Owners not believable when crying poverty

The players, we all get.

Doesn't take a nuclear physicist to know there's something wrong with guys like Ryan Howard or Joe Mauer pocketing $1 million or so every two weeks to play a kid's game. Easy to understand that a role player on the Orlando Magic getting $19 million over three years is terribly out of whack with today's economic realities.

Obscene salaries haven't ruined sports, but they've taken some of the fun from them. We're reminded every time a player switches teams for more money that it's a business more than a game.

All along, though, we were secure in the knowledge that the owners had plenty to pay them with. These are all rich guys, after all, who mostly got that way because they knew ways to make money none of us has figured out.

That's why NFL fans are often held hostage to pay thousands just for the right to buy a seat. It's why the Yankees can build the most expensive baseball stadium ever, then charge the most expensive prices to sit in it.

Apparently they're not as smart as we think. Turns out they've been giving away the store all along.

They're crying poverty in NBA, warning of dire times in the NFL. Things are so bad they're willing to cancel games, even seasons, to restore some sanity to their payrolls.

We've seen this act before. The NHL canceled an entire season just to gain control over player salaries that owners contended were bankrupting the league.

But that was hockey, and not many people noticed. Come next year they will, though, with lockouts possible in both the NFL and NBA.

The campaign has already begun on both sides to hold the other responsible for any disruption of play. In that competition, owners will always have the upper hand because most fans think millionaire players are overpaid anyway.

Just to make sure, though, the leagues are starting to step up their game.

In Green Bay, home of the only publicly owned NFL team, Packers executives blamed escalating salaries this week for the team's profit dropping to $9.8 million over the last year. Player costs are rising faster than revenues, they warned, a trend that even bloated television contracts can't make up for.

Barely mentioned, though, was that the team has $127 million in the bank and that the team could almost pay its $161 million in player costs without selling a ticket because of its share of the league's national television and advertising contracts. Not mentioned at all is that the Packers are the smallest of the small-market teams and don't have nearly the local revenue of, say, the New York Giants or Dallas Cowboys, yet were still able to turn a profit.

The Indiana Pacers, meanwhile, are apparently so desperate for cash that they got the city to agree this week to give them $10 million a year to help maintain Conseco Fieldhouse. That's the same arena Indiana taxpayers built for billionaire owner Herb Simon to begin with so his team would have a nice place to play downtown.

The place where the Golden State Warriors play in Oakland isn't nearly as nice. But that didn't stop new owners from getting in a bidding war and paying a league record $450 million a few days ago to buy the team - nearly four times what it sold for just 15 years earlier.

An astonishing investment considering NBA commissioner David Stern claims that owners will lose nearly $400 million this year alone in his league.

There are also a lot of other bidders standing in line trying to buy the Texas Rangers. And, if an NFL team ever came on the market, billionaires would be sharpening their elbows to get a piece of the action.

Indeed, at the same time owners are crying poverty, others are waiting in line ready to take their place. Even in a down economy there's no shortage of potential buyers for even the dowdiest of franchises.

It's easy to see why. Owning a big sports franchise is the ultimate ego trip (see Jerry Jones) that can instantly transform the average billionaire into a prominent community leader (see the new owner of the Chicago Cubs).

And while they may not be cash cows year to year, they do make money. Not only that, the franchises of the major sports come with guaranteed income streams from lucrative national television contracts.

Not every owner makes out like the late George Steinbrenner, who parlayed an $8.7 million investment into a franchise worth $1.6 billion. But team values have been rising steadily for the better part of the last two decades, and there's no reason to think they won't continue to appreciate.

That being said, you can still expect to hear owners crying poor over the upcoming months. There will be somber talk about the terrible consequences of not reining in player salaries in new collective bargaining agreements.

Feel their pain, if you must. But start believing them about the same time they start unloading their teams.

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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org