And I Thought Bobby Ginn Was Bad...

Over at Waggle Room, Ryan has been documenting the S.E.C. investigation into Robert Allen Stanford of Stanford Financial Group and the story has been all over the news so I won't go into the details here.  This situation affects the LPGA greatly so I would be remiss if I didn't post my thoughts on it.

As the Ginn situation deteriorated over the last 12 months, I and a few others pulled no punches about the Tour diving in headfirst with a sponsor whose house was built on a foundation of sand.  At least in that example, the sponsor was only guilty of over-speculation and poor judgment (in my eyes, not in a court of law).  Mr. Stanford has not been convicted of any crimes but the evidence made public so far doesn't bode well for him or his company.  It also doesn't bode well for the Tour, with its season-ending tournament in Houston being underwritten by this corporation-under-fire.

The LPGA doesn't have the luxury to turn away ANY potential sponsors, even in the best of economic times.  It wouldn't be prudent or polite for Ms. Bivens and her administration to insist on a full disclosure of practices from each company they partner with.  Therefore it also wouldn't be prudent to condemn her or the Tour (or Morgan Pressel, for that matter) for partnering with Stanford Financial.  If you must, be sure to also condemn the PGA Tour for the same infraction.

One major Bivens M.O. of growing the LPGA Tour has been to increase purse sizes by bringing in higher dollar sponsors to force the bar higher for the legacy events.  The Ginn and Stanford situations are an unfortunate by-product of that strategy and it remains to be seen whether the net will be a gain or loss.  It's not as simple as calling Stanford "strike two" on Bivens because the purse increases and the new TV deals are also by-products of her strategy but you wouldn't be out-of-line to call it "a second black eye".

So what happens now?  I'm going to assume that if the Houston event is held at all, it won't have the currently announced name attached to it.  Maybe one of the oil companies based in that area whose '08 fourth-quarter profits make the $9.2 billion CD fraud scheme that Stanford is accused of running look like a drop in the bucket will step up for us.  Or maybe monkeys will fly out of...the sky.