When news broke of Alex Rodriguez's season and a half suspension handed out by Major League Baseball, there was a echo that billowed throughout the league and a thunderous quake that trembled beneath the players as the verdict was struck down: the juiced of days of PED use will no longer be tolerated, or swept under the rug. When commissioner Bud Selig says that the exhibition All-Star game will decide home field advantage in the World Series, he means it, and not much can be done regardless of the amount of push back. Or when David Stern denies Chris Paul to be traded to the Lakers, fans and players collectively wince as they swallow their pride and move on with their lives.
We may not know all that goes on behind the scenes of some of the major sports in the US, but we get enough exposure to understand how much power players, coaches, manager, owners, and commissioners have when they speak out whether it is through a 2 hour press conference or a 140 character tweet.
Beach volleyball on the other hand is still small enough that the "playing field" is virtually leveled between players and executives. When they have significant grievances they are heard directly from the owners, not through a proxy, secretary, or assistant. And when the players push back, there is no army of yes-men at the ready to absorb the backlash from controversial decisions. So when Tarin Keith, a 7 year mid-level veteran and active social media user, spoke out about various clauses in the AVP's clause and was "banned" from the Manhattan Open this past weekend as a result, LOTS of people heard of it.
More importantly though, her message and growing concern and pessimism in the AVP's vision and business model was reverberated as players and fans prepared to take in "the granddaddy of them all" on this late summer weekend. The AVP, whether you are aware of it or not, did issue an unofficial "non-specific" rebuttal to Keith's concerns. But it seems as if the damage had already been done and all the horses have fled the barn.
So where is all of this leading us? You have players that are more visible, more recognized, and now whose opinions carry as much weight as the owners and person who are supposed to govern over them. Which means that either the owners of the respective tours, and the executives of USAV either give the players a seat at the table on issues that concern them, or I think the players should seriously consider unionizing so that people like Donald Sun with nothing more than a title aren't able to ban players from valuable tournaments in the future.
How plausible this is I believe will be up to the upper-echelon players, the mainstream and marquee names of the likes of Sean Rosenthal, John Mayer, April Ross, and Brooke Sweat. Will these players who have worked so hard to get to this level be willing to take a backseat to developing and future players? They would be in the right to say that it is a "right of passage" that every player must endure, but does it really have to be this way? To me the beach volleyball players of today hold much more power than I think they realize and are in position to create sustainable career for themselves in this sport, which they rightfully deserve, but who will be willing to take that step forward and speak out, not just for themselves for one another?
The ground is shrinking beneath the AVP's feet, and no longer can they consider themselves "top dog" when a single email, a single blog post and damage their glossy exterior. Maybe the pond isn't getting bigger, after all the sport is still rather small domestically. Instead, perhaps the big fish of the AVP, NVL, and USAV have just been as big as our imaginations allowed them to be.
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