Ten Things To Change in the World of Sports

As the new year kicks off with resolutions of change in the air, it seems appropriate to look to things other than our personal habits that could use a facelift. Here are 10 things from the wonderful world of sports that could use some tinkering.

10. Pictures on the Golf Course

Do digital cameras even make noises when they take pictures anymore? Why is it, then, that fans cannot take pictures of their favorite golfers making a clutch shot? In all other professional sports cameras and distractions alike are allowed—fans are even encouraged to try and distract opposing players—so why not allow slight distractions for professional golfers?

Not all fan-induced distractions are done on purpose, though—sometimes people are just trying to prove they were there. Think of how distracting thousands of flashing bulbs at night must have been when Barry Bonds was trying to connect for 756 or A-Rod was trying to become the youngest player to reach 500.

So PGA, please reevaluate your position on cameras and allow fans who have paid hundreds of dollars to snap a few pics.

9. Fake Injuries in Professional Soccer

You know what really grinds my gears—when a professional soccer player falls to the ground pretending to be in excruciating pain after getting barely bumped. How many times have you seen a soccer player fall to the ground and then roll around on their back gripping their calf only to get up and run at full speed two minutes later.

I get that players are tired because they cannot come off the field at all, but if you act like you’ve just been shot in the leg, you better not be able to get up and sprint immediately following the whistle.

If that’s the case, you should be penalized for making a mockery of the sport and disrupting the flow of the game just so you can get some rest. FIFA should add a third card and make it half the value of a yellow card—two blue cards and you have yourself a yellow card—and they should carry over for a couple of games.

8. Discrepancy of Sets in Men and Women’s Tennis Matches

Why is it that men’s tennis matches in grand slams require three sets for the win, while women’s only require two? The prize money for the ATP and WTA grand slam winner is identical, so why don’t they play the same amount of tennis?

For all other tennis tournaments, everyone plays the best of three sets. If the professional athletes of the ATP can endure five sets in grand slams, though, why can’t the WTA players?

The main problem is with court scheduling, since there are men’s singles and doubles, women’s singles and doubles, mixed doubles, and a boatload of junior tennis play. That hardly seems like an excuse to deny fans the matches they deserve.

It really becomes an issue when you want to watch the finals—they are supposed to stand alone as the best matches of the tournament. From a fan’s standpoint, if I am going to pay an exorbitant amount of money to see either final, shouldn’t I potentially get the same amount of tennis?

Both the WTA and ATP contain high-caliber professional athletes who have the ability to give fans a great show with eye-popping plays and grueling matches—why can’t we potentially see five sets from both men and women?

7. MLB Salary Caps and Floors

One of the best things about professional sports is seeing how teams deal with salary caps and retain talent in putting together a great team. The MLB has a completely different approach—they have a luxury tax that is assessed to teams with extraordinarily high payrolls.

This luxury tax is given then given back to the league, and some of the smaller teams have come to depend on it for revenue.

Instead of taxing teams for abundant spending and keeping unsuccessful markets afloat, why not just institute a salary cap and floor? If teams have to spend more than they can afford to reach the floor, they probably should not be operating in the first place.

If teams have to cut back a little and focus more on their farm system, is it really such a bad thing? Some players will have to sacrifice—hopefully they’ll be able to survive on a measly $15 million per year.

The MLB should implement and salary cap and floor and avoid having teams spend enough money to save major corporations in the midst of an economic recession—especially when said teams have just received public funding for their new stadiums. I’m just saying...

6. Overtime in Football Tying?

There’s no tying in football! At least not in college football, anyways. The Eagles and Bengals reminded us earlier this season that you can, in fact, tie in the NFL. But both the college and NFL overtime formats need to be reevaluated.

6a. College Football Overtime: For the most part I’m fine with the college system because it works—it ultimately determines a winner and there are no ties. The only thing that I have a problem with is where teams start with the ball. Why give it to teams where a field goal is virtually guaranteed?

Instead of handing them the ball on the opponents 25, give them the ball at mid-field. If they only make it nine yards then teams have a very tough choice on their hands—attempt the one yard rush or try for the 51 yard field goal?

6b. NFL Overtime: No one likes tying so there should be no tying. Bottom line. The only way that there is a tie in the NFL is if no one scores in the overtime period, which means that it is not a very offensively charged game. Not a lot of fun to watch, but a tie as an outcome is terrible.

Maybe this is where the current college system could be very useful—after the first overtime period is over, give the offense the ball on the twenty-five, you cannot kick a field goal, and if you score you have to go for two.

5. Addition of December College Hoops Tournaments

The November college hoops tournaments are a fantastic way to kick the season off—they get fans involved early and teams have the ability to see how they stack up against tough competition.

As a fan, December is a colossal letdown. After the excitement of November, teams have to take time off for finals (understandable—they are student athletes after all) but also schedule extremely easy games leading up to the beginning of conference play in January.

There are plenty of ways to set up meaningful tournaments in December—expand the Big Ten/ACC Challenge to include more conferences and the winning conference gets a second guaranteed March Madness berth, set up a mid-major tournament where the winner has a place in the Big Dance, or just make it a fun holiday tournament.

There are a lot of options here that are better than easy games that boost self-esteem.

