Coming to the aid of sports
Sports are broken. And with the sports world shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, this is the perfect time to hit the reset button and fix the broken parts.
Thus, I am coming to the aid of sports everywhere. I have been granted permission to fix them in seven easy steps. The following rule changes go into effect immediately.
All sports –
- No guaranteed contracts.
In professional team sports, salaries are typically connected to a player’s production from several years earlier, resulting in long-term contracts, and almost all of that money is guaranteed. Therein lies the biggest problem in professional sports. Major League Baseball completely guarantees salaries. So does the NBA and NHL, with the exception of the rare buyout. Of the four major U.S. sports, the NFL is the outlier, which makes sense because of the larger rosters and the increased injury factor. Guaranteeing contracts in football simply doesn’t make sense.
Guaranteed contracts are where team sports have it wrong. Real incentive should be tied to winning and current performance, when you have to produce and win instead of just showing up and collecting a paycheck. You should have to keep producing to get rich. That’s the way it is in professional golf and tennis. So why can’t it be that way in team sports? You have to make the team, whether it’s the active roster or disabled list, to make your money. If you don’t produce, then the team can get rid of you and the contract.
Guaranteed contracts really only guarantee one thing: higher ticket prices. When the New York Mets are still paying Bobby Bonilla almost $1.2 million annually two decades after he last played for them, then you know the ticket-buying fan is footing that bill.
Baseball –
- Ban the designated hitter in the National League, increase pace of play, start real revenue sharing, play at least one daytime World Series game.
The push for the DH in the National League is all about getting another high-priced hitter onto each team’s roster. That would be good for the players association, bad for the game – there is more strategy and a better style of play in NL games – and even worse for fans, who would have to pay a higher ticket price if another big-money player who sits on the bench for 98 percent of the game and rarely breaks a sweat is added to the roster.
There is one sure-fire way to increase pace of play: fewer commercials. Want to know why postseason games routinely last four-plus hours? It’s because the time between the final out in an inning and the first pitch of the next inning often surpasses four minutes. That’s more than an hour of built-in commercial time in a nine-inning game.
Cut the number of in-game commercials, add a few to the pregame show if you like, and play ball.
Baseball needs a broadcast revenue-sharing system that is tied to a salary cap with a floor and ceiling. The disparity between the Los Angeles Dodgers’ television and radio revenue and that of the Pirates or other small-market teams is so vast that it makes competitive balance impossible. Revenue sharing is what allows for an NFL team from Green Bay, Wisc., to have just as much chance to make the Super Bowl as a team from New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. Baseball needs, at the least, broadcast revenue sharing.
Starting now, each club will put 49% of its broadcast revenue into a pot that will be evenly distributed among all teams. The salary cap’s floor and ceiling would be based off this distribution.
At least one World Series game each year will be played with an afternoon start time. It will be either Game 2 or Game 5 – it must be a weekday getaway game – so that kids from all over the country can watch. It’s idiotic that World Series games start so late they end after midnight in the East.
Boxing –
- One governing body to regulate the sport and one champion in each weight class.
At $80 a pop for a pay-per-view card, boxing fans prove a couple of times each year that there is still interest in big fights. There just aren’t enough big fights.
There was a time not too long ago when boxing was one of the top three professional sports in this country. It has, however, wallowed in disorder for decades with numerous alphabet-soup organizations that are run out of phone booths running the sport. Boxing needs one world champion in each weight class. One organization will organize elimination tournaments among the current champions and assign mandatory title defenses.
And when there is a big-money, pay-per-view card, protect the fan with a money-back guarantee. If the main event lasts fewer than four rounds, then you get 20 percent of the purchase price returned. Less than six rounds and you get 10 percent back.
High school sports in Pennsylvania –
- Separate postseason divisions for public and private schools. Nothing in sports makes less sense than the current setup in Pennsylvania, where private (non-boundary schools) play in the same postseason tournaments with public schools.
Do I really need to go into how ridiculous this is?
College basketball –
- Fewer timeouts.
Teams will get two full timeouts and one 30-second timeout for the entire game, so use them wisely. And only two “TV timeouts” per half. It was not long ago that televised college basketball games fit nicely into a two-hour window. Now, they’re lucky to be completed in 2½ hours, the result of eight built-in TV timeouts and another four available to each team. Play. Timeout. Play. Timeout. Play. Timeout. It’s almost impossible to play five consecutive minutes without a timeout.
College sports –
- Realign the conferences.
If you want proof that fans don’t matter, only money does, in college sports, then let this sink in: Pitt, Penn State, West Virginia and Duquesne are in different conferences. If fans mattered, then Pitt, Penn State and WVU would be in the same football conference, Texas and Texas A&M would be together in a conference, Florida, Florida State and Miami would be in the same league, as would Iowa and Iowa State.
NBA and NHL –
- Shorten the regular seasons. We don’t need 82 games to eliminate less than half of a league’s teams.