Before you speculate on the future of pro sport in Calgary, as Flames’ president Ken King and various lesser lights did at Mount Royal College last week, it makes sense to assess the current state of affairs.

Actually, it’s a state of emergency, a state of decay. As states go, it’s like Oklahoma in the dust-bowl era, with the homesteaders (ex-Calgary Cannons’ impresario Russ Parker, ex-Stampeders coach-GM Wally Buono) bolting for the exits.

With MRC sports administration students asking astute questions, panelists representing the Calgary Storm (soccer), Stampeders (football), Roughnecks (lacrosse) and Dawgs (semi-pro baseball) all agreed: in pro sport, factors beyond local control can conspire against fiscal viability – soaring salaries, high costs and, in the case of the National Hockey League, international currency issues.

Too true. However, some of us disinterested observers can’t shake the conviction that basic business principles should still hold.

File photo by Dave Lazarowych, Business Edge
Calgary Flames president Ken King had the sense to implement damage control.

Smart local management should be able transcend external factors to at least break even, or generate a modest profit, even in Calgary’s so-called small market. Or so goes the theory.

At the same time, stupid management richly deserves any bad karma that returns to haunt the corporate bottom line.

Consider parallel public-relations disasters – entirely self-inflicted – that embarrassed both the Stampeders and the Flames before Christmas.

Stamps’ owner Michael Feterik inherited the Canadian Football League’s crown jewel when he purchased the team from Sig Gutsche.

By means of shrewd marketing, sound management and excellence on the field, former coach-general manager Wally Buono, president Stan Schwartz and communications-sales VP Ron Rooke had built a season-ticket base that remains the envy of the CFL.

But some people don’t like ice cream. Not satisfied with a model franchise, the incoming regime decided to clip Buono’s wings. Nobody questions the owner’s right to make personnel moves. But this one was badly bungled and Buono blew town, refusing to respond to a string of disparaging innuendoes from the new bosses.

It was a shameful way to treat a classy coach/administrator, who almost single-handedly dragged the team from the brink of financial oblivion in the dark ages of the late 1980s.

Fan reaction to the fiasco has been fiercely negative. Remember the Save our Stamps campaign? If the Buono incident is a reflection of a new management style, it could happen again. Maybe sooner than you think.

King and the Flames screwed up, too. But at least they had the sense to implement damage control. They may have even learned from the experience.

“I committed the most grievous act . . . a sports person can do and that was to give a generic backhand to the media,” King told the MRC students. “I paid for it for some time, somewhat justifiably,” he said, a significant mea culpa from a guy who doesn’t like to say he’s sorry.

It had to do with King’s overheated response to news-media criticism of his alleged meddling in the ridiculously long, laborious process of choosing a successor to fired coach Greg Gilbert.

To his credit, King buttoned his lip and the Flames ended the ludicrous episode by hiring the best available coach, Darryl Sutter.

All that said, it’s hard not to sympathize with the Flames’ ownership group. They’ve stuck to conservative business fundamentals, struggling to keep the payroll ($33 million Cdn a year, near the lower end of the NHL) under control.

They’ve attracted reasonably good crowds, despite the perpetual poverty of the on-ice product. They’ve sold out their corporate suites and boxes and retain a solid core of corporate sponsors and “partners.”

Yet the Flames lost almost $6 million in 2001-2002. Their worst problems are beyond their control. They operate in a league in which ordinary pluggers earn fatter salaries than the stars of football’s Super Bowl.

It’s a league so hopelessly out of whack that one of its best teams, the Ottawa Senators, was forced to find fiscal refuge under bankruptcy protection.

And when negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement get serious, it’s a league that will probably face the longest work stoppage in NHL history.

At MRC, King put on a brave face, telling the students: “This is a great market for hockey and for other sports.

If we vacate this market – which I am neither predicting or threatening – there’d be someone on our doorstep in a minute.”

Whatever you say, Ken. But from a perspective of smart business practice, there’s only one sensible option: call a broker and slap a “sell” order on this baby.