Along The Rails

Don’t you feel better now?

The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection has now met on the matter of Fixing All That Ails Horseracing. Our very close and gloriously obnoxious friend, Big Brown trainer Rick Dutrow, was invited, and he actually managed to do something dumber he usually does, which is to open his mouth: He didn’t show up at all, prompting the Congress to immediately place him on Double-Secret No Name Tag Probation and forcing him to sit out from all the other trainer games forevermore. No testimony for you! Come back one year. Or… not.

The day’s most headachy analogy came, not surprisingly, from a sportscaster, ESPN’s Randy Moss:

“Imagine if the NFL were set up to permit each state to field as many pro teams as it wanted, play as many games as it wanted all year long, and set its own individual football rules. … Horse racing has been set up in this fashion.”

First of all, setting up the NFL in this fashion would be awesome. The Roswell New Mexico Beamers vs. the Niles Michigan Natty Lite Consumers: That is a game I would watch.

And second of all, perhaps things are a little different for NFL because IT’S THE FREAKING NFL. THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE. THE POINT OF IT IS TO BE NATIONAL. Horse racing is… I don’t know even where to start here, the apples and oranges are flying through this analogy so frantically, smashing into every sentence I attempt to start. But I’ll try: Horse racing is, by its very nature, regional. Lots of different tracks, Randy. Lots of different types of races. Various depths of jock talent and horseflesh from which to choose. That’s one of reasons why breeders make such a big deal out of a horse’s state (or nation) of origin.

And while we might call the Triple Crown Races or the Breeders’ Cup the Super Bowl of racing, it is because these are the races which happen to garner the most press. There is no real national championship to horse racing, other than the voted-upon Horse of the Year award, because horse racing is not a national sport. America’s greatest thing on four hooves is not decided in a two-minute stretch. The Triple Crown races, for example, are closed to all but three-year-old horses. Put a still-green three-year-old up against, say, a seasoned mega-champ like Curlin, and you’ve got an utterly different race going on.

There is a glorious diversity to racing: Age restriction contests and handicaps, claiming races for plodders and maiden races for newbies, derbys for three year olds and distaffs for the ladies. All different types of horses racing against all different types of other horses. And that’s good. One of the points of having a commissioner of the NFL is to even the whole thing out, institute wonderful and necessary rules such as salary caps and hair length requirements and stern warnings about use of a Sharpie on the playing field after a touchdown. Yes, that’ll instantaneously fix everything that’s wrong with horse racing: Unleash upon it the likes of David Stern or Roger Goodell or Bud Selig, who’s done such a top-notch job of handling steroids in baseball.

Or, to make things even better, let’s wheel out Cynthia McKinney and Larry Craig.

For the most terrifying sentences of the day were issued from Curlin’s owner, Jess Jackson: “We need a league and a commissioner. We need action, please. Congress, help.”

Oh, dude, bite your tongue, and bite it hard. You have no idea what you’re asking for here, my friend. Panels and taxes and omnibus bills and forms and oversight committees and addendums and National Post Position Number Four Day and oh, this is just a bad, bad idea. When the government shows up to “fix” anything, run to your stockbroker and sell, sell, sell.

Deal with the steroids, yes. But deal with it in-house, and leave Congress to doing what it does best: Mucking up everybody else’s life.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS