CHICAGO - Missing in Action.
More famously and notoriously known for its acronym - MIA - the term used to be derogatory, stigmatizing.
But in a politically correct climate that our world now exists in, the dereliction of duty has been somewhat redefined to sound less jarring and more acceptable.
Leave Of Absence.
Greg Slaughter made it fashionable in 2019, And just recently, Bobby Ray Parks Jr elevated it to highly condemnable.
The faces and jerseys have changed, the abbreviation altered from MIA to LOA. Yet the stink and the havoc it wreaks remains the same.
I commend the PBA's plans to address the matter involving unhappy players who abruptly decide to take their talents to the sidelines and compromise the competitive health and well-being of their respective teams.
Nip this potential epidemic of rebellion in the bud before it explodes into a league-wide pandemic.
However, going about it through a so-called "study group" may not be the right path.
An old time member of the Board told me that under the PBA Constitution, the Commissioner "decides on all game-related matters, player discipline, inter-intra team issues and player trades."
And even if the said charter has been changed or amended, this study group still weakens Kume Marical because it deprives him of the unique power and independence to be "the arbiter of agendas and the more conflicted interests" that inhabit the league.
The five-man trade committee is another thing that has "emasculated" Kume Marcial, said the former Board member.
"ARE THEY MORE POWERFUL THAN WILLIE?"
Sure looks like it because they - Eric Castro and Joey Guanio, et al - are the ones who approve trades while Marcial, sitting on a chair with his hands tied. nods gently.
When the study group proposal was first introduced earlier this week, the esteemed Ricky Vargas swore that this wasn't a "knee-jerk" reaction.
But when the governor for TnT couldn't name some of the group's members because they have yet to be invited, the project sounds herky-jerky.
Like a whiplash from a bad Bobby Ray Parks crash.
Just as fact-finding probes and task forces often become marching bands to nowhere, I don't always believe that an army of high-priced lawyers or a committee made up of high-profile names solves any problems.
Sometimes all you need is a room full of ordinary folks with basic common sense.
I'm not the biggest Willie Marcial fan but he doesn't deserve to be thrown under this hefty, redundant study group that is encroaching on the commissioner's jurisdiction.
During his embattled tenure, which began last January 2018, Marcial has somehow brought peace to warring factions while extinguishing small fires.
The 10th commissioner isn't No. 1 in my heart but he has earned my respect. And, in some ways, my admiration for surviving a job that is soaked with so much intrigue and dirty politics.
Give the man his due, PBA.
If you choose to continue to distrust his ability to make the big boy decisions on behalf of your league then fine. It's your prerogative.
But you have to reassign Willie Marical as Head of Game Operations.
Insisting that he is still the commissioner when some of his great powers have been so clearly, publicly stripped is pretentious and misleading.
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