Well it finally happened! Hockey is back in our lives! After being locked out for 113 days, the two sides were able to come to an agreement. There will be a 48 game season with the post season starting on April 30. Well we lost the All-Star game and the Winter Classic, but at least we get some sort of a season. Hopefully now that the major sports have all come to recent agreements within their CBA’s, that we do not have to worry about lockouts in the major 4 sports.
As a student (almost alumnus) of Miami University, this is a cause near and dear to my heart. The You Can Play program comes from the Burke family, whose son was the student manager of our hockey team. Brendan came out to the team and they accepted him. Brendan was killed in a car accident in 2010. His father and brother have worked to keep Brendan’s message alive. ”If you can play, you can play.” Its as simple as that. They are working towards getting homophobia out of the locker room and making LGBT athletes comfortable in their own environments. This program has only been around for a year and as already made a difference. Brendan’s father is Brian Burke (CEO and President of the Toronto Maple Leafs) and his brother is a scout for the Philly Flyers. I am proud of the Miami Hockey team for having former players on the advisory board and as supporters, along with the current team. Check out their full mission at www.youcanplayproject.org
The past 24 hours have been eventful in the NHL lockout. The ends met until about 12:45a today and seemed to make some major progress. They are set to reconvene today to hammer out some more details. The two sides traded proposals. More people have been allowed in on both sides. During the past two days close to 20 players and 10 owners have been in on the discussions. According to the NHL things have been progressing and if a deal comes soon, we CAN still have a shortened about 50 game season! Let’s hope they can get a deal made, so we can get our hockey back!
Some details come from ESPN.com!
We are now 2 months and 13 days into the lockout with no end in sight. The Winter Classic game scheduled for New Years has been cancelled and its looking like the entire season will be cancelled. There have been federal mediation help, but that has not seemed to help either. This is starting to be a deja vu for fans and players since the 2004-05 season was cancelled due to failure to reach a mutual agreement. There are players playing overseas, and in the United States, some players have gone down to play in lower leagues (such as the ECHL, AHL, and others). On Bleacher Report, they say that the league and the players are not rushing to come to an agreement because they know fans will come right back when an agreement is made. The main issue is how to divide the money with each side failing to come to terms with the other.
The NHL has offered the NHLPA an agreement to split profits 50-50 and be able to start the season on November 2. This will give us an a full 82 game season! What can I say I love hockey! To me it is vastly unfair that the people who watch the games, the fans, have to suffer because two groups that have a large amounts of money just want more. And the fans do not have the money like the union players and the NHL heads. The Lockout has now been going for a full month. And if things are settled the season will go into June, but hey whats an extra month of hockey gonna do? I cannot think of many who will find this extension a bad idea.
http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/8512006/nhl-offers-players-50-50-split-hockey-related-revenue
I know I have been gone for awhile, but I’m back! I was hoping that I would not have to update this soon after my Capstone class ended. But the lockout of the Referees in the NFL and the lockout of the NHL brought me back. By now everyone in the entire United States has heard about the different flubs of the replacement referees in recent weeks (especially this past Monday Night Football game between the Packers and Seahawks). The referees called a play wrong in the last minute of the game causing the Packers to lose last minute. The backlash of this has been seen in Meme’s on the web to letters written to Commissioner Roger Godell by Jim Schmitt (mayor of Green Bay and stockholder of the Packers). And Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan (US Representative from Wisconsin) spoke out. This all happened on Monday night and continued into Tuesday morning, and now it is Wednesday afternoon, and the League and Referees have almost come to agreement. The NHL lockout is the league’s second since the lost season of 2004-05. This lockout, like all others could have been avoided. But it all came down to money once again. One main point that could not be resolved is the share of
During sport lockouts and strikes, it tends to make news headlines. Some of the largest places to report on these topics are CNN, the New York Times, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated. There are books that have been put out by columnists at these respective places. There has not currently been any books put out about the 2011 NFL and NBA lockouts, but there are many in the works and coming out in the near future.
A strike is a concerted action or combined effort by a labor union designed to exert pressure on an employer to accede to certain demands. A lockout on the other hand, is the employer counterpart of a strike. In a lockout, the employer prevents the players from working in an effort to gain a better bargaining position in labor negotiations. A lockout may occur upon the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement.
In the history of organizing in major league sports has been around for awhile. The NFLPA came around in 1956, MLBPA in 1966, NBAPA in 1954, and NHLPA in 1967. The leagues, especially now-a-days with the advent of the internet, it was easier for both sides to reach out to the public and let them know what was going on in meetings. With the big four being such a public entity as it is, it is necessary to keep the public involved since the public spends their own money on tickets and merchandise, along with other items. With the end of the NBA lockout in December, people thought that they would be free from having to watch and/or deal with watching and waiting for another sports lockout. In January, the current NHL CBA negotiations hit a snag because the current CBA ends at the end of the current NHL season. The major point in discussions is the realigning of the league.
In the sporting industry, if you look at it in a broad sense, you do not really think about factories being involved at all. But when you look deeper into the sports world, factories are a very large part of the everyday life of sports. Factories make the balls and equipment used to play the sport. They make the food and drink that is served at sporting event. They make the uniforms and apparel. If one of these types of factories go on strike or move their business to another country, then that affects the everyday operations of a large scale sports team. They will have to find someone else to have a contract with, or are faced with paying more for the same product since it will be harder to find.
