When Nick Saban was lured away from Miami to resurrect Crimson Tide football, he was lured by a contract that was said to be the richest ever offered to a NCAA football coach. Whether that remained true before this season, I’m not sure, but Saban’s guaranteed base salary, before bonuses, of $3,750,000 puts him ahead of Mack Brown, who is the Big XII highest paid coach, when bonuses are not included. Brown’s base salary is $2,900,000.

It’s the bonuses, however, that separate the truly well paid from just the run of the mill high paid and when it comes to including one year pay from all sources, it’s going to be hard to beat Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops. Stoops’ base salary is $2, 775,000 and he has earned an additional $350,000 in performance bonuses so far this year with, of course, one big game left to play. A win in the BCS Championship Game is worth an additional $250,000. In addition, Stoops will earn tonight a bonus of $3,000,000 for having served as coach at Oklahoma for 10 years. That brings Stoops total pay for 2008 (without the bonus for the BCS win) to $6,110,000. Bob Stoops, college football’s first $6 million man.

It’s the end of the year, and although I’m still trying to recover from the pain of last night’s Valero Alamo Bowl loss to Missouri (why oh why did you ever punt to Maclin at the end of the first half????), I thought it would an interesting exercise and somewhat obligatory blog post, to come up with a list of the top ten sports business stories of 2008. Of course, this list is totally arbitrary, so feel free to add your own in the comments. Without further adieu, on to the top stories:

10. ESPN Buys the World. This is really part of an ongoing trend, as were several of the top stories, which in this case, saw ESPN gain rights to properties it had been dreaming of for years, including the British Open and, together with its corporate sibling, ABC, all of the BCS bowls.

9. Flight of the Sonics to Oklahoma City. After 40 years in Seattle, the Sonics left for greener pastures in the midlands of OKC. Let’s see how well the small market experiment works in five to ten years.

8. Merger of Champ Car and IRL. After 13 years of disastrous competition that nearly destroyed open wheeled racing in this country, and with it the Indy 500, Champ Car and IRL finally merged. Let’s hope it’s not too late, especially given the perilous state of the auto industry.

7. Horse Racings Season of Tragedy and Questions. With the breakdown of Eight Belles in the Derby and the question of performance enhancing drugs dogging Derby winner Big Brown, horse racing found itself in the public’s eye for all the wrong reasons.

6. Tiger Wins Open then Disappears. Tiger Woods demonstrates once again that he is in a class all his own both on the course and as a draw, first for gutting out an amazing US Open win and then leaving the Tour for the rest of the year to recuperate from injury. The Tour survived his absence but it was clearly felt.

5. Increasing Globalization of Professional Sports. From Americans purchasing English Premier League Clubs, to the NFL playing regular season games in London and Toronto, 2008 saw professional sports become more and more a global enterprise, a trend which promises to accelerate rapidly in 2009 and beyond.

4. Anheuser-Busch Is Sold. Anheuser-Busch, the largest brewing company in America and, by far, the largest sports advertiser in the US and perhaps the world, to the tune of some $500 million, is sold to InBev, a Belgian/Brazilian beer conglomerate. InBev has a very different marketing philosophy and it remains to be seen how A-B’s relationship to the sports world will evolve.

3. Michael Phelps Wins Eight Gold Medals. Michael Phelps wins eight gold medals, live in most of the US and in truly dramatic television enthralling most of the country. Phelps returns from Beijing a hero and probably swimming’s first $100 million man.

2. The Beijing Olympics. The Games prove to be an artistic, sports and business success as first swimming, then beach volleyball and gymnastics produce huge audiences for NBC. In addition, NBC’s strategy of pushing out coverage of the Games through its website also proves highly successful and likely sets the pattern for future coverage, most certainly for Vancouver 2010.

1. Impact of the Global Recession. Sports is far from immune to the effects of the global recession/depression that we are now experiencing, as everything from naming rights and sponsorships to ticket prices, concessions and attendance is adversely affected, in some cases (Arena Football League) threatening the very viability of the sport. The impact on sports is heightened this time due to the concentration of financial firms in sports sponsorship and the steady disappearance or severe contraction of those firms in this recession/depression. This trend will definitely continue through much of 2009 as the recession/depression is likely to continue through at least the third quarter of 2009.

The response of baseball owners to the Yankees unprecedented free agent spending spree continues as another owner has joined the call for a salary cap. The difference this time is that the owner does not represent a small market club as did most of those who pushed for a cap in the past and as does Mark Anastasio of the Milwaukee Brewers who was the first to call for one this time around. Count Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane in the salary cap camp. In fact, he believes one would already be in place were it not for the opposition of the players union. “We would love to have a salary cap, but the (players’) union has been very resistant to that,” McLane said this past week.

