Conspiracy in the NHL: Bet(man) on It.

That loud bang that you heard in the basement of that dank room was the sound of the conspiracy theory machine being started up for the first time in a while.

Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory. That is why there are a million different conspiracy theories surrounding the death of President Kennedy; well that and the incredibly sketchy circumstances surrounding his death, but that’s for another day. Conspiracies are the same thing as rumors. Well, conspiracies are like rumors if those rumors were on steroids while drinking red bull and taking a bath in HGH.

Today the conspiracy theory machine is here to tackle the ineptitude behind the NHL lockout. Since Commissioner Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr seem to have their heads so far up their hindquarters that they can’t even talk about ending the lockout, it is impossible to keep the conspiracies away.

Here is the best theory the machine came up with and one that makes the “Killer KGB” theory look stupid: Bettman was planted to run the NHL by NBA commissioner David Stern in order to single handedly ruin the sport.

Now before you try to find where the conspiracy theory machine and go all office space on it, consider the following.

Bettman was first brought into the NBA in 1981 to serve in the league offices as a marketing and legal consultant. The Betts also eventually rose to third in command in the NBA before finally placing himself as the personal assistant and Senior Vice President of Commissioner Stern.

On February 1, 1993, the NHL hired an executive search firm to help find a new commissioner, wait for it, at the exact same time that then president Gil Stein was appointed NHL president. Since Stein did not have the best interests of the owners at heart the NHL, hockey decides to look for a new face to run the league. An article by Joe Lapointe of The New York Times explains that Bettman is brought in order to “modernize the views of the ‘old-guard’ within the ownership ranks”

Bettman was elected to be the league’s first commissioner by the NHL governors at the end of 1992 and Stein bowed out of the race to be the first commissioner in order to avoid a destructive battle with the league. So Bettman now has the power of the NHL president and one year after getting hired by the NHL, the 1994-1995 lockout that lasted 104 days happens.

Meanwhile in the NBA during that time there were a couple of major events in the sport. While the NHL was locked out in 1994-1995, Michael Jordan came out of retirement and began his second assent to greatness, Moses Malone retired, the Celtics played their last season in the Boston Garden, and Hakeem Olajuwon’s Houston Rockets beat Patrick Ewing’s New York Knicks in the NBA Finals.

The Rockets Knicks NBA Finals scored a Nielsen Rating of 12.4 when Bettman locked out the players in 1994-1995. As we all know, Jordan began to run rampant in the NBA shortly after and it saw ratings that touched the moon on the way into space.

Today, Bettman has his league in its third elongated work stoppage during his tenure and the NBA is enjoying the apex of LeBron James’ career.

So Stern screwed over his main competition for weekly ratings by planning a mole (Bettman) in the sport to destroy it from the inside out.

Seems legit.

Tied Up

          

            Well this is awkward.

           

            The San Francisco 49ers and Saint Louis Rams somehow played 75 minutes of football and nobody won. They each made big plays, scored points, and made defensive stops, yet the final score was 24-24. This phenomenon has not happened since 2008 when the Eagles and Bengals were done playing with the score 13-13.

            Ties are more awkward than a guy’s first contraceptive purchase. They are more baffling than trying to explain the birds and the bees to your eleven year old son.

You don’t know how to react to a tie as a fan because you can’t really be mad at the result one way or another. People paid good money to watch a football game that ended without a tangible result. Although in the case of San Francisco, they will probably have more questions than answers about them because they were big time favorites to beat the Rams.

            And the post game press conferences are just open ended venting sessions that don’t make sense.

            Ties are a journalist’s nightmare. When a team wins or loses, writers are dependent on portraying the causes that lead to the results. Causes and effects fuel journalism stories like diesel fuel fuels a Mercedes.

            However, ties are the journalistic equivalent of putting gas in a car and having the car stall out after driving it on the highway for 50 miles. You know that you were either supposed to get to your destination fine, or something would lead to you getting lost. But

stalling out is just awkward because you don’t know what lead to this result; ties work the exact same way.

            Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of good stuff that can be taken away from this game. This tie made Alex Smith suddenly a lot more valuable as a quarterback because without him, the 49ers can’t even beat the Rams. The young Rams team played well against presumably one of the best teams in the NFC. And Colin Kapernick is not and will never be an NFL starter because he can’t even beat the Rams.

            Still, looking at all angles a tie in a professional sporting event should not happen nor should it be allowed to happen. Yes there is the overwhelming argument of player safety and if the NFL actually gave a damn about the players it would be a valid argument. But the average NFL player gets paid an average of 1.9 million dollars a year to produce wins not ties. Simply put, the players and coaches are making too much money for a nine billion dollar industry to give out a half baked result like a tie.

            Ties leave both teams with more questions than answers. So it makes sense to ask to ask why the NFL even bothers letting ties exist at all. Well if they want to be awkward let them its’ their loss…err win….no wait tie.

            Yup. It’s still awkward. 

Don't Wait

Patience is by in large a good thing. Patience teaches your young sibling that the line does not move faster by yelling at it. Patience helps you keep a level head when your crush doesn’t text you back in .039486572 seconds.       

Yet in college football today, patience is meaningless. We don’t have to wait two years to get rid of the BCS when we are on the verge of another national champion controversy.

The four team playoff system that will restore the integrity of competition in college football will be implemented in 2014, not 2012. However, with Alabama, Kansas State, Oregon, and Notre Dame all 9-0 college football appears on the verge of another title snubbing season.

Here is a crazy idea that the FBS should consider, install the new format this season. Waiting for two years to install a system tailor made to solve the issue of today simply is stupid.

For the love of whatever deity you may or may not believe in, the new playoff is what the fans want.

College football fans want to see if the Irish can win a title for the first time since the Reagan administration. The fans who love the sport want to see if Optimums Kline (which by the way is one of the five best nicknames in sports today) can run against the vaunted defense of Alabama. And pundits across the sport want to see if anybody can stop Oregon, a team that seems to only recruit guys who can run the 40 yard dash in 4.35 seconds.

Suppose for a second all four teams go undefeated, then the computers will be left to determine who plays for a national championship and who gets hosed. And that is no way to determine who wins any sport.

Now the BCS could get lucky again. They faced a similar issue in 2002 when seven of the top ten teams in college football went undefeated through the first week of Nov. When that first weekend of Nov came around, four of the seven unbeaten teams lost. The controversy was settled when the last extra unbeaten fell and undefeated Miami played undefeated Ohio State in the ‘Willis McGahee-blew-out-his-knee’ national title game.

But we could get a collegiate catastrophe, again. It’s hard to forget when the Tigers of Auburn finished without a loss in 2004, but because of the computers, USC played Oklahoma for the national title. And an undefeated team did not even play for the right to call themselves champions.

The chances of more than two undefeated teams are slim, yet those who run college football should not even consider letting that happen again.

So put the four team playoff format in now, those in college football don’t have to be patient here.