A few years ago, sportswriting demigod Rick Reilly wrote a column about what he’d change if he were some kind of American Sports Czar and could change anything he wanted with the kind of impunity only Roger Goodell can imagine.
With this column, I’m … basically ripping him off. But these are (mostly) different approaches to what I see as the slightly to grossly, the poorly constructed and the downright obnoxious rules, slight to major improvements to the standards and customs of our national pastimes.
We’ll start with the biggies …
Football
It may seem a little odd to start a column about what I’d change to sports by pleading that changes NOT be made, but this is the case.
Each year, the NFL rules committee gets together and tries to figure out what to do to tweak THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SPORT IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE.
Yeah, I know, soccer/fútbol is way more popular worldwide and some stats indicate more people watch car racing than American football … but the league has an annual revenue stream of $10 billion that only scratches the surface of how incredibly big this sport is.
So let’s move back the point-after-touchdowns, because PATs are too easy! Let’s ban players from “dunking” over the goalposts! Let’s make every player — we’re looking at you, Marshawn — be required to talk to reporters after games! Let’s add more teams to the playoffs!
Stop it. Just, stop. The sport is not broken (save for the item below), so stop trying to mess with a good thing.
Instead, perhaps the committee could rather address important things, like concussions. They’ve gotten better at diagnosing those kinds of injuries, but there seems to be some progress to be made in helmet design and education.
Also, parents and players probably should remind themselves that this is a sport with helmets and many pads: that is a great indicator that there may be a chance to get seriously injured in a variety of ways. If you don’t want that to happen, take up another sport.
Finally, perhaps it’s time to get serious about performance-enhancing drugs in football. Anyone else think it’s a little weird that almost no major figure in American football has been banned from its Hall of Fame for steroid/PED use?
Want to stack up the number of players who by the numbers deserve a pass to baseball’s Hall of Fame but aren’t in thanks to use or suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs (10 at my last count and growing each year) to the number not making it in to football’s Hall of Fame for the same reasons (none)? Isn’t football the sport we’d suspect the most use?
Those drugs that increases muscle mass and strength and also enhance recovery time after a workout? In a sport where 6-foot-6, 310 pounds and running a 4.5 40-yard dash is becoming not the exception but the rule?
College football (and other college sports)
The NCAA got its act together and finally found a way to work in a playoff system for college football. Congrats. Now, instead of dozens of teams feeling they got robbed at the end of the season (minus two), you have dozens of teams feeling they got robbed at the end of the season (minus four).
A quick look at the Football Championship Series (formerly Division II) gives you a good idea that a 24-team playoff can be completed from Nov. 29-Jan. 10, with eight teams getting a bye and eight getting eliminated in the first round.
Of course, we would have to throw out the bowl system. Maybe not bad idea. This year, there are 36 bowls, NOT COUNTING the two national semifinals and the national championship.
I think we can do away with the Duck Commander Independence Bowl, the Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl and the Raycom Media Camellia Bowl, don’t you? Either get back to the “old days” of 16-20 bowls — sorry, 6-7 Fresno State — or get a real playoff going.
As for paying college athletes … that’s a big, ugly can of worms to open. I think the countless millions of dollars poured into universities solely for the glorification of college sports figures has pretty much thrown the whole “amateur status” thing out the window, right?
Like anyone thinks of any player suiting up for Alabama or Oregon or Florida State as untainted, uncorrupted young adults, with their multi-thousand-dollar scholarships, television deals that put them before a national audience in high school, and many of them signing letters of intent in middle school.
So you want to pay college football players? College basketball players? Sure. Go for it. But make them employees of the university and make every document having to do with their employment is open to public scrutiny.
Want to pay Joe Athlete $50,000 to come to your school? Go ahead … and anticipate a thousand reporters asking for copies of Joe’s W-4 forms.
Let’s see some free agency out there, as Joe looks to sign with Auburn, then LSU, then finally settles with Ohio State because the Buckeyes offer a $1.1 million signing bonus.
It’s a scene no one really wants … not the colleges and universities, not the fans and not the players, in the end. But it may be the best option with so many folks clamoring for a piece of the billion-dollar pie.
Baseball
Basically, baseball is the best-designed game anywhere: the symmetry of 90 feet between bases, the construct of nine innings that allow for bursts of intense action but plenty of downtime for refection about the history of the game, the beer and hot dogs … just amazing.
I’d only change a couple of things, the first being to bring back “Old-Timers” games. They used to be a staple of the game but for the occasional, poorly played celebrity softball games. Instead of seeing hobbled, aging versions of our heroes whiff at 65-mile-per-hour “fastballs” (like we should), we only get hobbled, aging versions of our heroes on bad reality shows or in mug shots.” Put ’em back on the field. And that goes for all sports … who wouldn’t want to see the greats go at it again, even if they’re decades past their prime?
Second, let’s nix the designated hitter. It was a good idea at the time and I would not trade Mariners DH great Edgar Martinez for a poor-hitting substitute, but I think the DH has run its course.
Third, put Edgar in the Hall of Fame. Seriously.
Fourth, and my biggest pet peeve of the game, STOP HAVING BASEBALL WRITERS DETERMINE WHO GETS INTO BASEBALL’S HALL OF FAME. And this is coming from a sportswriter. Who thought this was a good idea? Sports writers, I guess. It should be a mix of folks: former and current players, former and current managers and GMs, a few respected sportswriters … and James Earl Jones. So he can announce those selected.
Basketball
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz should be required to buy an NBA team and move them — himself — to Seattle, donating the squad to the city. And when I say he needs to move the team himself, I mean he has to give a piggy-back ride to each player from the city in which they play back to Seattle. And carry their uniforms. And sweatbands. And towels. And sneakers. And family members.
Read part two in the Jan. 7 edition of the Sequim Gazette.
