Worst commissioner in sports history.

[HotWheelsdude]

It's Gary Bettman. He has caused nothing but problems to the league. He forced the players association into three lockouts. Including
one the wiped out the whole 2004-05 season. Which is the main reason why the NHL sucks today. He has added a salary cap to each team, removed ties, changed Stanley Cup Presentations, added teams which have poor fan base, and changed up the rules after the 2004-05 season that should have not been changed. I understand that the owners wanted salary caps after teams went into bankruptcy, but's it's unnecessary to include one. He's so bad, that i have to agree with everything that Frank "Tank" Fleming (NJTANK) from Sports E-Cyclopedia said about him. He is the worst commissioner in sports history, and the dumbest man on the planet. The league should have kept John Ziegler until he decides to retire, then find a good commissioner. I don't care what the owners think after the 1992 players strike, they should have not forced John Ziegler to step down. The owners should have regreted on letting Ziegler go from the position. He was the greatest commissioner in NHL history. The NHL governors should have regreted on having Bettman as a commissioner. He should be gone by now after three lockouts that destroyed the league. Better yet, he should have been gone instantly after the third lockout. The NHL will never succeed until he steps down. But, history is history. Do you agree with me? Who do you think is the worst commissioner in sports history?

[PhantomDreamer]

Knee jerk reaction says it's Goodell. Hide the women and children.

[The_Admiral]

Goodell is just some prick in a tailored suit who has made mistakes handling the systemic ills of his sport. Gary Bettman walked out on his league's back yard and shut the league down three times, the second time for a full year because of all the mistakes he made by shutting the league down the first time.

[Sanic]

Knee jerk reaction says it's Goodell. Hide the women and children.

You forgot this

[NJTank]

I think the award still belongs to Bettman.

[pianoknight]

I misread the title as "Worst Commentator" and, without knowing much about hockey, thought that there must have been some COLOSSAL F***K UPs dropped on the mic for a commentator to cause lock outs. :)

[bstewart]

first reaction is Goodell but that might be just because of recent events. Probably pretty hard to make a case for anyone but Bettman with all the labour issues he has mismanaged.

[nuordr]

Bud Selig - he did nothing to move baseball into the 21st century and baseball is still as boring as ever. The only good time baseball was good with him was during the steroid era.

[Evil G]

[WhitecapsForLife11]

Goodell would have to blow up half of the United States to even come anywhere close to where Gary Bateman is. Is there really any question that Bettman is the worse commissioner in NA, or even the world. The chant almost every NHL franchise has yelled at a game, "FIRE BETTMAN!"

[BBTV]

Goodell would have to beat his own wife and kid to even come close to surpassing Bettman

While simultaneously electrocuting a dog and calling a hit man to murder his pregnant mistress. Even then, unless all of these acts occurred at a strip club right after he made it rain, it's still not close.

[The Six]

that baseball one who was super racist

[ElwoodCuse]

It's Gary Bettman. He has caused nothing but problems to the league.

According to who?

What do you think the job of "commissioner" actually means? It's not to be well-liked by fans. It's to make the owners more money. Bettman made the NHL a crapton of money and got a salary cap, he's done a fabulous job to the only people that matter.

[DnBronc]

I don't care what the owners think after the 1992 players strike, they should have not forced John Ziegler to step down. The owners should have regreted on letting Ziegler go from the position.

I am not too sure that Ziegler was that great, either. For example, he passed up a national US TV deal in the 80's. You could have had Lemieux and Gretzky on almost every weekend, showcasing the top two players in the game.

I do agree with Bettman, though. He is a joke. Goodell and David Stern are also on my crap list because they were/are so corrupt. Stern oversaw crooked officials (the 02 Kings-Lakers series is a prime example), and Goodell let the Cheatriots get away with murder.

[PhantomDreamer]

The Patriots' Aaron Hernandez is behind bars. Let's be careful with our words.

[The_Admiral]

I more or less issued my thoughts on Bettman when I summarized The Instigator for the board, found here: http://boards.sportslogos.net/topic/90067-the-bettman-book/

If that's a tl;dr for you, here's the gist of it: Bettman's real achievement, to me, was pulling the NHL's business side kicking and screaming into something resembling the late 20th century when it was theretofore content to be a bunch of crusty old rich guys in smoke-filled rooms doing whatever. The league didn't move its central offices from Montreal to New York until a few years before Bettman came aboard, and even that had been a real mickey-mouse operation with not much going on except Brian Burke pissing on the bathroom floor (I'm serious). Bettman was able to do some serious cat-herding and get all these guys to do little things like speak only when called upon, work constructively with one another, and aim their dicks toward the urinals. That organizational stuff counts for a lot.

Where Bettman failed was just about everywhere else. He royally dicked the owners and players alike with the first lockout by bumbling every step of the way until it got so bad that Ed Snider and some other big fish had to go over Gary's head and negotiate with Goodenow themselves. This led to the precariously player-friendly CBA that made Bobby Holik a multi-millionaire and left our beloved small-market teams to die or come close. And all the Robert's Rules of Order didn't do anything to vet John Spano, Tom Hicks, or the other scoundrels who bruised the league on his watch.

Les Bettmanistes are fond of saying that he's made lots of money for his bosses. He has, but how long should it have taken for him to get to this point, and should he have gotten to a further point? He got them the salary cap -- after he screwed it up the first time and lost a whole season to do so. He bent the ownership-group rules to save the Oilers -- after he invented the ownership-group rules to finish off the Jets. He got a big national TV contract with NBC -- after he squandered the one with Fox, alienated an increasingly reluctant ESPN, and made the league a punchline with the Outdoor Life Network. It's like running a marathon: yes, it's impressive that you completed it, but someone else could have done it in less time and without crapping his pants along the way. I don't know who the better choice would have been, but I maintain that he was the wrong person at the wrong time for the league. If you'll allow me to quote myself:

. . . a lot of what Bettman did had to be done: the league needed to be ready to enter the 21st century when it most clearly was not. I'm not talking about ill-advised expansion/relocation, most of which was planned by Ziegler and executed by McNall, but just, I dunno, good god, being a functional professional sports league and not just some group of rich old white men running a hockey league in their spare time, or over five-martini lunches, or whatever. All that being said, who's to say that all these necessary developments couldn't have been made by someone who wasn't Gary Bettman? I mean, yes, like I said, it's clear that he's intelligent, but how many other detail-oriented, Type-A labor lawyers are out there who could have marshaled the owners into something resembling order and done all the things that did have to be done, without all the messes that Bettman distinctly made along the way? That's the real question. You couldn't have found that guy in the skyscrapers of Toronto? or Montreal? Someone with a big brain and the requisite understanding of the game so as to avoid so many of the misfires we had with Bettman?

[btharner]

Bettman wasn't the NHLs first choice. They actually wanted then NBA Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik, but he wasn't a hockey fan so that went nowhere fast.

[IceCap]

Neither was (is???????) Gary Bettman.

[Sport]

I've never gotten the impression that Gary Bettman knows/likes/cares about the game.

[The_Admiral]

It was actually that David Stern wouldn't let him go.