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MASN dispute update


JohnD

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Sports that primarily require high levels of physical endurance are sports that women will do better with. Sports that primarily require high levels of physical strength will always be outdrawn by the men's version of the sport because the men's version will have the better, more skilled athletes. I don't watch a lot of soccer, but I've seen both men's and women's and did not see a noticeable difference between the two. I liked them both equally. Tennis is another where both men and women do well. Gymnastics and figure skating are two where the women's version are more popular than the men's. Some sports play better into women's strengths than others and the same goes for men.

With basketball, again, I don't watch basketball a lot, but there was a time where I was trying to get into it and did watch a few women's games. The women's games were boring compared to the men's. Missed more shots, less skill and lacked something. Certainly, a less physical game. Hockey is the same way. I've watched several women's hockey games even the US vs Canada games which featured the best women's hockey has to offer and it was nowhere close to the level of men's hockey. While certainly skilled, they were not nearly as skilled as the men in several areas. Not as skilled in passing. Weak shots that almost never beat goalies clean and are almost always along the ice instead of elevated. Not good at one-timers or slap shots. Most goals are from rebounds right in front of the net. Last but not least, there is no body checking allowed in the women's game because, you know, someone might get hurt. The women's game is completely devoid of any physical play and is in fact against the rules to do so. They are fast skaters, though.

As an athlete, you are the draw. If you're not drawing, you don't get paid and you're certainly not going to get equal pay to the men who are drawing far more money than they are. Women's hockey can't even survive in Canada and if your hockey league can't survive in Canada, that says a lot about their drawing power. It's going down the tubes in the states too. Athletics is unique in that way and the difference in pay is completely fair. If the men aren't drawing billions of dollars a year, they wouldn't get paid millions. Neither should the women. That is completely fair and is not indicative of any unfair pay gap.

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17 hours ago, Frobby said:

I view this through the long arc of history.    The Washington Senators predated the Orioles.   Under the AL charter at the time, they had the absolute right to veto a team moving to Baltimore.    They didn’t do it.    Meanwhile, Angelos had no absolute right to veto an NL team moving to DC.   He came up with some legal arguments about how his TV rights would be affected if DC had a team, and leveraged that into the MASN deal.     As an Orioles fan, I say good for him.    But MLB did require that the TV rights be assigned “fair market value” and the lawyers left the standard for determining that very vague.   

I personally believe the decisions of the RSDC have been reasonably Solomonic.    Neither side got what it wanted but both sides can live with it.    The Nats chose to accept that they didn’t get all they wanted; Angelos didn’t and has protracted the dispute for 5-7 years.    He got some short term benefits from that, but overall he has hurt the franchise by burning bridges with MLB and creating business uncertainty for the team.    He would have been better off looking for win-win solutions rather than treating the MASN deal as a zero sum game.   

As to the team, they’ve hurt themselves by being poorly run far more than the Nats have hurt them.   Would they be better off if the Nats weren’t here?    Of course, but the Nats move didn’t have to have a major impact.    The O’s have magnified its’ impact by their poorly run team.

The bolded is absolutely wrong IMO.    Before the Nats arrived the O's had the potential to draw between 3m and 3.6m fans a season.  The Nats impacted the O's by taking the potential away.  

Most teams other than the Yankees and maybe the Dodgers go through cycles when they win and when they lose.   The O's have done both.  From 2014-2016 they won more games than anyone in the AL and went to the playoffs three times.  Its pretty hard to argue that they were poorly managed during that period.   If they won all those games and were poorly managed what do you call the management of the other teams?

However the O's never drew 2.5m during those 5 years.  The potential was there had the Nats not been in DC to draw 3-3.5m fans but the Bats were and that probably took a million fans a year away from the O's.

So saying the Nats didn't have a major impact on the O's attendance is just wrong IMO.

