Pro Sports

It seems absurd that professional sports represent a major growth sector for future jobs, given the U.S. population of 300 million, not to mention the global population of 6 billion. Surely the number of professional atheletes won't rise to a number that is statistically much different than zero in the scheme of things. Even in a world with 100,000 pro atheletes, it is not a realistic proposition that this is a growth sector worth spending much time considering.

That was my thinking before the 232-day baseball strike that led to the cancellation of over 900 games, including the entire post-season and World Series in 1994. That strike hurt more than players and owners. It hurt the workers who sold hot dogs and cold beer in the stands. It hurt neighborhood restaurants and hotels and their workers. It hurt TV moguls!

The whole universe of professional sports employment is multiple times larger than the mere number of players. Armies of coaches, scouts, trainers, media analysts, camera crews, highlight voiceover actors, writers ... even bloggers.

Just consider the television contracts for the National Basketball Association. CBS paid $27 million for the rights to broadcast NBA games during the three seasons of 1973-1975 (ending in the spring of 1976). The current contract gives ABC/ESPN/TNT the network/cable rights for just under $8 billion over the next eight years. A billion a year paid to broadcast something that cost 9 million a year when I was just a boy. I put the numbers for previous contracts back to 1973 (Hat Tip insidehoops.com) in this chart just to see the trend for my own lying eyes to disbelieve:

Granted, in real dollar terms, $1 billion is still not much of a splash in a $14312.5  billion nation. That represents 0.007 percent of the economy. Which of course doesn't include player salaries, coaching and staff, sponsorship deals, tickets, concessions, merchandising, and so on.

And this is just the NBA.  Don't forget Tennis, Football (pro and semi-college-pro), Baseball, Soccer, etcetera, etcetera. Help me out here ... can we get up to 0.1 percent of the economy you think? (ed: Easily, just add stadium deals). Another way to think of it: why let Congress bail out Wall Street when for $700 billion it could easily pay for seven centuries of NBA games instead? 

OK, get serious.  Here's what I am looking for: advice on books. 

Best sports book I have ever read to date is Halberstam's "Playing for Keeps," though "Moneyball" by Michael Lews is in a completely different league.  Not meant as a pun, I swear. Both great. 

What else should I be reading, fellow sports fans? On my potential list are:

• Bowls, Polls, and Tattered Souls by SI's Mandel
• How Soccer Explains the World by Foer
• The Blind Side by Lewis
• The Work of Professional Football (Soccer) by Roderick
• The Meaning of Sports by Mandelbaum

Comments

[Charlie Poole]

Best soccer book ever written: "Among the Thugs" by Bill Buford.

[Charlie Poole]

Best soccer book ever written: "Among the Thugs" by Bill Buford.

[Cameron Cushman]

Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger -- not only a story of west Texas high school football, but also an interesting economic account of weatlh and poverty in the boom-bust economies of mid-sized oil towns.

[Scott]

If you liked Moneyball, give Wages of Wins by David Berri a try. Its about roughly the same thing, bringing real statistical analysis to sports. He touches on all sports, but he concentrates on Basketball.

[NewsToTom]

I did a review of Mandel's book that I like to think is halfway decent (see link in name). Friday Night Lights by Bissinger, recommended above, is a good one, particularly when it comes to sports in the context of society. The best book on pro football is Michael MacCambridge's America's Game. I didn't think The Blind Side was nearly as good as Moneyball. Foer's book was one of those that had its genesis in a reasonably interesting magazine article, but doesn't have enough content and/or thesis to make a decent book.

[Gaming Mouse]

Wages of Wins was...meh. I gave it a brief skim a while back, and was unimpressed. A good one I liked, though, was "The Book Playing the Percentages in Baseball" by Tom Tango.

-Ted