Professional sport or entertainment

There was a time when there was uncertainty to the fakeness of professional wrestling. There's nothing fake about a 300 pound man falling 10 feet on his back. That's skill. The fakeness I'm referring to are the staged outcomes. Somewhere in adolescence we realize that the storylines are not believable. That's where the magic ends and the entertainment begins.

The World Wrestling Federation, in using WWF as their short name, changed their name in the face of a lawsuit from the World Wildlife Fund, also WWF. Their new name became World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE. In using the word entertainment, it was now clear that the matches were not sporting events. They were for show.

The show is spectacular. Athletic ability is unquestioned. It's like watching a movie. Like any good movie, you don't know how it will end. There will be ups and downs to the plotline. And you can suspend your belief for a couple of hours as you get entranced into the stories.

In the eighties, a friend told me he thought all professional sports should be considered entertainment. He suggested the games were pre-determined. The plotlines were established in advance so that fans would come back for more. This person surmised that professional sport served only entertainment purposes.

Is hockey, basketball, football and baseball like wrestling?

In the 1980's and 1990's, many called the Superbowl, the Superbore. With good reason, the average difference of score in those two decades was 18.6 and 18 pts respectively. In the following decade, the average point difference dropped to 10. Up until this year's event, the difference dropped even further to 6.

In the NBA, from 1970 to 2009, if you looked at any decade, the average number of games played in the finals ranged from 5.2 games to 5.8 games. The last four years has averaged 6.25 games.

The NHL is the most blatant. From 1970 to 1999, again looking at each decade, the average number of games played in the Stanley Cup Finals ranged from 4.9 games to 5.4 games. Then from 2000-2009, something changed. The finals averaged 6.33 games. The last four years, the NHL plays an average 6.25 games in the finals.

One could argue that parity in the leagues have made the differences between teams so small that there is only a slight difference between the best and the second best.

I watched a special on two of the most eccentric owners that used to own NHL franchises: Charles O. Finley of the California Golden Seals and Harold Ballard of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Finley forced his players to wear white skates. His team was brutal, but he saw the entertainment value in the franchise. Ballard notoriously fired his coach, then rehired him as his players threatened not to play. He asked the rehired coach to stand behind the bench with a paper bag over his head, until the end of the national anthem. Roger Nielson refused to follow along with Ballard's request. So to compromise, he waited in the tunnel and emerged in great fanfare.

These two characters demonstrate that there may have always been a bit of Vince McMahon in professional sports.

With NBA final games generating in excess of $20 million per game, the question today should be to what extent are the showmen influencing the games???