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41 minutes ago, theocean said:

What are you even talking about, dude? Sure, NWSL isn't commercially strong - but there is absolutely tremendous, elite talent in that league. To look at a couple stats and say it is on par with 1800s baseball is really silly. You're ignoring a ton of other variables of the 1800s - like segregation, wars, a completely different US economy, limited transportation...

Gymnastics, swimming, etc aren't selling out stadiums either - but that doesn't mean anything in terms of the talent-level.

I read back and I'm not even sure what you two were arguing about - but I had to call this lunacy out. Not sure your motive here. Just because women have to fight for equal pay (like they have to fight for in every industry) doesn't mean their leagues are lacking in talent or play. It's us men who need to wake up and realize that we should be paying attention to the talent of the NWSL, WNBA, etc. Not dismiss it to be equal to an indoor soccer league.

High-level women's soccer basically didn't exist 30 or 40 years ago.  The current pro league was founded in 2012.  As organizations grow over time they optimize, every day they do little things to improve.  MLB has spent the last 150 years optimizing how it grows, funnels, and develops talent.  They are quite excellent at getting kids to want to play baseball, and all those players want to play in MLB.  We saw how quickly things improve and change by watching the Orioles stay in 1985 mode for 25 years and fall hopelessly behind.

The NWSL has been optimizing itself since about the time Manny Machado was called up to the majors.  And they're doing that with a tiny, tiny fraction of the resources that the men's leagues have.  That's why salaries and attendance matter so much - they're sources and indicators of resources available to pour back into making the league and the sport better.

The current USWNT has a lot of talent.  It is hugely entertaining. I loved watching the last several women's World Cups.  But I fully expect that over the next 20, 40, 60 years women's soccer will go through the processes that the major men's leagues have been going through for 50, 100, 150 years.  The NWSL players of 2040 will wipe the floor with today's players. Because of where they're starting they will almost certainly grow more than MLB or the NFL or NBA will over that same period, maybe exponentially more. 

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1 minute ago, wildcard said:

The bolded is absolutely wrong IMO.    Before the Nats arrived the O's had the potential to draw between 3m and 3.6m fans a season.  The Nats impacted the O's by taking the potential away.  

Most teams other than the Yankees and maybe the Dodgers go through cycles when they win and when they lose.   The O's have done both.  From 2014-2016 they won more games than anyone in the AL and went to the playoffs three times.  Its pretty hard to argue that they were poorly managed during that period.   If they won all those games and were poorly managed what do you call the management of the other teams?

However the O's never drew 2.5m during those 5 years.  The potential was there had the Nats not been in DC to draw 3-3.5m fans but the Bats were and that probably took a million fans a year away from the O's.

So saying the Nats didn't have a major impact on the O's attendance is just wrong IMO.

I agree.  It can be spun any number of ways, but what is not disputable is that the Orioles past fan base that went from Carolina up through southern PA is now divided among two teams.  And the entertainment dollars people have to attend games is split between 4 teams if you add all of the Ravens/Skins/Orioles/Nats.  Some people have a set income for sports, and they must decide which of these games to attend.  So I guess we COULD say that the Ravens could possibly effect the Orioles ticket sales as well as the Nats.

On another note, regarding the MASN dispute, how about the winner of the series wins the MASN dispute, and we move on?  (I keed, we'd have no chance.) 

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1 hour ago, interloper said:

I think he's saying that 2019 US women's soccer would trounce 1910 US men's soccer on the field all day, and that's almost certainly a fact. 

Probably.  The training, and nutrition, tactics, fitness are certainly in the women's favor.  But the men of 1910 will still be larger, faster, stronger, just because of genetics.  Alex Morgan towers over many of her teammates, and she's 5' 7", 137.  Honus Wagner was 5' 11", 200.

One major advantage today's women would have is that the 1910 US men's national team was kind of a disorganized thing that played Canada once a year.  They didn't play their first official, sanctioned match until 1916.  Dick Spalding was a guy who scored in that first official match and he's listed at 5' 11".

