When pro sports became a video game

Every sports video gamer has experienced it at least once over the years. That one time they took their favorite team and turned it into more of an all-century franchise than a realistic salary cap-abiding club. Whether through forced trades, neglected budgets, disabled salary caps, or the ol’ trade-11-draft-picks-for-Albert-Pujols tactic (Thanks, MVP Baseball 2005), cheating in sports video games was part of the fun.

Everybody wanted their team to have the super Crosby-Datsyuk-Ovechkin line or a football fantastic four of Peyton Manning, Chris Johnson, Dallas Clark and Andre Johnson. For years, the fantasy had to be played out through a console in front of television screens across the country, but now the sporting world has changed. Childhood dreams have become a reality, much to the anger of the slightly more mature sport fan.

The basketball world thought it was an anomaly in 2007 when the Boston Celtics landed Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to join Paul Pierce as the “Big Three.” At least then the argument could be made that these three were getting up there in age and they would show it sooner rather than later. The Celtics proved that a championship was sooner, winning the 2008 NBA title. Currently they are 17-4 with the emergence of Rajon Rondo as one of the top point guards in the association.

After uneventful free agent pools in 2008 and 2009, the anomaly became a trend as the stars aligned for a possible power house during 2010 free agency. Just like in a video game, where one can more or less sign whomever they want, the Heat signed both LeBron James and Chris Bosh to join Dwyane Wade in Miami. Although it’s too early to tell the full impact of this move, you would be nave to think that they won’t win at least one NBA championship.

Baseball fans are used to this. For years they have sat back and watched the New York Yankees sign free agents to ludicrous contracts or trade their entire farm system to get a proven slugger. What is changing in baseball is that multiple teams are now doing it. What was once a single empire of dominance is now looking more like the cold war with countries stocking up talent by the barrel. Teams like the Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, and even the Chicago Cubs ($10 million for Carlos Pena?!) are desperately trying to sign players rather than develop them.

How many people actually played 15 seasons of MLB: The Show to see those fake name minor players become big league powerhouses? It’s like general managers have lost their patience in the same way.

Look at the Red Sox over the past 16 months. Last season: Victor Martinez, Adrian Beltre in. This season: Martinez and Beltre out, Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford in. When this generation of baseball players gets to the hall of fame, they’ll have so many teams to choose from, they may have to settle for a dollar sign on their cap.

The real unfortunate issue about this is that the other 85 percent of teams in Major League Baseball suffer through this year after year. Sure there are good stories like the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers but they’ll eventually have to fork over a massive amount of money to keep their major talent or get sent back to end of the line. This is the current situation for the Tampa Bay Rays who just lost Pena, Dioner Navarro and most notably the aforementioned Crawford to free agency. For the most part, many teams will suffer through 162 games of hopelessness for what others euphemistically call “rebuilding.”

The other two major North American sports, hockey and football, are currently protected from this by a brilliant hard salary cap. The average video game player hates the salary cap. It’s the perfect check and balance system in sports. Due to a designated max salary, teams are limited in how much they spend. Look no further than the New Jersey Devils this season as proof. The Devils had to go one player short due to the team being right at the $59.4 million cap at the start. In football, the NFL is having the largest season of parity in recent memory as there is no clear dominant team in the league. The salary cap makes that possible.

How would a video game player deal with such an obstacle? Turn it off of course. That video game player is the National Football League Players Association.

With the current labor agreement expiring at the end of this season, the NFLPA wants some major gains for its players. You can’t blame them though, the owners are making a lot of money in the NFL right now and the players want more of the pie. The danger is getting rid of the cap altogether. If you raise the cap to a larger number at least teams could stay on the same level, otherwise Jerry Jones will become George Steinbrenner and football will be doomed to the same fate of baseball.

For the NFLPA, NFL or any supporters of the anti-salary cap movement, there is really only one thing to do after you’ve turned on your PlayStation, played two or three seasons of a franchise, won multiple championships and have all the best players in the game. You turn the game off.