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If I were the Sports Czar…surely every fan has had those thoughts at some time or another. Some of us more then others. What if we were elected president of the American sports scene? What changes would we enact? Like any good president, we’d have to focus on a few key issues and not get bogged down in every last detail. Here’s the agenda I would run on. Most of the changes are substantive rule or format-related, but others pertain to a more subtle altering of perceptions and the way the game is presented.
Baseball
I was never a supporter of baseball’s realignment when they went to the three-division format plus the wild-card after the 1993 season. I’ve partially come around on this. The smaller divisions combined with the unbalanced schedule have helped to enhance the rivalries. But I’ve never come around on the wild-card. There’s just not enough of a distinction between making the postseason as a division winner or going the wild-card route. Unlike the NFL, where lower seeds face a much tougher road to the Super Bowl, the eight playoff teams in MLB are all basically on even footing once Octoberfest begins. Ideally, I’d like to see the wild-card junked and the best team in each league get a bye into the LCS. Short of that, I’d like to see a second wild-card team added for each league. It would mean that if you don’t win your division, you are forced into a extra series (probably 2-of-3), rather then getting an even chance at the starting line.
The game itself is pretty sound, but the increasing tendency of managers to brings pitchers in to face one hitter is getting irritating. I think the age of specialization, particularly in the bullpen, has enhanced the game’s strategic element. But bringing a left-handed pitcher out of the pen just to face one left-handed hitter and then quickly being removed goes a little too far and slows the game down. Pitchers should have to face a minimum of three batters or finish the inning, whichever comes first. At that point, they are eligible to be lifted.
College Football
No, this isn’t going to be one of those hackneyed columns where some whiner throws up a proposed 16-team tournament and asks you to ponder how great it would be. I’d just like to see New Year’s Day restored, the championship game pushed back and conference titles given even greater prominence.
My ideal format would be to ensure all traditional bowl tie-ins and have all four BCS games played on New Year’s Day. The top two teams could then be chosen afterward, with the title game being played the offweek prior to the Super Bowl. Short of that, I would accept a format where an eight-team tournament kicked off with the four first-round games on January 1 and ended the week prior to the Super Bowl.
Under the more traditional format, there has to be rule preventing conference championship game losers (Missouri, Tennessee) from being jumped for at-large bids by teams they beat out in their own division (Kansas, Georgia). This doesn’t mean you should have to win a division to get an at-large. When Oklahoma and Texas are the best teams in the Big 12, we won’t force the BCS to take the North champ ahead of the second-place finisher. But at the very least, you shouldn’t be able to leapfrog your own divisional winner.
The rules would have to be even stricter if we turn the eight-team New Year’s festivities into the opening of a tournament. Then it’s time to say that each conference gets only one team, and it must be their champion. If we are going to “settle it on the field”, as pro-playoff people insist, how can we pretend the results of an eight-game league schedule are inconclusive to eliminate teams? And if they are, why is a three-round tournament going to bring us any more resolution? The six BCS conference champs get bids. If Notre Dame (or any other independent) meet pre-determined criteria, they get a bid. And the best of the mid-majors can fill out the field.
Under either format, New Year’s opens early in the day with bowl games involving the top runner-ups (Capital One, Cotton, Gator), have two BCS or quarterfinal games in the 4 EST time slot, and two more in prime-time. January 1 would again be the centerpiece of college football. And the sport would still get a winner-take-all national title game.
Pro Football
You know I’d like to turn the clock back several years to when there were only thirty teams. I liked the three-division format with five teams per division. It allowed for a clean schedule, in that precisely half of your games were against your division foes. The current format with 4 divisions at 4 apiece allows for only six of sixteen games to be against your archenemy. That’s just not enough. A core rule of Flaherty doctrine requires that a minimum of 50 percent of a team’s games be within their own division. If I got the old three-division format, I’d implement the two wild-card system, for the reasons discussed in the baseball section of this platform.
But that requires contraction, and no NFL team is so poorly supported as to justify that. And doing a three-division format with 16 teams per league doesn’t allow the clean 5-5-5 split. Given a 32-team NFL, the format they have is the best one available.
So I’m prepared to settle for more basic measures: just cut down on the damn commercials. When I watch a tivo’d game I feel like I spend more time with my finger on the fast-forward then I do actually watching. The NFL can’t be hurting for money that badly that it would kill them to modestly reduce the network fee in exchange for mandating even 2-3 fewer breaks per game. Especially the ones where they break after a score, then after the kickoff they break again before even running one play.