Of course, opposition by the players union is a formidable obstacle to the imposition of a cap since it can’t be imposed unilaterally but must be a part of a collective bargaining agreement. The Players Association believes that the Yankees free spending drives up salaries throughout baseball, although I’m not convinced that is really the case. I’ll concede that the salaries of the stars have risen out of all proportion to any reality, but what about those on the middle rungs? When all the money is being doled out at the top, is there enough left to spread around the middle?

Opposition to a cap generally also takes the form of: “baseball has competitive balance, so who needs a cap? Just look at the number of different World Series participants, the number of small market/small payroll participants and how long has it been since the Yankees won it.” All of these points are valid but they miss the fundamental point. It is bad for the game when the Yankees, and to a somewhat lesser extent the Red Sox and the Mets, are essentially guaranteed right of first refusal to any free agent that hits the market. Sure, the Rays can happen in any given year, but no team can build consistent and long-term success when its best players can leave for pinstriped shores in three years or so, just when they are hitting their prime.

The reason there have been so many different World Series competitors is that no team is able to build consistency and maintain a roster over an extended period. The Rays may actually be an exception to this as they have aggressively attempted to sign their young players to long-term deals, but unless Tampa Bay gets a new stadium built, and soon, even those attempts will fall apart in a couple of years. Without a cap to rein in big spending teams, there is no hope for small market teams to keep their best players beyond free agency, or at least more than a couple of them. That cannot be good for the long term competitive health of the game no matter how many ways New Yorkers try to spin it.

I guess you really can have too much of paradise. The NFL is moving the Pro Bowl to Miami after holding the game in Hawai’i every year since 1980. The game has traditionally been held the week following the Super Bowl but will be moved up to the week before, falling on the Sunday between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl. In 2010, both games will be held in Dolphins Stadium and the Pro Bowl will likely rotate in the future, with a strong possibility that it will return to Hawai’i in alternate years.

This will likely turn out to be a good move as the game is now an afterthought for everyone but the players that play in it. For them, it is a nice end of season trip to Hawai’i for their families and playing in a game that no one cares about or many watch. By moving it into the dead week before the Super Bowl, the NFL fills in that week, helps create more excitement in the host city about the Super Bowl, if that’s possible, and create more of a week-plus long celebration of the league as it counts down to the Big Game (oops, sorry Cal & Stanford, I forgot your copyright). “Moving the Pro Bowl to the Sunday prior to the Super Bowl can add even more excitement to Super Bowl week, one of the most anticipated weeks of the year,” said Frank Supovitz, the NFL’s senior vice president of events.

I have never really understood the reason for the extra week off anyway. I guess the downside is for those players on the Super Bowl teams elected to the Pro Bowl, they won’t be able to participate but most of them don’t go anyway. They’re generally too exhausted or banged up after the Super Bowl to play in the Pro Bowl as it is.

As if the Arena Football League didn’t have enough problems, what with suspending its season next year, now one of its television broadcast partners has filed suit against it alleging the league owes over $1 million dollars in advertising costs. NBC filed suit in New York State Supreme Court claiming that the AFL owes it $$1,597,320 in revenue sharing from advertising from the 2006 season. It’s probably a pretty fair bet that the league doesn’t have the money to pay if it truly is owed.

For another perspective on the madness inherent in allowing the Yankees to buy up baseball while still going to the City of New York on bended knee for subsidies for New Yankee Stadium, please see this commentary.

The newspaper business has had more than its fair share of problems the last few years and they have only been exacerbated by the recession. No paper has been immune from the falloff in print readership and accompanying decline in advertising, including the venerable New York Times. In an effort to salvage the flagship Times, executives of the parent company have been examining all assets of the company and targeting any “nonessential” assets for the sale block.

Among the company’s nonessential assets apparently is a 17.5% in New England Sports Ventures, the partnership put together by John Henry that purchased the Red Sox in 2002, along with Fenway Park and an 80% interest in NESN, the regional sports network. The Times is now shopping that partnership interest Barclay’s Capital has pegged the value of the interest at $166 million, although in a better market it could easily be worth much more. The Company is said to be seeking $300 million, which seems a bit on the high side, particularly in this business climate. The Sox are however, a unique asset even for baseball.

The Times might package the interest with the Boston Globe in an attempt at a better price. The Times rebuffed inquiries from Jack Welch two years ago valuing the Globe at $550 to $600 million, a decision I’m sure is much regretted now. Barcaly’s values the Globe today at only $20 million, after incurring steep losses.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s grand Sun Belt expansion strategy has been troubled for several years now, as attendance at the Southern US franchises has been, well, less than one would hope in a league where a team’s financial success is driven by ticket sales. Nowhere has that been more evident than in Phoenix.

