5 Radical Changes to Make Sports Better

The sports world is one fraught with many perils and pitfalls. While I love many things about the current state of sports right now, there are definitely things that I think have gone wrong and would like to see corrected. Here then, in no particular order, are five very radical and controversial, changes I would make to sports (both pro and college) to make them better. I'm sure this will stir up some debate, so please comment away:




MLB-- Contraction: This has been a pet argument of mine a long, long time. Many people have complained (and rightfully so) that it was steroids that "ruined" baseball and turned it into a video game where it became all about who could hit the biggest and the most home runs and there was no strategy involved. It is the view of these people that the inflated numbers of the late 90s into the early 2000s were solely and completely the fault of steroids and PEDs. But that's not entirely true as expansion, and specifically the over-expansion in the 1990s, has also resulted in the inflated numbers we see in modern baseball. By and large, the talent has been spread too thin and the overall level of talent that a player faces from day-to-day is much lower than it was in the past, when many of these records were set. What you don't realize is that, because players like Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams or Stan Musial played before the first instance of expansion, they were facing better overall players. I'm not thinking about star players here, but your average 3rd or 4th starter on a pitching staff or your 6th or 7th hitter in the batting order. Because there were fewer teams, teams were able to have stronger 3rd and 4th starters, players who would be aces or number two starters for more mediocre teams as a result of expansion and thus a need for more pitchers with the existence of more rotations. Today, a player faces a progressively weaker 3rd or 4th starter every fifth day, thus enabling them to put up gaudier numbers. What's the answer to this? Contraction. I know a whole hell of a lot of people don't like the idea, and wrinkle up in fear when it's brought up. But the fact of the matter is if we eliminate a certain number of teams (particularly those who have difficult actually creating a fanbase), we can redistribute those players throughout the league which will, in turn, raise the overall level of play throughout the league. I'm not going to get into a specific plan here, as that can come at a later date and in a longer post, but I believe that over-expansion over the years has diluted the talent pool in baseball and given us (as baseball fans) an inferior and watered-down product. By removing some of these teams stemming from over-expansion and allowing their top players to go to other teams, the overall level of talent and play will rise and Major League Baseball will produce a superior product.

NCAAB-- Expand the "one and done" rule to 3 years: While I definitely think that the college game is better off with the current rule, which says that players cannot go straight from high school to the NBA (they must either spend one year in college, go to Europe or the D-League), I don't think it goes far enough. Now, maybe I shouldn't be too greedy,and I should be happy that my Longhorns were able to have a player like Kevin Durant for that one year, but were we really able to enjoy it because we knew he was likely to jump into the NBA after that one year? I feel as though this "one and done" mentality, where the top college players only play one year at a school all the while knowing that they're going to jump into the pros after that one year and they're only playing college basketball to meet that requirement, really hurts the college game and creates too much ebb-and-flow in college basketball. Teams can't build or have a long term plan when Kevin Durant, Greg Oden, Michael Beasley or Carmelo Anthony are only planning on being around one year before going pro. The action I would like to see in response to this would be two-fold. The first would require the NBA to take action like the NFL and say that players must be 3 years removed from high school to enter the league. Thus, if college isn't for a particular player they can pursue those other options (either the D-League or going to Europe). The second action would come from the NCAA and would be close to what you see in college baseball-- if you commit to an NCAA scholarship with a team, you must stay on the squad for 3 years (that is how I've heard it described). That way, players there on scholarship would be "locked in" for at least 3 years and if they're on a Durant/Anthony/Beasley level, they can leave after their third year. But, what I'm willing to bet, is that more players will enjoy and embrace college basketball if they have full exposure to it (rather than just one solitary year) and will want to stay for that fourth year. If the players are locked in for that kind of extended commitment, coaches can plan and build and not have to live year-to-year.

I also want to very briefly, address the notion that players like Dwight Howard and LeBron James were ready to go straight from high school to the pros and thus it's not fair that they would have to play college basketball. This might be true, but has anyone really been hurt in the long run by playing college basketball? I know it's hard to imagine these players being any better than they actually are, but they very well might be had they played college ball, or their development might have occurred much quicker. It might seem like we're "holding these players back" but even if someone is the brightest kid coming out of high school, they still need to go to college and get a degree if they're going to be hired for most jobs. And the college game definitely benefits by having these stellar players in their league, and thus we're watching a sport played at a much higher level. Even if they could, hypothetically, play in the NBA I don't think it hurts them at all to play the college game and it only raises the level of play, which benefits... just about everyone else.