4. Introduction of the Blacktop Classic

If the NHL can have the Winter Classic outdoors, why can’t the NBA host a summer game outdoors, too? Everyone likes drinking outside while watching other people work out—why else would people sit in the snow to watch football?

It is possible to set up a basketball court and stands virtually anywhere—the NCAA has shown us that in March when fans sit in baseball stadiums watching basketball games during some of the regionals—so why not do it for the pros, too?

The idea here is not to put players in danger or anything—there is no point to having the athletes get pointlessly hurt. This needs to be set up somewhere where if the weatherman starts predicting rain two days ahead it can be cancelled and the game moved back to the normal arena.

Take the Meadowlands, for example. If the Nets host the Blacktop Classic at Giants stadium, but there is a call for rain, fans can go to the Izod center on the other side of the parking lot.

I’ve already done half the work in coming up with the name. It’s the NBA’s turn to step up now.

3. Expansion of March Madness

There are 341 eligible D-1 schools that can go to the Big Dance, yet only 65 make it there every year. March Madness creates some of the best sports moments—from Cinderella stories to fan bracket domination—and it does not leave a lot of room for the NIT to have any sort of meaningful impact (and don’t get me started on this new College Basketball Invitational).

With the two other college basketball postseason tournaments virtually irrelevant already, why not expand the NCAA field to 112 teams? Slightly under one-third of the eligible schools would make it and you have the ability to give the top four seeds in each region a first round bye.

This would bring the ratio of teams making the NCAA tournament much closer to what it was in 1985, when the field was expanded to 64 from 32.

This, unfortunately, does not leave a lot of room for a decent NIT field in the postseason.

There are two options for the NIT, then: either the NCAA Tournament can call it an absorption as they expand their field, or it can become one of the relevant December tournaments (sorry 2kSports—I still don’t care about the CBI). Regardless of the NIT’s stance on the matter, the NCAA should still expand the field for March Madness.

2. BCS Ranking System

The BCS ranking system involves a complicated formula that most people cannot understand and the only person who fully gets it is the guy who created it (talk about job security).

The bottom line, though, is that there are six computer rankings—each one uses a different ranking methodology—the highest and lowest rankings are dropped, the remaining four are summed and then averaged with the AP and Coaches polls.

There is always going to be discrepancy between various polls, but that normally comes from differing opinions that can be explained (or at least understood) by a couple of talking heads—it’s hard to accept reasoning from a couple of complicated matrices.

The real predicament occurs when teams are ranked higher (or lower) than both human polls say they should be. Use Week Nine from this season as an example. The AP and Coaches polls both had Georgia ranked eighth, but the BCS decided that they should be ranked sixth.

Since the BCS ranking averages together the computer rankings with the AP and Coaches polls, this means that the computers had to rank Georgia fourth or fifth to average them to sixth. This is a very notable difference. The same thing occurred a few weeks later when both human polls ranked Penn State sixth, but their BCS ranking was eighth.

No one enjoys having their team ranked by a computer—it lacks the human element. College football should do away with the BCS ranking system and stick with the AP and Coaches polls.

But if we get rid of the BCS computer system that would mean that the top thing that needs to change is...

1. BCS Bowl System

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the college bowl system is a disaster.

Year in, year out teams are left feeling unfulfilled with the college football “national champion”, and this year is an extreme example of how flawed the bowl system is.

There are plenty of schools who have a right to be disappointed with the team selection of the title game team—both programs have one loss (so do the rest of the top eight teams—except Utah with no losses) and their losses put them on an even playing field with everyone else. Here’s a closer look (based on week 15 BCS rankings):

No. 1—Oklahoma: Lost to No. 3 Texas 35-45 on a neutral field as part of the Red River Rivalry Week Seven.
No. 2—Florida: Lost to Ole Miss 30-31 on a blocked PAT with 3:28 left Week Five.
No. 3—Texas: Lost to No. 7 Texas Tech 39-33 on 28 yard TD Pass with 0:01 left Week 10.
No. 4—Alabama: Lost to No. 2 Florida 31-20 in SEC Title Game.
No. 5—USC: Lost to Oregon State 27-21 Week Five.
No. 6—Utah: Undefeated.
No. 7—Texas Tech: Lost to No. 1 Oklahoma 65-21 Week 13.
No. 8—Penn State: Lost to Iowa 24-23 on last second field goal Week 11.

I understand that rankings have a lot of “what have you done for me lately” built into them (so it benefits you to lose earlier in the season and finish strong), but with all of the top eight teams having very similar seasons, it seems difficult to justify having the “title game” be between two teams who are identical to others.

The only way to actually crown a national champion is to have a playoff, plain and simple.

The teams that go to the bowls, though, cannot be determined by rankings—otherwise we are stuck in the exact same position we are in now, except that teams will be arguing that they deserve to be in the top eight instead of the top two.

To avoid having the same debate, the only legitimate way to have a playoff is to have the winner of each conference entered (and maybe the top independent entered—which makes 12 teams in the playoff).

This makes the playoff grid a little odd, but if people were paid to create a convoluted bowl system, I’m sure they could come up with something here. This would also allow bowl games to still exist for the teams not in the playoffs, so the sponsors of the 29 remaining bowls would not lose out.

So there they are—the 10 things that should be changed in sports. Who knows if they actually will be, but I can keep my fingers crossed!