Manny, Marbury, and the Movement Toward a More Player Controlled Sports World

It’s almost Spring time, and all the stars are out in the Arizona and Florida suns to prepare for another grueling season of major league baseball. Well, almost all the stars, that is.

Instead of waking to the smell of outfield grass in the desert air of Arizona or the taste of sunflower seeds underneath the Florida sun, Manny Ramirez, along with a handful of other stubborn players are waking to the screeching sound of fax machines and the sudden jolt of a vibrating cell phone.

For them, even as we transition into Spring Training, missing practices and games leading up to the season is no matter—after all, they’ll be paid, paid handsomely, and paid what they want, no matter how enduring and drawn out the negotiations process is.

Across the sports world, Stephon Marbury is now a Boston Celtic with tens of millions of dollars in his pockets—from the Celtics’ division rival Knicks.

Despite refusing to play and displaying public dissention against management and coach D’Antoni, Marbury was paid endless sums of cash just to leave the Knicks and join a common foe of the Knicks.

In the NFL, every year there are multiple players who hold out, refuse to play, and are rewarded for it with a handsome raise.

Why is this happening? To put it simply, players and their agents are beginning to realize that teams depend on the players more than players depend on their teams.

Soon enough, sports will be run not by the fans, whose investments in the team are the backbone of sports’ financial infrastructure, not by the owners, who, well, own the teams who make up the leagues we all follow so closely, but by the employees of the game who find themselves in the spotlight and with an agent in their ear, have learned that patience and will power equal cash, and lots more of it than they probably deserve.

This, my friends, is a very scary prospect.

In a standard American factory, for example, workers may go on strike or refuse to work for a short period of time in order to receive increased wages which they find appropriate and fair.

These strikes only last for so long though, because while the factories can’t function without its workers, the workers don’t have enough money in the bank to go without work for any extended period of time.

In professional sports however, athletes have Benjamins rained down on them as if they’re in a P-Diddy music video. They can survive with a few months without fresh pay, with full knowledge that in time, big bucks will be in their hands again.

Business must be cooperative to thrive and survive, and when one end of the business spectrum gains the upper hand...well, you've got problems.

Sure, we’re in one of the worst economic recessions our nation has ever seen, and 15 NBA teams are receiving loans worth over 10 million dollars each to make ends meet, but players just must buy that diamond studded toilet paper.

The divide between middle America and the glitz and glam of professional athletes is as wide as ever, and while athletes are completely aware of how to take advantage of the dependence organizations have on them, they are oblivious to what the world around them holds.

Fans will continue to pay more for tickets and merchandise so that stars can get that 7th beach house, and owners will continue to raise the prices even more to make sure that their own sources of income—yes, us fans, are raking out their meal money for a chance to witness the most overpaid people in the world entertain.

At what point does this system collapse? America keeps getting poorer, and the rich keep getting exponentially richer. Eventually, there will be no money to move around, and these seemingly invincible leagues will fold.

So let’s continue to laugh off Manny being Manny and Steph being Steph, as they get paid huge sums for being unprofessional and greedy. We’ll see who’s laughing when the leagues that bring us fans so much joy go by way of the XFL.

In our modern world of sports, Ramirez and Marbury are among the many players and agents who are changing the game in their financial favor. It’s hard to say who can, and will, stop the direction we’re headed in, but until someone does, the future of sports is not as bright as that of the athletes who play it.

That, sports fans of America, is not a promising tomorrow.

Originally written by Conor at Real Sports Talk Forums