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14 minutes ago, wildcard said:

The bolded is absolutely wrong IMO.    Before the Nats arrived the O's had the potential to draw between 3m and 3.6m fans a season.  The Nats impacted the O's by taking the potential away.  

Most teams other than the Yankees and maybe the Dodgers go through cycles when they win and when they lose.   The O's have done both.  From 2014-2016 they won more games than anyone in the AL and went to the playoffs three times.  Its pretty hard to argue that they were poorly managed during that period.   If they won all those games and were poorly managed what do you call the management of the other teams?

However the O's never drew 2.5m during those 5 years.  The potential was there had the Nats not been in DC to draw 3-3.5m fans but the Bats were and that probably took a million fans a year away from the O's.

So saying the Nats didn't have a major impact on the O's attendance is just wrong IMO.

I didn’t say it didn’t have a major impact.    I said it didn’t have to have a major impact.    I’ve already explained my thinking in posts subsequent to the one you replied to, so I will leave it at that.

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17 minutes ago, Sessh said:

Sports that primarily require high levels of physical endurance are sports that women will do better with. Sports that primarily require high levels of physical strength will always be outdrawn by the men's version of the sport because the men's version will have the better, more skilled athletes. I don't watch a lot of soccer, but I've seen both men's and women's and did not see a noticeable difference between the two.

In youth soccer if you're going to scrimmage a boys' team against a girls' team you want to have a couple levels of separation to make it competitive.  For example, I help coach what we call a RecPlus team, slotted in between Rec and Travel.  U12, so 10-11 year old boys.  We will sometimes scrimmage a U13 girls travel team and the games are competitive.

When DC United would play doubleheaders with the Washington Freedom the difference in level of play was immediately obvious.  The Freedom were entertaining, they had Mia Hamm for a while.  But you wouldn't want them to try to play DC United, which was then an okay team in a 2nd or 3rd tier league.

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1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Probably.  The training, and nutrition, tactics, fitness are certainly in the women's favor.  But the men of 1910 will still be larger, faster, stronger, just because of genetics.  Alex Morgan towers over many of her teammates, and she's 5' 7", 137.  Honus Wagner was 5' 11", 200.

One major advantage today's women would have is that the 1910 US men's national team was kind of a disorganized thing that played Canada once a year.  They didn't play their first official, sanctioned match until 1916.  Dick Spalding was a guy who scored in that first official match and he's listed at 5' 11".

The current womens team would destroy the 1910 mens team.  If you can't see that there is no hope for you.  The men probably were slower.  And how is bigger stronger going to help you in soccer Wayne Rooney is what 5 ' 7". I am much larger than most elite soccer players.  Maybe you should stick to Amwrican Football.

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9 hours ago, atomic said:

What you are saying has nothing to do with the quality of play. The MLS players are not that good.   The NWSL teams have great players on them.   I am not sure what attendance has to do with anything.  I know we live in a misogynistic world where male sports are perceived to be better no matter what the quality difference. 

 You can watch MLS teams get humiliated this summer in friendlies against top league teams.  Colorado just lost to Aresnal 3-0.  Arsenal sat most of their stars.  

Those MLS teams would trounce the USWNT, so not a far comparison.

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3 hours ago, atomic said:

The current womens team would destroy the 1910 mens team.  If you can't see that there is no hope for you.  The men probably were slower.  And how is bigger stronger going to help you in soccer Wayne Rooney is what 5 ' 7". I am much larger than most elite soccer players.  Maybe you should stick to Amwrican Football.

I had a look earlier today.    The men’s world record 1500 meter time from 1908 was broken by a woman in 1976.    Today the women’s record is about 10 seconds faster.   

The men’s 100 meter dash record from 1908 has been bested by a woman only once (Flo-Jo did it).   

The current women’s world record in the 10,000 meter run is about a minute and 40 seconds faster than the men’s record in 1912 (there were no records at that distance before then).   

So at least as far a speed goes, I’d guess the 2019 women would hold their own and probably have more stamina than the 1910 men.   

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