It's a frustrating time to be a Toronto sports fan. As we sit here 20 years removed from the Toronto Blue Jays first championship season (which also marks the last time the Toronto Maple Leafs were legitimate contenders) the losing has started to make everyone a bit crazy. That a 25-year-old sports fan has grown up without seeing Toronto good at, well, anything is hard.
Lots of cities go through droughts, of course, but few are as universally bad as T.O. currently is. It's enough to give one a complex – or drive a young fan to his satellite dish to find another city's teams to cheer for.
Wednesday was a particularly difficult day. Not one, but two Toronto sports teams lost out on their chase of big name free agents. Readers here will be familiar with the Nesta story and will know that the Montreal Impact swept in after Toronto had put an offer on the table that he was set to accept. Readers everywhere will know that Steve Nash is a LA Laker. Both losses burn and underline a belief that many in Toronto have that there is something seriously wrong with Toronto sports.
And if you ask most fans what that is they will come back with one answer – four letters that symbolize a generation of frustration.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]M
L
S
E
It's hard to ignore that three of the five biggest teams in the city are all owned by MLSE. It's staggering to think that one company can be behind three teams that have struggled so much. It's especially difficult to comprehend when you realize that the company is so successful on the business side of the operation.
Is Toronto's failure a simple case of one company not doing things right? Can you even compare the three teams, or are their circumstances unique and their concurrent failure simply a coincidence?
To answer that you need to look at what the three teams do that is similar and then evaluate whether it's problematic.
Nash and Nesta might be the best example of a MLSE similarity across teams. The Leafs, Raptors and TFC have all, to varying degrees, consistently gone after “names.” The Leafs, especially, were guilty of this for years signing aging start after aging star in an effort to put them over the top. The Raptors struggle to attract the biggest names, but there has been no shortage of name guys they've gone after over the years. TFC has three DPs.
On one hand there is likely some belief that the names will make the clubs better. When the Raptors signed Hakeem Olajuwon they really did think he was the big they needed to compliment Vince Carter. Bringing Eric Lindros to the Leafs was a chance to land an elite power forward in the team's mind. And, TFC brought in Torsten Frings because it felt he could stabilize an inconsistent midfield.
An argument can be made, however, that those signings were also at least somewhat cynical. The fan base is excited by names and signing them can help drive interest. Although MLSE doesn't need to sell Leafs tickets, the Raptors and TFC are less a sure thing. It's likely too simple to suggest that the only reason they go after the names is to sell tickets, but it's probably naïve to suggest that it doesn't play a role in the thinking.
Names can be seen as band-aids. They cover-up system wide problems and help to ignore deeper rot. Signing a name gives the appearance of doing something, without actually addressing what needs to be addressed.
Then, of course, there is the problem of what to do when the pursuit of the names falls through. Too often, Toronto lacks a plan B.
That leads into the next similarity – at various times all three teams have appeared to suffer from the “advice” of MLSE management. It was long thought that the Leafs were influenced by suits that thought they knew more about hockey than the hockey people and it's only been since Brian Burke came along that the situation has changed.
With TFC and the Raptors the advice often came from sources closer to the team, but still from those that should not have been driving the bus. Carter was as much behind the Olajuwon move as anyone and TFC currently has 3,876 people making decisions in the front office.
In recent years there seems to be an effort by MLSE to change that and to put the power to make decisions into the hands of one person. This is a recent phenomenon and, so far, it's unclear whether they have the right people in place.
And that brings us to the third commonality – upper management. Increasingly more attention has been placed on COO Tom Anselmi with the suggestion that he is the one person that has the most responsibility. He's the ultimate boss and the one that puts the people in place that are supposed to make the decisions. If all three are consistently failing should he not take the fall?
Sports is a results oriented business. It's very difficult to argue that there shouldn't be a change. Almost impossible, actually.
Would firing Ansemli change the fortunes of the three clubs? No, not on its own. There are other factors that make it a challenge for Toronto to field winning teams. As much as fans want to put all the blame on MLSE, it's too simple.
But, something does have to give. Toronto sports fans have been loyal and they deserve more than what they are getting.
And with Rogers almost set to take over control of MLSE change might be coming sooner rather than later.