Being the commissioner of a major sports league could be looked at as a honour, but it’s certainly no easy skate atop the executive hierarchy. While some commissioners are praised for their decisions, it seems a lot more likely that they will be blamed for decisions instead.
It’s similar to the idea that some people will only leave a review if they had a bad experience.
It is not rare for a commissioner to be booed every time they step to the mic at an NHL event, even if it’s when the home team is lifting a trophy. Just as Gary Bettman about that. One of the more recent commissioner dilemmas came at the expense of MLB commish Rob Manfred.
What to do about the Houston Astros cheating scandal?
In the end, the league decided not to strip the Astros of their World Series in 2017, despite being at the height of their cheating. It’s a decision that has been met with lots of backlash, and lots of fans are still pretty upset with Manfred and the MLB. On Sunday, Manfred game his explanation to ESPN.
"In the context of my original decision, something that we talked about and analyzed extensively," said Manfred of potentially stripping the Astros of the 2017 title. "A big topic of conversation between me and my senior staff. ... It has never happened in baseball. I am a believer in the idea that precedent happens and when you deviate from that, you have to have a very good reason. The report gave people a transparent account of what went on. We put people in position to make their own judgments about the behavior that went on. That certainly has happened over the last month.
"The idea of an asterisk or asking for a piece of metal back seems like a futile act. People will always know that something was different about the 2017 season, and whether we made that decision right or wrong, we undertook a thorough investigation, and had the intestinal fortitude to share the results of that investigation, even when those results were not very pretty."
Realistically, this decision likely would have been met with a lot of backlash no matter what came out of it. What did you think of the decision? Let us know @BarDown!
(H/T ESPN)
