While I am still on a Super Bowl high from my beloved Giants’ win, I decided that I needed to vent about my frustration with pro sports. This comes from a really big sports’ fan, both an observer and participant, so take it in the spirit of “tough love”! Be happy to get your additions to my list as well.
In no particular order, here’s my list of changes by pro sport:
Baseball — I am a lifelong Yankees’ fan and that means that I have cheered for them when they have been really, really good (since 1996) and really, really bad (the early 1970s and the 1980s), but I do have some pet peeves about baseball, such as:
- The DH — even though I am an AL East fan (except for the Red Sox), I am finally ready to say that the designated hitter should be abolished once and for all. There is no other sport that has two sets of rules for teams that play each other and baseball shouldn’t either. I know that people will say that pitchers’ hitting is really boring and that lots of older players would not be able to extend their careers (e.g., Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon, etc), but in point of fact, when AL teams play in NL parks during inter-league play, the games are more exciting because the managers actually have to manage and do things like bunt and use pinch hitters.
- Length of Games — Though the Yankees are some of the worst offenders of this, I think that the umps need to actually enforce the rules about time between pitches and stepping out of the batters’ box. Four hour nine inning games are ridiculous!! Once you get into the box, stay there!
- Instant Replay — Notwithstanding the length of game argument, I think that, like the NFL, managers should get a couple of challenges for close plays in the field to be reviewed by replay. No challenges for balls and strikes but anything else is fair play!
- Playoffs — Compress the schedule so that there are no games in November, ever! No adding of wildcard teams either.
Pro Football — I think that NFL is the best of the pro leagues, last year’s lock out notwithstanding. Even it could use a couple of tweaks.
- Equipment & Safety — Though it took them way too long to figure this out, the NFL is finally getting with the program about improving player safety. Better helmets and other equipment, fewer few contact drills and other changes will hopefully extend careers and lives.
- Playoffs — No more playoff games!
- Pre-season Games — I would make two or three of them not four, and that doesn’t mean 18 regular season games, either.
Pro Basketball — Jeremy Lin, notwithstanding, the NBA is some trouble. Here’s what I would do to make it more exciting.
- Shorter Season — The lock out produced a 66 game season, and I think that should be the normal length, especially when you have playoffs that go into mid-June. Each game would be more meaningful and there would be more competition.
- Shorter Playoffs — All playoff rounds would be three out of five except the last round which would be best of seven.
- More meaningful salary cap — The haves and have nots are getting greater and greater apart. Miami should not have been permitted to sign James and Bosh. There should be more parity among teams, like the NFL, where even a bottom dweller can rise up in a matter of a couple of seasons.
- Minimum age requirement — I think that you should have to be 20 years old to play in the NBA, which means two years of college basketball or two years of minor league basketball. The reason why Lin has been a successful pro, at least for two weeks, is that he had four years of college basketball under his belt.
Pro Hockey — The NY Rangers are doing great, but hockey is in a bit of trouble as well. Here’s what I’d do to fix it:
- Shorter season — Just like the NBA, I would cut at least 10 games off the schedule and make it a November to April league.
- Shorter playoffs — Ditto comment above, but who want to watch hockey in June? Make the playoffs three out of five until the finals.
- Ban fighting — Olympic hockey doesn’t allow it. College hockey doesn’t allow it. How come pro hockey does? It adds nothing to game and permits people with low skill levels to remain in the league far too long. If you want to fight go become a boxer or an ultimate fighter and then I don’t have to watch you.
- OT — Make there be a second five minute four on four overtime before the shootout and only award a point if there is a tie after the two OT periods.
- TV Blackouts — The NHL blackout rules make no sense. We are considered in the home territory of the Buffalo Sabres which is 100 miles farther away than the Rangers, Devils, Bruins and Islanders, so that we get blacked out when the Sabres are home and can’t watch the other more local teams.
Other Sports — Some thoughts about other professional sports:
- Tennis — make men and women get the same prize money; no grunting on the court; and make women play five set matches at major tournaments (or men play three sets).
