Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Global Sports Salary Survey 2012, Crew Last

Thought I'd post up a couple notes about Sporting Intelligence's Salary Survey.

First off, here is the LINK to the organization that put it together and not ESPN's summary.

The Columbus Crew come in last out of 278 clubs surveyed over 14 leagues worldwide.

To be frankly honest, it is a bit embarrassing. To be lowest or last in anything is. Seeing the team you follow closely and spend hours upon hours writing about being last on this kind of list stings a little.

It also doesn't make a lot of sense. Major League Soccer is single entity yet The Columbus Crew are $1.4 MILLION DOLLARS below the league median in player salary.

There are those that like to tell us that sports "at the end of the day, is just a business." This is something you usually hear from team executives when your heart has just been ripped out because your favorite player just got traded. Or the jackass star of your favorite team from your own hometown takes his talents elsewhere. Gotta get yours right?

Let this be a Helltown lesson, you only use that "...just a business" card when you are screwing someone over.

Teams, clubs, franchises that see any sort of extended success view (and thrive off) sports as pure performance based competition first.

I'd like to think that Columbus thrives on that pure competition. Pushing and pulling players in and out based on performance. All the player transactions over the last couple years having purpose and meaning that leads fans to the greater good.

Instead, I realize that it has nothing to do with the players. I realize that Columbus is a mini thiefdom that is fueled by club nepotism. Coaches on the pitch and employees in the offices do not realize the direction to the dark depths this team is headed in.

Check "thecrew dot com". It reads like HR memos to government employees. Memo back to the good folks there... Ohio is probably the most sports crazed place on the planet. They have been to the highest highs and lowest lows. Save the horseshit. It ain't gonna fly here.

I wrote a couple months back about all the players the Crew have let go in the past couple years. Almost none of them found another job playing soccer. Think about that. Imagine the board letting 20 teachers go from your child's school and only a couple of them being rehired as teachers somewhere else. What would that say about the education your child was getting?

The last place ranking on this particular salary survey has nothing to do with the players. Nor does it have anything to do with the stadium, fans or supporters. It doesn't even really have to do much with Robert Warzycha.

No. It's just an outward representation of how far this franchise has fallen.

Of how mismanaged they really are.

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1.64 Million Crew Moves, is a post that summarizes the player transactions Columbus made during this past off season (and where they are now). LINK

3 comments:

David Burgin said...

Billy, you still sum up the numbers behind the story better than anyone I know. Those hours you are talking about, the writing ones, do add up.

Trying for months and years to keep an open mind when both watching and critiquing this club has become almost impossible for me.

The most interesting aspect of what you say is the chasm between the players let go who have fallen off the face of the soccer planet, and the players who have been let go who have gone on to be solid contributors on other squads.

It's like there is no in between. I have addressed the idea that keeping just half the talented players who have left in the last two or three years makes The Crew one of the league's best, for a long time running.

Robbie, Ekpo, and Mendoza alone would make this years team potentially unbeaten at this point in the season. Sorry this was so long.

Nice stuff as usual.

Larry W Johnson II said...

Until this version gets months and months of time together, there won't be much to critique. Let alone, praise.

Writing about play on the field with the Crew this year is like writing about a pickup game over at Berliner Park (no soccer fields there, so it would be a pickup game happening in the outfield of a softball field).

(One with no goal posts either, of course). (and it would be 11 kids vs. 3 adults).

SurveyTool said...

I just read the book Artemisia by Alexandra Lapierre and aside from learning about her amazing life, it inspired me to get the kids to make their own paints. Now I have a means--thanks for the post!
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