"It's not the clients and company executives who suffer if companies cancel their events. They'll find other fun things to do that weekend."

The WSJ's John Paul Newport on the PGA Tour sponsorship issues from this week:

Golf, with its traditional fat-cat image, is an easy target for abuse, some of it deserved. I'm one who has long believed the game skews too fancy for its own good. But the trouble with this week's rabble-rousing, apart from whatever damage it does to the effective business practices of banks and other troubled companies, such as the automakers, is the chill it casts over the entire microeconomy of golf, and of sports in general.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the drying up of corporate outings to golf resorts, mostly for fear of projecting the wrong image in the current economic environment, was creating travel bargains for the rest of us. But it is also devastating the golf resort and hospitality industry. The same holds true for the drying up of client entertainment at golf and other sports events.

"It's not the clients and company executives who suffer if companies cancel their events. They'll find other fun things to do that weekend. It's the 20 guys who valet-park cars for minimum wage plus tips, the 15 cooks in the kitchen, the six dishwashers, the rigging guys who put up the stage, the housekeepers who make up the hotel rooms where people stay," said David Israel, a TV producer who is involved in the sports economy as vice chairman of the California Horse Racing Commission and past president of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission.

And...

"It seems to me that if the goal is to get the financial system working normally again, you've got to let businesses do what they know how to do best to make money," Mr. Israel said.