- Golf — get Tiger Woods a new putter
- Nascar — never watch it and don’t care about it
- UFC — ditto with Nascar
I have another post about college athletics to share soon.
A Man in the Middle 
College Hockey doesn’t allow fighting? That doesn’t stop them – at least, it didn’t when I was in college! 😉
I mostly agree with you about baseball, but I would flip it and require the DH for both leagues, not the other way around. It’s less about it being boring (if the pitcher is hitting with more frequency, one could conclude that their hitting skills would improve), and more about injury. With how easy it is for pitchers to get injured as it is, I don’t like the idea of my pitchers batting. But, I agree with you that the two sets of rules is just plain asinine.
I would also just go back to East/West, have a pennant race and then the World Series. This month-long and growing playoff nonsense is exactly that, and I’m tired of it. I wouldn’t mind, however, if they evened out the leagues and expanded to 16/16 teams – Chris and I have talked about this, and it would be great to see a couple more teams in the south. (Louisville and Charlotte, maybe?)
You do bring up a good point about the games being more exciting with the pitcher batting, however …
Not sure that there will be any new teams added to MLB, but there could be some teams moved around.
I don’t want to see pitchers injured but I am finally persuaded that the DH is a dumb rule.
Well, 15 NL and 15 AL means interleague play constantly. Which, if the DH was either completely eliminated or completely embraced (the NL is the only professional league that has not embraced it, by the way), then that would be fine, but what is the point of having 2 separate leagues if you’re going to play each other all the time, anyway? Might as well go the way of hockey and have the 2 conferences be East and West.
If it was 16 and 16, then the interleague play could be kept to a minimum.
However, either way, the nonsense extended playoffs for baseball suck. Pennant race and World Series, 7 games each, and that’s IT. Solves the November problem.
There is only one pro sport that matters and that’s baseball and the METS are the team that matters. as far as I can Tell the ONLY place where there is no DH is the MLB national League. While I think the DH was a bad idea I am obviously in a minority so I think it is time for the NL to get with the program. (I may be affected by the fact that the Mets have Daniel Murphy who is nothing if not a DH — but I guess he’ll be playing second base until he’s hurt).
There’s nothing wrong with the NBA that a significantly larger court wouldn’t solve. How about 200 by 100 instead of the present 50 by 96. The players keep getting bigger and faster give them a proportionate amount of space to play in. Screw the arena owners.
I’m with you about fighting in hockey. You fight , you sit without pay for 5 games. Oh and points for winning or losing only — 2 for a win no matter how got, 1 for a tie and 0 for a loss however got.
Bill,
I feel your pain about the Mets. They are going to be lousy for years to come…
I think that the NBA should raise the height of the net as well…:)
I am in complete agreement that fighting needs to be banned in the NHL. Fighitng is a sideshow act that people try to turn into something mythical and steeped in tradition. It’s unneeded violence that does nothing for the game. It doesn’t impact momentum – studies by hockey experts (PowerScout Hockey) have proven that it has no impact on strategy or the outcome of a game. If fighting makes players accountable then let’s look at the 70’s and 80’s when every team had multiple enforcers on their team. With all those “policemen” skating a regular patrol, we should have ended up with no cheap shots, very few injuries and good clean hockey. Instead those decades were some of the most violent in NHL history; stick swinging, elbows, butt ends and slew foots. Enforcers don’t work.
I posted about these issues in my blog – http://itsnotpartofthegame.blogspot.com/. You can’t have players acting as police based on some mythical set of rules, “the code”, that is not written down anywhere. In the heat of the battle they start enforcing clean hits or game blow-outs, and try to send messages at the 2 second mark of the game. They are acting with emotion and bias and that’s how you end up with ugly incidents like McSorley/Brashear and Bertuzzi/Moore. It’s not part of the game.
Totally agree with you about this. Real Sports on HBO did a great piece about this in December, and I am not convinced (even if my beloved Rangers lead the NHL in fighting minutes).