Phil Mushnick

Phil Mushnick

NHL

Fans need defense against neglectful commissioners

Need two to Feb. 2’s Super Bowl at PSL Stadium?

Shouldn’t be a problem. Just ask one of your Jets PSL pals to throw you a couple. They have first-in-line purchase privileges.

Starting in 2009 and then into 2010, telephone-attached Jets PSL salespersons promised that purchasers would be given first crack to buy tickets to all other events held in the new stadium — games, concerts, you name it!

The Jets further fueled this sell with print ads promising “Exclusive opportunities for other stadium events.”

The come-on was bogus. The Jets had neither the right nor the legal ability to fulfill such a promise. But what did the NFL care? Soon Commissioner Roger Goodell would declare publicly that PSLs are “good investments,” another claim with no legitimate basis.

In fact, with the NFL’s blind approval, the Jets’ PSL sales techniques — as per TV, radio, print, mailings, the team’s website — were so larded with sucker bait that deep into the team’s tiny-type PSL contract was a paragraph absolving it of all prior sales claims.

From Section 11, Item E: “This PSL Agreement contains the entire agreement of the parties with respect to the matters provided for herein, and supersedes any written or oral agreement, instrument application, promotional material, brochure, or other representation made, distributed or entered by or on behalf of them or their respective affiliates with respect to those matters.”

In other easy-to-miss words, anything and everything the Jets previously pitched and promised was to be disregarded.

Again, what did the NFL care? It didn’t care that legions and generations of Jets and Giants customers were being priced out by PSLs, so why worry about their replacements? As long as their checks cleared.

Heck, when the Jets allowed a team “insider,” mortgage-broker David Findel, to parade town as their PSL poster boy — he claimed to have “won” the Jets’ online auction to buy two first-row PSLs for a suspiciously absurd $414,000 — neither the Jets nor the NFL cared that Findel didn’t have a pot to PSL in, that it was a stunt, that he was in debt and soon would be off to prison for bank fraud.

But why would the NFL care? It never had. After thousands of tickets that were supposed to be sold to Packers ticket holders for the 1997 Packers-Patriots Super Bowl in New Orleans were instead delivered by the team directly to a Texas travel agency, know what the NFL did about that? Nothing.

Fans and patrons now need a commissioner to protect them from the commissioners.

And that, naturally, brings us to Baseball In The Time Of Bud Selig. Last week, Tony La Russa, at a time when Hall of Fame voters are giving newly eligible stars the cool breeze for PED use on Selig’s $16 million-a-year watch, was selected by special committee for enshrinement.

So stars who one day showed up with bulging triceps and began breaking records now stink too much for Cooperstown, but La Russa, the manager who greatly benefitted from the sudden, magical muscle mass and power from sudden sluggers — Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi quickly come to mind — has passed muster for official legendary status.

Of course, La Russa, career baseball man, had no idea or he would have reported it to Selig, who, of course, had no idea. After all, to be a commissioner, these days, ignorance isn’t just bliss, it’s a must.


If you don’t like big hits, stop glorifying them.

Use Your Heads: Call me crazy, but if players are going to continue to sue the NFL for brain injuries, perhaps it’s time they ceased standing over knocked-silly opponents, gesturing their joy as if they had just conquered the Byzantine Empire.

And if players are going to continue to sue the NHL for brain injuries, perhaps it’s time they ceased dropping their gloves to better land a knockout punch to opponents’ heads.

And if TV’s going to continue to make “Tsk, tsk, tsk” on behalf of the brain-injured, perhaps it’s time to cease glorifying both of the above.

But what do I know? I just work here.


For those who recall when Rutgers was a very good college, first, the athletic department’s continuing legal troubles are a matter of self-fulfillment.

And as the shadow of expelled basketball coach Mike Rice lingers in the form of another lawsuit — now a former player claims abuse — a smoking email persists.

On March 10, 2011, a concerned Rutgers fan contacted ex-AD Tim Pernetti with some friendly advice. As seen on the sidelines, Rice often would go “bonkers,” beyond coaches’ extreme norms. Rice’s approach needs softening.

Pernetti responded with, “Mike’s enthusiasm and temperament is exactly what I was looking to hire, and I won’t ask him to change.”


N.J. makes it easy to lose ‘gaming’

What New Jersey has done by legalizing online “gaming” — gambling — is hideously shorty-sighted, even for those who refuse to see.

Unlike playing in a poker game or gambling in a casino — both from which gamblers eventually have to go home, if they still have one — you are home.

And if you’re fortunate enough still to have chips to cash when sleep approaches, there is no cashier. So you leave it there — that’s all you can do — until the next day. Then you play until what you started with is gone. Then replenish and start again.

And people who never knew they had that in them — and wished they hadn’t — will fall by the bunch.

No state should be in the business of seeking to produce tax revenue supplied by those offered the at-home convenience and encouragement to crash and burn. Of course, N.J. always can later pick up some of these people on the bounce, as welfare recipients.


Not that the NFL would do anything for TV money, but it’s now a given that its worst teams earn the right to play at the most logical, patron-friendly times, 1 p.m.

Good bit from WFAN’s Steve Somers on Thursday, satirizing local team owners as “The Sons of Entitlement.”

What an age we live in: An insurance company selects Michael Vick, who served 19 months in prison, to star in its TV commercial. Everyone into the assigned risk pool!

Reader John Cafarella suggests “any broadcaster, reporter or analyst who opens a statement with, ‘At the end of the day,’ should be suspended, until the end of the day.” Going forward, of course.

Here’s hoping Robinson Cano’s new beard doesn’t slow him down.