Same As The Old Boss?

Note to Reader:  This post was written on Tuesday but inadvertently never published.  As you'll see at the bottom, I was anticipating a disruption in blogging due to travel to Utah.  That disruption was magnified by the failure of my laptop.  A new laptop has been secured (this has not been a cheap week even before the laptop, so I may put a "Contribute" icon on the blog), and this is my first use thereof.

There's been much in the news that we need to discuss, but there are also competing demands on my time.  My best bet is that I'll have time tomorrow morning, but please bear with me.

Today is all about this expected news:

I do hereby invoke my rights under the fifth amendment...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- Tim Finchem officially retires at the end of the year as PGA Tour commissioner, ending more than two decades during which he expanded the

tour's footprint around the world and saw prize money grow to nearly $300 million. 

The PGA Tour's board of directors accepted Finchem's resignation Monday and unanimously approved Jay Monahan as his replacement.

Monahan, who has served as Finchem's deputy commissioner since April 2014, becomes the fourth commissioner on Jan. 1.

Bloody perfect, my friends, as not even Nurse Ratched pays any mind to his ill-conceived wraparound schedule.  What kind of lowlife leaves in the middle of the season?

I know precious little about the man, but Shack is here to review his C.V.  And, mark this date on your calendar, because I have to agree with Geoff that there's much in it that warrants optimism.  Of course he starts it with the necessary disclaimer:

The only negative on Jay Monahan’s resume? Why of course, he is Tim Finchem’s hand-picked successor.

No small thing, that.  I'm in a lazy lace, so I'm just going to plagiarize provide a lengthy excerpt including his comments:

—Division III Academic All-American golfer at Trinity College: He could play the game at one time, which never hurts with players who respect such ability.

—Masters of Science in Sport Management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1995: He knows how to use B-speak. 

—Account Supervisor at Arnold Advertising, handling Titleist and FootJoy Worldwide's advertising business: Okay, so rolling back the ball might be a tougher sell. 

—Director, Global Sponsorships and Branding Programs at EMC Corporation: When they had the Skills Challenge, which, I think many of us kind of miss and might be the kind of alternative format idea the tour needs to be open to going forward.

—Executive Director of the Deutsche Bank Championship: has experience on the ground running a tournament, never a bad thing in a climate where tournament directors are not exactly unanimous members of The Tim Finchem Marching And Chowder Society. 

—EVP at Fenway Sports Group. Knows sports, loves sports and has worked in sports besides golf. This has always felt like a blind spot for Finchem, who never seemed like a serious sports fan. 

— Co-founded Golf Fights Cancer, with fellow Fenway executive Brian Oates. Has a heart! 

—Tournament Director of The Players Championship. More tournament operations experience, which will help him justify the event's move back to March, opening up the PGA Championship to some day be played in May. Or something like that. 

—Deputy Commissioner of the PGA Tour starting in 2014: reportedly never once dropped Tim Finchem’s garment bag in that time, always picked out the best ties for his boss and never ran out of hand sanitizer. 

—COO of the PGA Tour. Already has essentially started the job and has begun moving in his preferred lieutenants.

OK, I hope you enjoyed Geoff's little jibes...  I especially liked the garment bag.

I'm over the moon about that first item, as I don't even know that the incumbent plays our game.   But while it seems a small thing, a profound love of and respect for our game will be a nice thing to see in a Commish.  And since one can't cope with this maddening game without a sense of humor, I have hopes that we'll also get to see the new guy smile occasionally, perhaps even, dare I say it, laugh?

I also agree with Shack that his other golf-related experience sounds promising, to have actually been in the trenches with other stakeholders in the Tour's events.  

So, where do we go from here.... Shack in a second post and Jeff Babineau are the first to the post with their thoughts.  I'll try to make sense of them all, and to no one's surprise they start at the same place:

TV Contracts - The guy using the affected spelling of his name is the more specific:

Expect the PGA Tour to exercise an early opt-out of its CBS and NBC deals soon, with a renegotiation of terms that would kick in for the start of next fall's 2017-18 start. The current Golf Channel cable deal is locked in until 2021, but some changes in weekend coverage of PGA Tour events may be possible in this renegotiation.

Whereas Babineau ignores that elephant in the room:

Digging in to negotiate the PGA Tour’s next television deals, and defining new media in the 2020s: The Tour’s deals with CBS, NBC Sports and Golf Channel all run through 2021, but already talks have begun regarding the next generation of contracts. The Tour has a huge opportunity here: Most professional leagues preside over sporting contests that last 2-3 hours; a day of golf can extend beyond 12 hours, and a tournament features four days of play. That means plenty of action outside a typical television broadcast window, providing lucrative live-streaming and digital opportunities that could deliver significant revenues by providing extra content to fans who want to consume action on computers or mobile devices. Under Monahan’s leadership, could we be far away from a PGA Tour Channel?