College Hoops
This one’s a cultural shift. I’m concerned about the NCAA Tournament. Not the event itself, but the all-consuming obsession with it. We’ve lost the focus there used to be on winning on conference championships—not just as a means to getting a higher seed, but as a major achievement in its own right. The season needs to be measured by more then just how far you go in March.
I certainly agree that making the Final Four is the centerpiece that everyone’s gunning for. But let’s say a team won the ACC and then got upset in the second round. Another team from the same league finished fourth, but got to the Sweet 16 before being bounced. Is the difference really that compelling that we think the one extra tournament win overrides an entire season? Based on the way the media reports things you’d certainly think so.
It’s time for that to change. The game is about winning championships. The only way to override winning a conference title should be by winning an NCAA regional and going to the Final Four. Otherwise, it’s better to be the best in your own backyard.
NBA/NHL
This proposed change goes beyond pro basketball and hockey, but I’m going to suggest it originate here with the NBA & NHL.
A common theme in professional sports lately has been a major imbalance between leagues/conferences. The American League vastly outstrips the National. The AFC beats up on the NFC (though that looks to be evening out a little bit in ’07). The West owns the East in the NBA. It goes well beyond having a long winning streak in the World Series, Super Bowl or Finals. It goes beyond maybe the best two teams in each league being on the same side of the bracket. It certainly goes far beyond who’s beating who in the All-Star Game & Pro Bowl.
In all three cases, it’s one league systemically dominating the other up and down in inter-conference play. In all three cases it’s a landscape where the best team in the weaker league wouldn’t be anywhere close to the top in the stronger one. Does anyone really believe the Chicago Bears were better then any of the AFC semi-finalists last year? In the midst of all the talk about the Rockies magic ride in 2007, does anyone think they could have beaten the Indians or Yankees, much less the Red Sox? Personally, I think the Angels or even the non-playoff Tigers would have won the National League.
This gravely damages the credibility of each sport’s showcase event. While it’s not necessary for the best two teams to play in the final round, it is critical that the leagues they represent be on equal par. In the early 1990s, Dallas and San Francisco were the universally acknowledged top two teams in the game and the NFC title bout was seen as “the real Super Bowl.” But the AFC had more depth, and through that depth its conference champion earned the right to stand toe-to-toe with the winner of the Cowboy-Niner heavyweight fight. That’s not the case today.
What to do? For those of us who admire the game’s traditions, the conference/league distinctions are unique. To keep the uniqueness vibrant, it’s necessary to carry it into the postseason format. Do we just live with the current imbalance and hope for things to cycle back? That’s an option, and truth to be told, I’d prefer that to a hasty fix that we may come to regret. But ESPN’s Bill Simmons broached on idea that I find intriguing.
Simmons suggested that instead of making the championship round the place where the two leagues meet, we make it the first round. Make each matchup a battle between the leagues. The #1 seed in one league plays the lowest seeded team in the other league. And just create the rest of the brackets using the same formula (1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc), but just draw them from opposing conferences. Keep inter-conference matchups going as long as you can until one league is toast. This ensures each league still gets its quota of playoff teams, thus preserving the integrity of its division races. It still allows for the best in each league to meet in the final round if they both keep winning. And if one league is weaker then the other, it allows them to fall by the wayside quickly.
The best part about this proposal is it that its something that looks good even if a sport returns to balance among its leagues. It’s not intrinsically dependent on one league being stronger then the other, even if that’s the problem that’s inspiring it.
But an idea can look good on paper, but not work out so well once the rubber hits the road. MLB & the NFL’s league/conference distinctions are very well developed and I’m hesitant to foist a novel idea upon them without test-driving it first. Let’s have the NBA & NHL start with this plan and see how it works. If all goes well, we’ll expand its usage.
Conclusion
That’s the Flaherty agenda for change in American sports. There’s more ideas that I kick around. The economic structure of baseball is always in need of repair, and the amount of in-season roster moves that happen should be scaled back. I’d like to see more defense-friendly rules in football and an end to college football’s odd start times done to accommodate ESPN. But those are still at the level of general thoughts, and I haven’t worked out the details for how it would function. They will have to wait for another day. For now, Congress will have plenty to keep them busy when the program outlined above is submitted after my Inauguration.
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