NCAAF-- Eliminate the BCS/Go back to the old system: I know there a couple of people who feel even more strongly about this than I do, and I'll leave it to them to argue this point further. But the BCS is clearly flawed. While it does give us a "championship game," it also takes away from the tradition and all the things that make college football special and unique. Because of the BCS' flaws, many people clamor for a playoff system, as though that would solve the problem. But the playoffs would only further take away from the traditions that make college football special, and you would have arguments from the 9th team (in an 8 team playoff) about why they deserve to be in the playoffs, etc etc. Again, I don't want to get into this argument too much, but trust me-- a playoff system is not the answer. Then what is the answer? Go back to the old system. That's right, no BCS title game, no de-facto playoff system in the BCS. Instead go back to the way it was, an onslaught of New Year's Day bowl games after which the deciding entities sort through the results and determine a national champion or, if there isn't a consensus that can be reached, a split national champion. A playoff system would completely diminish the importance of the bowl games, something special and unique to college football. There's something special about the Big 10-Pac 10 showdown in the Rose Bowl, or Texas heading up to Dallas to play in the Cotton Bowl (another pet cause of mine-- getting the Cotton Bowl back to where it was as one of the premiere bowl games) or Alabama playing in Louisiana in the Sugar Bowl. A playoff system would totally destroy those games and take away their greater significance. So let's just accept the fact that, in order to keep the special and unique things about college football, we totally scrap the BCS so I don't have to see Miami or Oklahoma playing in the Rose Bowl and we go back to the way it was. That way, we're able to preserve the things that make college football special and unique and we're not going to destroy it in order to chase after an equally flawed playoff system. Though I do acknowledge that it can be vexing to not have a sole national champion every time, I feel like there's nothing that can really give people the clearcut answer they want. Thus why destroy decades and decades and decades of tradition over something that one can never attain? So I say we scrap the whole BCS system, go back to the way things were and we'll have your national champion (or split national champions) decided by the end of New Year's Day.

(This idea was first brought to my attention by Dave Dameshek on ESPN: Page 2. Take a look at this article; he makes a pretty good case)

NBA-- No guaranteed contracts past 3 years and/or drop 10-20 games off the regular season: I've read about these two ideas in Bill Simmons' columns or head them on his podcast, and I agree with him on both counts. The idea of no guaranteed contracts past 3 years is a very interesting one. Simmons identifies large contracts that teams can't get out of as something that is holding up and hurting the league and keeping teams from improving, and a couple of players from the free agent class of the summer of 2008 (Gilbert Arenas and Elton Brand) really prove this point. These teams will be, most likely, hamstrung with these huge contracts for 6 years rather than being able to void it after the third year. I think that this idea would be a great one, as you could guarantee 3 years of the contract and then choose to honor the rest of it if the player turns out well and produces (and you could re-guarantee it as well, ostensibly) but if the player doesn't pan out at all, you aren't completely held hostage by this large and expensive contract and can get out of it. It's not quite to the level of the NFL, where nothing is guaranteed and anyone can be cut and all the team is on the hook for is the signing bonus, but it's not as extreme as the MLB where everything is guaranteed. It seems as though the NBA, the fluidity of the game and teams being able to re-build after lean years would benefit greatly by having this caveat in every contract. In addition to this, the NBA's season is generally seen as too long by most casual viewers. Perhaps by dropping anywhere from 10 to 20 games, the season doesn't seem to go on forever and thus you hold the interest of more casual fans. In addition, there are less back-to-back games and players aren't quite as worn down as they are now, so Kobe isn't as likely to injure his ankle and miss time. The NBA schedule is bloated right now, and by trimming the fat of extra games will things run more smoothly and players won't get as worn down so they can stay healthy throughout the season.

NFL-- Eliminate 1 regular season game: The approach that the Colts took this season, having clinched their division and home field throughout the playoffs and thus resting their starters and NOT going for a shot at perfection, shows us that the NFL season is over-long. Cutting off the last week of the season would mean that the season would, overall, be more competitive. I mean, how many years has it been that 2/3 to 3/4 of the teams in the last week of the season aren't playing for anything? The final week (or even weeks) of the regular season have been rendered meaningless, so why not get rid of it? If these teams are going to clinch their divisions and then shut it down in order to prepare for the playoffs, why play games at all? If these Week 17 games don't matter, and that seems to be the approach of a lot of teams, why risk getting people injured? That's why you see teams like the Colts or Bengals or Cardinals shutting it down in Week 17. This is a sign that the NFL schedule is one game too long, as things are usually wrapped up on Week 16 and Week 17, for the most part, is a relatively meaningless exercise. It seems sacreligous to talk about taking away football, because we all love it so much, but the fact of the matter is things get more competitive if there are only 16 games and we don't have to deal with teams confronting this issue of resting starters, and thus we don't get meaningless Week 17 games with Curtis Painter playing QB for the Colts. Going from 17 weeks to 16 would make the NFL season tighter and generally more competitive, and thus a superior product.