Lots of moving parts here, but my take is that the Tour effectively has nowhere to go with its TV packages.  So while they might opt-out for strategic and/or negotiating reasons, there's a huge risk factor with that.

I'm amused by how glass-half-full Babs is.  Everything he says is true, there's a world of content out there.  But that content is extremely expensive to produce and equally difficult to monetize.  The fact of life is that the only value in the Tour's packages is the Sunday afternoon portion....  If you think about it, the only events that are remotely interesting early in the week to casual fans are the Ryder Cup and perhaps the Match Play.

Schedule - First Geoff:

PGA Tour players are asked to compete all summer, then show up in the playoffs before "enjoying" maybe a week or two off before returning to a full schedule (or risk falling way behind in Cup points, ranking points, or re-shuffle status). In 2017, the late season schedule may have only one week off up to Thanksgiving. So while the Commissioner's job is to provide playing opportunities, the long term pacing of the schedule makes little sense for players, fans, sponsors or TV partners.

Then Jeff:

The Tour will stage 47 events this season with official events in 11 months of the year. There are seven fall events that kick off a wrap-around season that provides terrific playing opportunities for young newcomers and veterans who have limited status (we give you Sanderson Farms winner Cody Gribble and Shriners champion Rod Pampling). But honestly, is it too much?

Yes, next question.  I would also expand this category to include the mind-numbing boredom of Tour events...  They have 47 events, and only 46 of them are 72 holes of stroke play.

It seems quite obvious to me that if the Tour is going to have events in October and November, those need to be devoted to non-elite players to improve their status.  You're not going to be on network TV, but no one is watching in any event....

Which brings us to the elephant in room as relates to the fist item:

The FedEx Cup - Only Shack deals with this directly:

There still has been no renewal with the playoff sponsor. This was assumed to be (one of) Finchem's final pet projects. Perhaps the FedEx deal is done and terms will be delivered to the networks on opt-out day. Or maybe a FedEx renewal is not done and this will dictate a more-comprehensive-than-expected re-thinking of item's one (TV deal) and two (schedule).

Can we be honest?  The FedEx Cup is an artistic failure.  There, I said it...Yes, it's a big payday, but as a vehicle for sporting drama, it's right up there with the Harlem Globetrotters.  Not the best analogy, because while the outcome is unknown, it's also not of interest to more than thirty human beings and their families.

I strongly believe that the Tour would be better served to think of this event as a high-stakes shootout, as opposed to playoffs as that term is understood.  My vision is eight guts on the course on Sunday (at east Lake if you insist) playing 18 holes for the $10 million large.  Think that would generate ratings?

This from Jeff is important I think as well:

Now that golf is an Olympic sport, should the Tour have more rigid testing for performance-enhancing drugs, asking for blood samples and not urine? And along those lines, should the PGA Tour step in line with most other major sports and have transparency in the way it deals with disciplining potential drug offenders and levying other fines? This is a tricky one, for sure, as the Tour wants to protect its squeaky-clean image at all costs.

I've been assured that there's nothing to see here....  They need to do blood testing on Sundays, and they need to let the sunlight in.  Or we can just enjoy DJ's endless series of Jet-ski accidents....

Both guys deal in different ways with the globalization/WGC issue, though I sense that no one quite knows what to say here.  I see no benefit in the PGA Tour expanding into Asia, as that's why we have an Asian Tour.  The WGC's are their own hot mess, providing no-cut cash grabs for the guys, but little else.  And while you'd hope that they could take those smaller-field events to some interesting venues, that certainly hasn't been the case.

Here's Babs' rousing coda:

Maintaining momentum is the main message Monahan will hammer home to his team. He inherits a great product from Finchem, just as Finchem inherited a strong product from his predecessor, Deane Beman, in 1994. Growth is always a nice goal, but making sure to maintain momentum is key. Sponsorship is in a good place (players will compete for $339 million in purses in 2016-17), the FedEx Cup has traction and is starting to build history after a decade, young stars have established themselves, and charitable dollars – one of the Tour’s best but little-told stories – have crossed the $2.3 billion mark. Monahan’s main task as he settles in: Keep everything rolling down the road.

Let's take a moment to enjoy the howlers therein....  Don't worry about growth but keep your eye on Big Mo...Good luck with that, Jay.  And I don't know why the Tour never mentions their charitable donations....  yeah, that just never comes up.  And the FedEx Cup? $10 million will buy traction, just not respect.

Obviously his predecessor's legacy will be the dramatic increase in purses, so to be a success Monahan will have to keep the gravy bowl full.  But I believe that he needs to find a way to make Tour-level golf more interesting... There's a wealth of young talent that can help, but the week-to-week dreary sameness is wearing.  

Note To Readers - The bride and I are heading West tomorrow morning to outfit the new Unplayable Lies Western HQ.  Given the travel and work ahead of us, blogging cannot be a high priority.  I'm sure I'll check in once Internet service is in place, but it will no doubt be intermittent.