Let's make the players pay

Have you guys heard about this story? A pro soccer team in the Czech Republic has stunk up its season so royally that team officials made the players pay for fans' tickets to the game last Saturday.

Team Sigma Olomouc (don't ask me how to pronounce that) was so embarrassed by its 2-5-5 start that officials decided they needed to punish the players for not performing. And what better way to do it than to make then foot the bill for their fans?

According to an AP report, everyone got a free ticket into the stadium, which can hold up to 12,119 people. Tickets go for about $1.70 apiece, so a sellout crowd would cost the players a combined $20,000, give or take. For a professional athlete here in the good ol' US of A, $20,000 is chump change. They buy jewelry that costs more than that. Hell, they could buy toilet paper that cost more than that if they wanted to.

But over there the Czech Republic, where men are men and a cheeseburger's a cheeseburger, pro soccer players make an average yearly salary of about $5,900. $5,900!! That's .0002 percent of what A-Rod made this year. You can't even buy a car for that much money. You can barely even buy tires for that much money!

If you figure that there are maybe 20 players on this Czech team; that means that each one will have to pay around $1,000. That's 16 percent of their yearly salary. That's a HUGE chunk of your pay to give up just because you've been playing lousy.

In the AP report, club chairman Jiri Kubicek said "We were wondering how best to punish players who are paid royally but play lousily." Royally? Now, I don't really know too much about what goes on over in the Czech Republic, and I don't know how much $5,900 is over there. But something tells me that $5,900 there is nowhere near what $5,000,000 is in the United States. Call me crazy.

And these players who are getting paid "royally" aren't even complaining! Is this some kind of twilight zone? After officials announced the punishment, the team captain said "None of us even thought about grumbling. We hope the stadium will be packed. We want the fans back on our side."

Ahhh. Isn't that music to your ears? We want the fans to be happy. We appreciate you, fans. Thank you for still supporting us even though we suck.

This story makes me downright giddy. Why can't we see more of this type of action in sports? Am I the only one who thinks that this is an absolutely fabulous idea?

I think we should institute some sort of policy like this in the United States. I don't think that athletes should get their full salary if they're not playing up to snuff. Sure, to them this idea will look about as attractive as back hair, but who cares what they think? I'll be damned if I have to sit through another crappy game that I paid 20 bucks to get into. Enough is enough!

And we don't have to impose this penalty in exactly the same that they do over in the Czech Republic. We're Americans. We should think of our own way to do it.

The way I'm thinking, it will be different for every sport. Every time the Red Sox bullpen blows a lead in the ninth inning I want a free hot dog, or something like that. Or if you wanted to get even more ambitious, every year from now until the Red Sox win a World Series, the players should have to pay for everyone to get drunk enough to ease the pain. I'm really not asking much.

And all of those NBA games where the teams combine for 44 points total? They can be a thing of the past. We could make a rule that whenever your team doesn't make it to at least 85 points they have to buy everyone cheesy bread. (Don't you love cheesy bread?) This would be a revolutionary movement. No more slow moving, crappy basketball games with 900 missed shots. Players might actually try to score points. Can you imagine?

Sure it might suck if you sit through a whole game and your team ends up scoring 86, but life's a gamble. And you can probably make it that one night without the cheesy bread anyway.

In the NFL we'll just have the Bengals pay everyone ten bucks at the start of the season. No reason to wait around for the misery to start. Might as well just get it over with as soon as possible. And in certain years we can have other really bad teams buy us bobble head dolls too. Like this year the Vikings would have to throw in for that. And maybe the Bears too _ just for kicks.

Am I delusional? Certainly. Is this really a good idea? Without a doubt. Did anybody actually read this far? Absolutely not. But if we all work together I really think that we can pull this off. The Czechs have already taken the first step, and it's just up to us to make the next move. Join with me, reader! Together, we can take back sports.