WTF Indeed: Aww, nice try Bill, but wrong. Football is successful because of a weak union, supply of games raises demand, and it matches the attention span of the average American. Go back to farking your escorts and leave the discussion to the adults.

I want a weak union which allows me to earn $4M a year.

Ah, I think I remember this rant. He completely ignores the fact that in MLB it is in many team's best interests to be shiatty and spend nothing thanks to revenue sharing.

And The Pirates used to be a great team. The owners haven't tried to put out a winner since Sid Bream outwalked Barry Bond's arm.

Oh, and every sport has the most successful teams pick later in the draft. MLB and NBA uses regular season record rather than post season success. And in MLB if one of your great players leaves for a bigger payday you get a compensatory or extra draft pick:

A Class A free agent is ranked in the top 20 percent of players at his position. A team that signs a Type A player gives its top draft pick to the club that the player is leaving; that club also receives a supplemental pick in the "sandwich" round between the first and second rounds.[25]

A Class B free agent is ranked below the top 20 percent but in the top 40 percent of players at his position. A team that loses a Type B player receives a supplemental pick, but the signing team does not lose a pick.

So, baseball essentially has a more robust welfare system than football.

um, no way.

just listening to bill mar would give me ibs.must less having to look at him.

What a total crock, Bill. how completely unusual for you. Of course, if anyone calls you on your bullshiat you say "Hey, I'm a comedian".

If only the US only had 32 small groups after the revenue pie, and really rich billionaires were given the money first to manage in a way that will produce more revenue, I guess everything would come up roses.

T-Bone42: Ah, I see the usual Bill Maher haters are out.

I really enjoyed the animation, for some reason. It was really smooth.

As to his point, I really ain't buying it. I think comparing the NFL revenue model to socialism is a stretch, to say the least. Sure, they both share, but that's about the only common thread. The NFL is still a business designed to make money, and they are really good at it.

I liked the statistic that more people watch the super bowl than attend church on Christmas. But then he couldn't resist throwing in a "suck it, Jesus." We get it Bill -- you hate religion. You really gotta throw that in everything you work on?

I still like Bill, but he's got some kooky ideas that I totally disdain (peta, vaccines). I'd still read this book.


I don't fault him for the religious thing one bit because I get so sick of hearing idiots drone on about their magic man in the sky. it's nice to hear someone spout an opposing view back in their faces with a measure of fervor.

Bill Maher IS Irritable Bowel Syndrome. A gasbag twit who is neither funny, nor knowledgeable about SOPA. But, he supports.

The unofficial video for Bill Pig Maher's "Irritable Bowl Syndrome" (language not safe for work)

Fixed that for subby. His name is Pig Maher. Not Bill. Pig.

Hobodeluxe: Brilliant. You can tell it hits home with the derp squad by the troll response. lol go Bill!

Yeah. This one seems to have cut deep. The first 10 or so posts in this thread reek of butthurt.

/Reek, Reek, It rhymes with weak.

intelligent comment below: MeinRS6: What a total crock, Bill. how completely unusual for you. Of course, if anyone calls you on your bullshiat you say "Hey, I'm a comedian".

If only the US only had 32 small groups after the revenue pie, and really rich billionaires were given the money first to manage in a way that will produce more revenue, I guess everything would come up roses.

You said nothing to disprove his points, and instead just resorted to petty personal insults and strawman. Not surprising given your m.o. on here.

You mean nothing besides pointing out that running the national economy is nothing like running the NFL, which was his entire lame point?

it's a syndicate that has simply decided that the product they sell will be most attractive if their is on the field parity (not that it slightly matters, but nothing guarantees that each of these clubs make a profit, just that their player salaries will remain equal and they each get a slice of the tv pie).

socialism != people sharing stuff.
socialism has never != people sharing stuff.
when you see a couple sharing an appetizer at red lobster you can't yell *socialism1!*. there is a different term for that.
socialism is defined by the government or the people controlling the means of production.

and I thought bill m. claimed to be a libertarian anyway. the antithesis of that philosophy is socialism. why is he trying to play up this failed system with this thin layer of bullshiat?

thornhill: lacydog: thornhill: intelligent comment below: Any sport that has drafts to help lower quality teams, revenue sharing, unions, and other protections is pure socialism.

The draft and all the various roles about recruitment are completely counter to free market principals -- it's regulation. If sports leagues took a true free market approach, teams could higher any player they wanted -- it would be a total free-for-all where the teams with the most money would snatch up the best players.

And that's one of the problems with baseball. Players outside the amateur draft are all free agents, and are subject to bidding wars. Even in the amateur draft (until the last CBA), teams have to negotiate with their draftees, who hold all the leverage in those negotiations because they can simply return to school and be drafted later. So, some teams figured that they would take players with higher signing bonus demands later in the draft (they would fall due to signability issues), give them what they want and they would end up with a really talented draft class. That should change a little now that the MLB is actually enforcing it's slot recommendations.

