Hockey came back this week. Canadians watched in force. Americans didn't:
The Outdoor Life Network's first telecast, a Philadelphia-New York Rangers game, was seen in 268,000 households (just barely beating “Quite Frankly,” we might add). In Los Angeles? A zero rating. Zero.
Link.
I like hockey. I've attended more Red Wings games than I can count. But I don't plan on watching much any more. I grew disgusted with professional hockey years ago when Detroit sold out its solid fans in order to attract corporate dollars and rich people so it could pay exorbitant salaries. They did it to the exclusion of ordinary folks who couldn't afford season tickets.
I suspect the corporate types and rich people will desert the Red Wings as soon as it's no longer fashionable to be seen at Joe Louis Arena, though I could be wrong. Detroit is a very strong hockey town. But I don't need to watch any more, and I don't really care whether the NHL recovers from its Armageddon strike last year.
The NHL suicide attempt fascinates me, though. The sport had great success for many years, expanded in an attempt to reach the next level of success, and then started to collapse. The money poured in, the players demanded more of it, and the seedling franchises in the weak expanded markets started to break. The owners stiffened up, and the players wouldn't back down.
And hockey turned its back on millions of fans.
I could be cant about it and say, “Too much money spoiled hockey.” I'd be partly right. Too much money, after all, pretty much spoils everything.
But a lot of money is necessary: to pay for equipment, to obtain the facilities to house 20,000 fans, to pay young men to dedicate their lives to one sport, to cover travel expenses. Without a lot of money, hockey never would have obtained the fan base and TV broadcasts that allowed it to reach guys like me, a second generation American on my father's side with no more endemic appreciation for hockey than an Algerian.
The whole hockey-money thing is, quite frankly, a snapshot of the dilemma that drives our society. We want men to act aggressively in their pursuit of money. By doing so, they create the goods that increase the wealth of all of society. Yet we also want the same men to restrain themselves so they do not poison the rest of society with greed, vanity, and vacuous pursuits. We don't want a culture in which the only thing appreciated is something with cash value, in which other items of substance–from poetry to prayer–are neglected.
Hockey didn't appreciate the dilemma. It saw only the money, hiring a new commissioner who was largely ignorant of hockey because he was a marketing whiz. It went for the money and neglected the substance. And it imploded.
