Owners of the Toronto Rock -- including managing director Bill Watters -- are deep into negotiations to purchase the Syracuse Smash and move the franchise to the Corel Centre in Ottawa, according to a newspaper report published today in the Canadian capital.

The Ottawa Sun reports in Saturday's editions that the Rock, two-time defending NLL champions, are interested in making their 1998 Expansion Class brethren the second Canadian team in the league.

"I'd say the talks are more than advanced," said Corel Centre COO Cyril Leeder. "We're not there yet, but we've talked about it in detail."

The relocated Smash could begin playing in Ottawa as early as the 2001 season, assuming that an agreement can be reached in the next three weeks.

The sale brings up a very important issue -- should one NLL team be allowed to own another? In most professional leagues, the answer is a resounding no, for the very simple reason that it promotes dishonest practices such as imbalanced trades and the f-word of professional sports: fixes.

Although never proven and often preposterous, rumors persist that many Major Indoor Lacrosse League games were fixed in the late 1980s and much of the 1990s. In the days of MILL, the entire league and every team were owned by three investors -- Russ Cline, Chris Fritz, and Bruce Lucker -- setting the stage for charges that teams such as Buffalo and Philadelphia were favored by the referees.

Although Cline, Fritz, and Lucker each nominally owned separate teams in 1998, the first year of the NLL, the three often acted in concert (under the banner of the "Major Indoor Lacrosse Group") while whittling their collective holdings down to only Philadelphia (New York and Ontario -- ironically, the team that became the Toronto Rock -- were the other MILG clubs).

Watters' track record as the head of the Rock ownership group speaks well of his abilities to turn around a failing team in a hurry -- in the two years since the sale of the Ontario Raiders to Watters' group, the franchise has a 22-6 record (including playoffs) and a pair of NLL Champion's Cups.

Given the league's past decisions, it is easy to see the owners allowing Bill Watters and his partners to own a second team. Likewise, it is easy to see the Syracuse Smash becoming another rags-to-riches story under the Rock's ownership, and is the most probable outcome of such an arrangement. However, it's also possible that the Smash will become an "ugly stepsister" to the league's top team, and even the appearance of such a relationship could set the NLL's rising profile back by years. In order to make sure there is no possibility of impropriety (and to prevent the public from believing there is any), the NLL's owners should institute safeguards such as expanded monitoring of both teams' activities if it plans to approve the sale of the Smash to Bill Watters' group.