Oct. 30, 2007
by Matt DaSilva, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
Dear Creator,
I hereby tender my resignation from your sport, due to those who have done their best to turn it into a joke.
I got played. Egg on my face. I thought that the commissioner of the National Lacrosse League meant what he said Oct. 16 - that there was "no hope" for a 2008 season; that it was an "impossibility" because the league could not reach a collective bargaining agreement with its players; that owners had been told to release their arena dates.
So I hustled post-deadline and did my best to include coverage of this landmark decision in the November issue of Lacrosse magazine, which hits doorsteps now only after Jim Jennings turned around nine days later to say, in essence, "just kidding."
I'm sure most lacrosse enthusiasts rejoiced Oct. 25, when the NLL announced it had, in fact, agreed to a seven-year deal with the Professional Lacrosse Players' Association. Owners urged the league to reopen negotiations three days after the league's deadline, citing fan response.
But outside this little lacrosse community, people are laughing.
It's not Jennings' fault, necessarily. He operates on behalf of his owners. If they drive a hard line, he must tow it. If they slacken, he looks weak.
Still, the events of the past month have exposed a crucial communication barrier between the powers that be in professional lacrosse, and the image of our sport has suffered.
If Jennings knew there was even the slightest chance to reinstate the 2008 season, he should have said so. What kind of message does this send to people who never knew of professional lacrosse in the first place? Believe me, there were those (with lives, presumably) who never heard mum about the sport until their media outlets reported this alleged cancellation.
Take 38-year-old Pasquale Guarino of Selden, N.Y. Upon reading in Newsday and seeing on TV that the New York Titans would not be playing in 2008, he called his brother Peter, a buddy of mine, and asked in his thick Long Island accent: "Yo, is Matt gonna be out of a job?"
Peter told me this during a camping trip the following weekend in the Catoctin Mountains of Western Maryland. We laughed, of course. Pasquale is always saying obtuse things like that. It probably wasn't fair, however. He couldn't care less about lacrosse. He knew I was associated with lacrosse and that a professional lacrosse league was dumping the season.
Now that the NLL has performed the most public flip-flop the sport has seen since Northwestern's 2005 trip to the White House, we're all guilty by association.
It's embarrassing, really. I can only imagine what Pasquale will say if and when he finds out that the Titans and their league are back on for 2008, and that his beloved New York Rangers will again share the world's most famous arena with a fringe sport begging for legitimacy in the public eye.
What kind of operation is this?
I won't have an answer. Too many ultimatums retracted and promises broken (NLL2? NLL Outdoor Showcase?) have forced us all into cynicism and skepticism.
There is always the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" argument. After all, would ESPN.com and SI.com have reported the NLL season's reinstatement had it not been cancelled in the first place? Not a chance.
"It's not good," one NLL player said of the league's reputed indecision. "You know what, though? It's publicity. Everyone wrote that it was cancelled; now they'll write that it's back on. Someone who never heard of the league before will have heard about it twice in two weeks."
During a media conference call following the season's reinstatement, Jennings refuted that the cancellation was a negotiating ploy or a PR stunt.
"It was as dead as dead can be," he said. "I'm glad that we're here and I'm glad that I was wrong."
"We don't know what the season is going to look like. We don't know which teams are going to participate, and we don't know how many games will be played," Jennings added. "There are too many variables up in the air right now. We just got this thing done in the middle of the night last night."
That's a great way to treat your fans, owners. Mislead them to think there won't be a season, and then tell them upon salvaging it that you don't know if their team will be among the casualties of your incompetence. That's not to mention how it makes your commissioner look misinformed.
(For what it's worth, reports are that Boston is the only team considering pulling the plug for 2008.)
Provided it gets back into its arenas, who knows if the NLL will be back on TV, either? The NLL's high-wire act already caused Versus not to renew its "Game of the Week" package for 2008.
Oh, and the $870,000 in player benefits the PLPA reports it is owed by the NLL for the 2006 season? That will go to arbitration "in good faith," NLL deputy commissioner George Daniel said.
Good faith no longer exists in this league. I'll stand by what I wrote in this space a week ago: Canceling the 2008 season was bad for the NLL. Reinstating it, under these uncertain terms, was worse.
Consider this my two weeks notice.
Regards,
Matt DaSilva
P.S.: When does spring practice start?