/For the record, Maher is a hack
//There are some points to be made about the difference between the NFL and MLB, but it doesn't quite so simply as "Socialism vs. Free Market"

That's not Maher's point. What he's saying in a nutshell is that the NFL -- the governing body of the league -- uses regulations and profit sharing so that the teams with the most money cannot dominate the league. They create an even playing field with money so that things like coaching are what make the difference between teams. if anything, it's actually a really good argument for campaign finance limits.I

that's a dumb argument for campaign finance reform. and who the f*ck needs b. maher to explain the purpose of revenue sharing and the salary cap in the nfl to them? the dumbest asshole in the sports tab has that figured out.
you know what is a good argument? *without campaign finance rich people can buy the politicians to become richer and you can't do shiat about it because you are poor*
Maher just doesn't ever make good points, about anything. he's occasionally halfway funny, but he's stupid.

relcec: and I thought bill m. claimed to be a libertarian anyway. the antithesis of that philosophy is socialism. why is he trying to play up this failed system with this thin layer of bullshiat?

Because he's a liberal that smokes a lot of pot. He heard once the libertarians were for legalizing weed, so he started calling himself a libertarian. He's not the first or the last that will do that.

relcec: it's a syndicate that has simply decided that the product they sell will be most attractive if their is on the field parity (not that it slightly matters, but nothing guarantees that each of these clubs make a profit, just that their player salaries will remain equal and they each get a slice of the tv pie).

socialism != people sharing stuff.
socialism has never != people sharing stuff.
when you see a couple sharing an appetizer at red lobster you can't yell *socialism1!*. there is a different term for that.
socialism is defined by the government or the people controlling the means of production.

and I thought bill m. claimed to be a libertarian anyway. the antithesis of that philosophy is socialism. why is he trying to play up this failed system with this thin layer of bullshiat?

So the distribution of wealth is just "people sharing stuff" and not in any way related to socialism. Good to know.

/I'm sure the derp platoon agrees wholeheartedly.

lacydog: bighasbeen: Ah, I think I remember this rant. He completely ignores the fact that in MLB it is in many team's best interests to be shiatty and spend nothing thanks to revenue sharing.

And The Pirates used to be a great team. The owners haven't tried to put out a winner since Sid Bream outwalked Barry Bond's arm.

You're forgetting that the Pirates (and Royals, Indians, etc.) were good before the salaries started taking off. The last time the Pirates made the playoffs, 1992, the top paying ballclub was the Blue Jays at $49MM. Ten years later, the Yankees were at $125MM, and would balloon to around $200MM in later years. The Pirates, Blue Jays and Twins can't put together great teams like they used to, and they've really only started to adopt better models for mid-market teams.

Most of that increase comes as a result of regional cable network money. While gate revenue is nice, what keeps the Yankees and Red Sox ahead of everyone else is YES and NESN, which can pay them quite a bit given their market size. Cable revenue is also the reason the Rangers and Angels have been stepping up their game recently, the Angels having just signed a $3 Billion contract with Fox Sports Net, which was basically the reason they could afford both Wilson and Pujols this off-season. A team like the Indians can't generate that kind of income, because regional networks in Ohio aren't going to make that kind of money (they've tried with STO, and that's the only reason the Indians can afford a $70MM payroll, as ticket revenues only make them $40-$50MM)

Ultimately, that's why baseball will continue to be unfair. The MLB can't sell all of their games to a few networks and then distribute that money like the NFL. Because there's no network clamoring to take on the thousands of games that would entail, especially when that would mean that that network would have to devote a huge block of programming time every...single...day over 6 months (and that's true whether they take 1 game/day or if th ...

I agree with a lot of your points, I just felt that the comparison Maher was making wasn't as cut and dry as he wanted it to be. The fact is that spending a ton of money doesn't guarantee you success. It certainly does help and it did get harder for smaller to medium sized teams to succeed through the generically termed "moneyball" approach once big spenders started to spend big on those types of players. But teams like the Cubs and Mets have been spending gobs of money over the last decade and it hasn't brought them any more success than some smaller spending yet well run clubs like the Diamondbacks, Rockies or Rays. In fact, only three of the teams in the top ten of payroll (Yankees, Phillies, Tigers) made the playoffs last year and two of the bottom ten of payroll made the playoffs (Arizona, Tampa Bay). I would say that there has been a recent push back against the types of contracts Pujols and Fielder signed this off season now that there is more than a decade of stats available to analyze the long term value those contracts have had.

I also feel it's unfair to put the Twins in the category of teams who can't afford to spend much. They had the 9th highest payroll last year. The Twins were dumb enough to throw a huge, long term contract to a catcher. I know the common retort would be to say that if they hadn't, someone else would have, but then it would have been their mistake, not yours.

And the other thing that we always forget as fans is that sports are a job to these players. I don't think the players would trade the potential they have to make gobs of money for a "fair" system.

lacydog: There are some points to be made about the difference between the NFL and MLB, but it doesn't quite so simply as "Socialism vs. Free Market"

This is pretty much my point as well. I felt his summation ignored the difference between the sports in terms of the realities of the game, the structure of the media involvement and the relative supply and demand of each sport.

If he really wanted a sport which examined the shady practices of owners and had good comparisons to how certain powerful individuals are gaming the system he should have gone with the NBA.

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intelligent comment below: I find it funny in a land full of rabid capitalists, they demand their sports to be extremely socialist. Football (soccer) is pure capitalism in the rest of the world, especially popular in very socialist countries. Really says something about the American mindset. They love them some socialism and they don't even know it.

Well, when it's something they care about like their team, they love it. But when it's about something they can't see the value in such as making sure everyone around them is healthy and educated without being ruined by massive debt they sort of tune out.

/FWIW I like Bill Maher