In US sport, Head Office calls all the shots

I’ll finish talking about my trip to America sometime soon, but I refer to one interesting conversation before the moratorium kicks in.

Chatting to an American sportswriter, I said the perceived wisdom over here was that access to athletes in the States was far better than it is here, but he disagreed.

In terms of the big sports, he said that baseball was getting better, having been relatively tricky for quite some time; that American football operated at its own level, given its popularity, but was okay to deal with, all things considered; but that basketball was, had been for some time, and continued to be, by far the easiest to deal with in terms of athlete access.