The Coyotes financial problems have gotten so bad, the team has turned to the NHL for help in meeting its payroll. According to a story in the Toronto Globe and Mail, the NHL is advancing the Coyotes’ share of shared revenue to ensure that the team is able to meet its payroll and other obligations timely. The Coyotes have no other lending source as the team’s entire assets and all revenue have been pledged to secure a loan from a hedge fund controlled by Dell Computer founder Michael Dell. The team is expected to lose $30 million this year following losses totalling as much as $200 million since the current owners bought the team in 2001.

The principal owner, Jerry Moyes, is actively seeking a buyer for the club. One difficulty is the team’s lease of its current home in Glendale. The arena is new and the club has a 30 year lease which is only breakable in bankruptcy. The team and the city are currently renegotiating the terms of the lease, but most revenue streams from the arena now go to the club, so there is precious little room for improvement. That also means, short of pitching the team into bankruptcy and the new owners then buying the club out of bankruptcy in order to move it, there is little chance the club can move.

Without relocation, there is little likelihood the club will survive. Phoenix is not a particularly good hockey town town – who thought sticking a team in the desert was a good idea anyway – and the location of the arena in Glendale away from everything makes success more difficult. The club should be moved back to either its former home in Calgary or to Hamilton, Ontario which desperately wants a club and would be able to support one in the manner in which a NHL club is deserving. Maybe then, The Great One will be able to get a club with players and fan support worthy of his nickname and we’ll all learn whether he can really coach.

With the wholly expected signing of Mark Teixeira to an eight year, $180 million deal today, the Yankees now own the four highest active major league contracts. This is only the third big free agent contract the Yanks have signed this off-season, in response to not making the playoffs this past year. The Bombers signed pitcher C. C. Sabathia to a seven year, $161 million deal and A.J. Burnett to five years for $82.5 million. That’s three players for a combined $424 million. Granted, the Yanks move into the new $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium this spring, but that’s a big number even for them.

Clearly, the luxury tax hasn’t fazed the Steinbrenner boys anymore than it fazed their father. The Yankees have been over the cap every year that the tax has been levied and have been responsible for 90% of the money (a total of $148.5 million, counting this year) paid in as a result of the rule. This year, the Yankees owe $26.9 million, up from last year’s $23.9 million and that was for a team which failed to make the playoffs. Despite that, the Yankees’ payroll keeps expanding and the disparity between it and the rest of Major League Baseball keeps growing. As it is, only the Mets and the Red Sox can even pretend to keep pace, and even they have their limits.

Baseball is the only major sport without a salary cap and the results of this year’s free agent market make the case for a cap more clearly than any argument concocted by any sports writer or any owner of a small market team ever could. Try these numbers on for size. Take the salaries of just the Yankees top four in A-Rod, Jeter, Sabathia and Teixeira and you get $91.9 million next year. That is higher than the entire payrolls of 17 teams in Major League Baseball. How in the world can than possibly be good for the game, even if through injuries, bad luck , mismanagement or bad play, the Yankees fail to perform. At the end of the day, success in the World Series is not usually the determining factor in fan attendance or support of a local team. Winning helps immensely, but that means contending for a division title or playoff spot.

If baseball doesn’t take measures more concrete than the luxury tax currently in force, the small market teams will not be in a position to keep talent on their rosters once those players attain eligibility for free agency. The drumbeat is starting. Brewers owner, Mark Anastasio, is advocating a salary cap. He told Bloomberg: “They are on a completely different economic playing field. I paid $220 million for my team; now they get three players for $420 million.
At some point it gets to be absurd when a team has a $200 million payroll.” He also said that the Brewers would not be raising their $81 million payroll next season due to the recession.

ABC enjoyed record ratings for college football this fall, more than making up for a very slight dip in ratings from its cable overlords at ESPN. Over the course of the season, ABC was up over 7% from last year, averaging 6.25 million viewers. It’s largest audience came for the thriller between Texas and Texas Tech, a game that Longhorns fans will be trying to forget decades from now.

ESPN saw a slight decrease in viewers, down 3% from last year, while sibling ESPN2 was up slightly with just a .5% increase. Given the glut of games across the WWLS and its corporate family, I have to believe the suits in Bristol are happy with these numbers, as they show the continuing ability of college football to deliver solid audience numbers in an era when few TV properties can claim to do that.

CBS numbers for its SEC broadcasts were down 4.7 percent, averaging 5.1 million viewers, led by the nation’s most watched game, with 15.1 viewers, the SEC Championship Game. CBS should be a bit concerned since slippage of this magnitude in a highly competitive SEC season may show that some of the bloom is coming off the SEC magnolia.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the same cannot be said of Notre Dame. No matter how poor a product that Crewcut puts on the field, golden domers around the country tune in by the millions. NBC’s ratings for ND games were up a spectacular 21.3% this season. No wonder NBC reupped its contract. That also explains the otherwise unjustifiable bid to the Hawai’i Bowl.