The only way to grow the sport of hockey internationally is to have other nations that don't have a hope in winning a championship have some hope of winning in the future. If there's only two team that beat up on each other for the past 12 years and only those two teams are the only teams that gets gold and silver every time, what good is the sport? Also, what good is promoting the sport when the gold medal team has a salary that's $300mil compared to the bottom 6 teams which may total less than $50mil?
The only way to grow the sport is to even out the playing field so that everyone gets a chance of winning. What's the use of playing the game when you have only 2 elite teams (women's hockey) or the same 4 or 5 teams (men's hockey) going for gold every Winter Olympics?
What'll be interesting is if the Olympics and other tournaments puts a salary cap for teams having pro athletes entering amateur sport tournaments so that teams can be equalized. I'm mentioning Olympics and hockey as one example, but this can be applied to other venues.
|