Don't believe me? Just ask Lovie Smith.
According to one source, recent contract talks between Smith’s agent Frank Bauer and Bears team president Ted Phillips have left the two parties "miles apart." For penny-pinching Chicago owners, it's just another chapter in a long, shameful history.
Take the Tribune Company, which bought the Cubs in 1981 for the unbelievably low sum of $21 million. Only recently has the Tribune started to reinvest its profits on the field. For twenty years, company brass had no problem pocketing the money of dedicated fans who were willing to support mediocre teams—and even stooped to a price-raising ticket-brokerage scam along the way.
Jerry Reinsdorf, majority owner of the Bulls and White Sox, gets a free pass because of his seven championship rings. But let's not forget that he was one of the primary architects of the 1994 MLB strike—even though his team had the best record in the majors and was the odds-on favorite to win the World Series.
Reinsdorf also signed off on former GM Jerry Krause's decision to dismantle the Bulls after they won their sixth title in 1998. And the owner's current cost-cutting plan to purge the White Sox of nearly every pitcher from the 2005 World Series team is sickening to anyone who cares about baseball on the South Side.
But none of it compares to the exploits of Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz. Known around the NHL as “Dollar Bill," Wirtz has brought stinginess and selfishness to entirely new levels. ESPN recently ranked the Blackhawks as the worst franchise in sports, and named Wirtz the third greediest owner. His worst sin: He refuses to televise Blackhawks’ home games in Chicago. Add in a complete disregard for basic business ethics—the 1999 Illinois Wine and Spirits Fair Dealings Act is also known as the “Wirtz Law”, and was inspired by the owner's power-abusing liquor company—and you have the worst person to ever run a professional sports team.
And trust me, it's not even close.
Now, Ted Phillips and the McCaskey family (majority owners of the Bears) can't hold a candle to Wirtz's money-grubbing, but their handling of the Smith negotiations makes you wonder if they've been taking deal-making advice from ol' Dollar Bill.
Smith was paid $1.3 million in 2006, which garnered him the inglorious title of Lowest Paid Head Coach in the NFL. He is set to hold that position again with a contract worth $1.45 million in 2007—unless the current talks take a drastic turn in the coming months.
“We’re not close,” says Bauer. “We’re not encouraged and based on where talks have gone recently, Lovie will be a free agent after next season.”
The new contracts handed to Brian Billick (five years for $28.5 million, from the Ravens) and first-time head coach Bobby Petrino (four years and $24 million, from the Falcons) prove that teams around the NFL put a premium on the men wearing the headsets.
So what are the Bears thinking? Take your pick:
“Anybody can win Coach of the Year in only his second NFL season.”
“It’s not that hard to get to the Super Bowl...we just did it 21 years ago.”
"Coaches of character and class are a dime a dozen in this league. (Someone get Nick Saban on the phone.)"
“We know what we’re doing. Look at our track record before Smith showed up...”
The bottom line here is an economic one. The supply of talented head coaches in the NFL is at a record low (just ask the Raiders). With so many teams scrambling to hire anyone with even a semblance of competence, it's understandable that contracts for coaches are more lucrative than ever. The market demands it. And what the market wants, the market gets—no matter what the cost.
“When we signed Lovie Smith, it was a market-value contract for coaches who had never been a head coach in the NFL," said Ted Phillips before the Super Bowl. “He received a fair deal.”
No one can blame the Bears for defending Lovie’s current contract—it was, at the time it was signed, a “fair deal." But that was three seasons ago, and the current market value for a young head coach with Super Bowl credentials is somewhere in the range of $4-6 million per season. If Phillips wants to fall back on the “market value” argument, he's digging himself a hole.
In any event, facts are still facts. As of this week, only a month after the Super Bowl, talks between Smith and the Bears are all but dead. And Chicago fans, once again, have been left to wonder whether management will let money come before the good of their team.
“Lovie Smith has indicated to me he wants to be head coach of the Bears for a long time,” Phillips said. “That’s my goal. That’s the organization’s goal.”
If this is true—and forgive me, as a Chicago sports fan, if I tend to question the integrity of such statements—then why balk at paying Smith what the market states he should be paid?
The answer, of course, has to do with profits, and with the fact that the McCaskeys don't want to open their wallets any more than they absolutely have to. It's the same old story in the Windy City, where at least one fan can't keep it any longer:
PAY THE MAN WHAT HE'S WORTH AND STOP BEING GREEDY FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIVES!
After all: Enough is enough, right?
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