This Kind of Solution Means Indoor Soccer Is 100% Desperate

“The 33% Solution.”

What is this? A Garpian book from John Irving? Or maybe a Ludlum spy thriller?

It might also be a vaccine.

Indeed, a vaccine might be appropriate, because The 33% Solution has been labeled a cure for the ills of the Major Indoor Soccer League. But that label should also carry a warning that it could kill the patient.

Bill Kentling, the MISL commissioner, has another name for The 33% Solution, and it’s definitely a euphemism. He calls it a salary stabilization program.

This is an interesting way of describing what amounts to a 33% cut in pay for MISL players. It’s as if to say they won’t really be taking a cut but rather investing in the financial stability of the league.

The cornerstone of The 33% Solution is a proposal to lower the per-team salary cap from $1.275 million to $850,000. Translated, entire indoor soccer teams used to be paid about the same as one .290 hitter or 15-game winner, but now they would be making the same as only a .275 hitter or 12-game winner.

Obviously, we’re not talking high-rent district.

Indoor soccer is still a beggar looking for crumbs, a transient looking for a home. It can’t seem to keep up the payments on a penthouse.

This is the MISL’s 10th year, and there have been times when it seemed reasonably healthy. The Sockers, in fact, have looked at times as if they should be healthy, but former owner Bob Bell sold out last October after losing $9 million in 10 years of stewardship. If the Sockers were not making money with their run of five successive indoor titles and a solid nucleus of fans, who was?

Anybody? Somebody?

It sure doesn’t look that way.

The MISL’s proposal to lower the salary cap is actually a threat. Since such a slash would negate the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, the players must agree to it. To get their attention, the proposal came with a proviso that the MISL would fold if it were not approved.

This is a cloud with no silver lining. This is bad news, bad news, and no joking.

These players are being asked whether they want to make less money or no money at all and are being given an April 15 deadline. It would appear to be a fundamentally easy, though quite distasteful, decision.

But the players are skeptical. They wonder if things are really as bad as the league says they are. They wonder if they are being asked to give blood to a patient that really doesn’t need a transfusion. They wonder if all this might be bluff and bluster.

It will behoove the players association to get all doubts erased before taking any kind of a vote. Abrogating a collective bargaining agreement being rather serious business, the owners have agreed to open the books to the hired help. After all, what these guys are being asked to do is a little more drastic than downgrading from first class to coach.

The players, meanwhile, are rightfully chagrined at the entire scenario. An athlete with a mortgage, car payments and maybe a wife and family rues the incongruity of a financial stabilization plan that costs him a 33% cut in pay. It’s no way to comfortably run a household.

The thing about indoor soccer players is that they are not paid the outrageous salaries of other professional athletes in the first place. The average salary under the current cap is $70,000, but the median salary may be closer to the $35,000 to $40,000 range. The minimum is $24,000, and a surprising number of players are paid at or just above that level.

These guys have already been biting the bullet, and now they are being asked to swallow it.

But how else might this dilemma be solved?

Front-office cutbacks?

MISL front offices are already woefully understaffed and underpaid. Cut some of those people by 33% and they will be on food stamps.

Game/travel expenses?

Maybe MISL teams should fly with the baggage, hitch rides to the arena, pitch sleeping bags in the locker room and get their uniforms at garage sales.

Raise ticket prices?

If not enough people are paying today’s prices, it does not make a whole lot of sense to raise them.

A lucrative television contract?

Forget it. No such thing is forthcoming.

The players are being asked to bear the brunt of this fiscal fiasco because there are really no other ways to adjust this imbalanced picture by either cutting expenses or raising revenues.

The bottom line is that The 33% Solution really is not a solution at all. The sad reality is that desperate cures are usually reserved for the most critical of patients.