agree. Even though I sometimes criticize him, I think that Bud Selig is without question the best active commissioner. It's not even close.
The most obvious reason why Selig runs circles around Goodell, Stern and Bettman is the simple fact that there have been three lockouts in three different sports over the last year and a half. The only sport that hasn't? Major League Baseball. The owners and players negotiated a new CBA a few years ago that guarantees more than 20 years of labor peace since the strike that infamously cancelled the 1994 World Series. It's amazing to think that Baseball, the sport that used to be the most notorious for labor strife, has become the most stable of the four.
The new poster child for labor unrest is the NHL, where Mr. Lockout has presided over four work stoppages in his tenure. The 1994 baseball strike is nothing compared to the 2004-05 lockout that wiped out the entire NHL season. That lockout was all about changing the NHL's entire business model. For the most part, fans understood that. The fans came back and the product was better than ever. You'd think Mr. Lockout and the owners would've learned from that. Evidently not. Because we're on the verge of Labor Armageddon again. And it should be noted that the NHL's immediate course of action every time the CBA expires is to lock out the players. That's no way to do business.
Ranking just ahead of Mr. Lockout is Mr. Brilliant Commissioner himself, Roger Baddell. In the past two years, the NFL has had two different lockouts--one of the players, one of the officials. The lockout of the players never should've happened. The two sides couldn't agree on how to split billions of dollars in revenue. That was the only reason for it. But the referee lockout was even more stupid. They easily could've come to an agreement during the offseason, but the NFL stubbornly insisted that the referees would cave. As a result, we got three weeks of games played with replacement refs, which completely compromised the integrity of the game.
Goodell's biggest problem, though, is that he's a hypocrite. He talks about the integrity of the game, yet locks out the officials and brings in underqualified replacements. But the player safety thing is where he's really two-faced. The NFL is cracking down on helmet-to-helmet hits and the same time they're facing a lawsuit from retired players about the long-term effects of concussions. And let's not forget the additional Thursday night games and the insistence to eventually go to an 18-game schedule, neither of which is in the best interest of the players. Then there's Bountygate, which has been an embarrassment for all involved. (Sidebar, the Saints players really need to just serve their suspensions and get over it. The story has gotten old, and proloning the process with all these continued appeals isn't making anybody look any better.)
David Stern, honestly, I don't have any real issues with. He's done a lot of good for the game of basketball, and I'm actually pretty impressed that they were able to play a 66-game season last year when it looked like they were going to lose an entire year just like the NHL did. While I think that deal was rushed because Stern was waaaaaaaay too worried about losing his beloved Christmas games, he showed the initiative to get it done. I expect another NBA lockout once the current CBA expires, though. Mostly, I think David Stern's been around too long. He seems to understand that, too, and I have no doubt it entered his mind when he was thinking about retiring.
Bud Selig is also going to retire in 2014 after a career as one of the most influential commissioners baseball has ever seen. Like them or not, all of the changes in the sport over the past two decades have been institued under Bud Selig's watch (most of them were actually his idea), and they're all here to stay. A few examples: Interleague play. The wild card. The second wild card. The All-Star Game determining home field advantage in the World Series. The rule that states all playoff games have to go a full nine innings once they start. The Astros switching leagues, giving the AL and NL 15 teams apiece and allowing for a balanced schedule within each division. The implementation of a drug-testing policy. More than 20 years of labor peace. All of these will be part of Bud Selig's legacy.
Whether or not you agree with all he's done, there's no disputing the fact that Bud Selig has done more good than bad for Major League Baseball. And when he leaves office, the game will be better off than it was when he became commissioner. Throw in the fact that he's avoided even a single work stoppage at a time when lockouts in sports have become all too common, and you've got the best active commissioner in the four major leagues.
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